Music benefits the brain, research reveals

(NaturalNews) Northwestern University scientists have pulled together a review of research into what music — specifically, learning to play music — does to humans. The result shows music training does far more than allow us to entertain ourselves and others by playing an instrument or singing. Instead, it actually changes our brains. The paper, just published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience , is a compilation of research findings from scientists all over the world who used all kinds of research methods. The bottom line to all these studies: musical training has a profound impact on other skills including speech and language, memory and attention, and even the ability to convey emotions vocally. So what is it that musical training does? According to the Northwestern scientists, the findings strongly indicate it adds new neural connections — and that primes the brain for other forms of human communication. In fact, actively working with musical sounds enhances neuroplasticity , the brain’s ability to adapt and change. “A musician’s brain selectively enhances information-bearing elements in sound. In a beautiful interrelationship between sensory and cognitive processes, the nervous system makes associations between complex sounds and what they mean,” Nina Kraus, lead author of the Nature paper and director of Northwestern’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, explained in a statement to the media. “The efficient sound-to-meaning connections are important not only for music but for other aspects of communication.” For example, researchers have found that musicians are better than non-musicians in learning to incorporate sound patterns for a new language into words. Their brains also appear to be primed to comprehend speech in a noisy background. What’s more, children who have had music lessons tend to have a larger vocabulary and better reading ability than youngsters who haven’t had any musical training. And children with learning disabilities, who often have a hard time focusing when there’s a lot of background noise, may be especially helped by music lessons. “Music training seems to strengthen the same neural processes that often are deficient in individuals with developmental dyslexia or who have difficulty hearing speech in noise,” Dr. Kraus stated. The Northwestern researchers concluded their findings make a case for including music in school curriculums. “The effect of music training suggests that, akin to physical exercise and its impact on body fitness, music is a resource that tones the brain for auditory fitness and thus requires society to re-examine the role of music in shaping individual development,” they wrote. In addition to musical training, listening to music has also been shown to have some remarkable beneficial effects on the body. For example, as NaturalNews has previously reported, Tel Aviv University scientists found that premature infants exposed to thirty minutes of Mozart’s music daily grew far more rapidly than premature babies not exposed to classical music (http://www.naturalnews.com/028011_music_premature_babies.html) and researchers at the University of Florence in Italy documented that listening to classical, Celtic or Indian (raga) music once a day for four weeks significantly reduced the blood pressure in people suffering from hypertension (http://www.naturalnews.com/023479_blood_pressure_hypertension.html). For more information: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20648064 http://www.soc.northwestern.edu/brainvolts/

Pharmaceutical drug contamination of waterways threatens life on our planet

(NaturalNews) The President’s Cancer Panel (PCP) recently released its yearly report to the President outlining the status of cancer in America. This year’s report focuses primarily on environmental factors that contribute to cancer risk. According to the report, pharmaceutical drugs are a serious environmental pollutant, particularly in the way they continue to contaminate waterways across the country (and the world). Many reports have recently appeared about pharmaceutical contamination of water supplies, rivers, lakes and other waterways, but spokespersons from the drug and chemical industries have denied that this pollution poses any risk whatsoever to the environment. But this report, issued directly from PCP, provides a stunning indictment of the dangers associated with pharmaceutical pollution. The executive summary of the PCP report includes the following statements: “[P]harmaceuticals have become a considerable source of environmental contamination. Drugs of all types enter the water supply when they are excreted or improperly disposed of; the health impact of long-term exposure to varying mixtures of these compounds is unknown.” It’s important to note that PCP is required by law to assess the National Cancer Program and offer a truthful evaluation of the various things it finds to be responsible for causing cancer. The panel is a division of the National Cancer Institute itself, so its findings hold fairly considerable weight in the scientific world (or they should, if the reaction wasn’t so politicized). The report itself is quite extensive, evaluating everything from the environmental and health impacts of drug and pesticide pollution to cell phone radiation and nuclear testing residue. But the section on pharmaceutical drugs is especially interesting when considering the fact that numerous reports have shown that drugs and drug residue that ends up in water supplies typically isn’t filtered out by municipal treatment plants. No laws exist to protect the public from pharmaceuticals Many chemicals are highly regulated because they are known to negatively affect human and environmental health. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is tasked with regulating exposure to these chemicals, but pharmaceuticals are not included in its regulatory scheme . Despite years of prodding by environmental scientists, the EPA has given very little attention to the dangers posed by widespread pharmaceutical contamination. According to a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) study conducted back in 2002 , antidepressants, blood pressure and diabetes medications, anticonvulsants, oral contraceptives, hormone replacement therapy drugs, chemotherapy drugs, antibiotics, heart medications and even codeine are all showing up in the water supplies of American cities. This study was the first national-scale evaluation of pharmaceutical drug contamination in streams, and roughly 80 percent of the streams tested were found to be contaminated as well. In 2008, an AP investigation found that at least 46 million Americans are drinking water contaminated with trace amounts of pharmaceuticals. Even though every city tested has its water treated and “purified” prior to being delivered to the public, trace amounts of pharmaceutical drugs are making their way through to the tap. (Since not all major metropolitan areas were tested, the number of people affected is likely far higher than what was reported by AP.) In spite of all this, water quality reports don’t disclose the levels of pharmaceuticals found in tap water. Since the EPA and FDA have failed to establish any proper guidelines for drug contamination in water, most people have no idea that their water contains a dangerous cocktail of prescription medications. Hospitals, consumers and drug companies are all responsible None of this is surprising if you consider that unused and expired drugs cannot be legally returned to the pharmacies where they were purchased. Many people just flush them down the toilet because the drug labels actually encourage patients to dispose of them this way (and they probably don’t know what else to do with them). People who take prescription and over-the-counter drugs will excrete them as well, contributing to the drug overload being found at wastewater treatment plants. (Drugs are not necessarily “broken down” by your digestive system.) It is also regular protocol for hospitals to flush millions of pounds of unused medications every year , a practice that contributes significantly to water contamination. And let’s not forget the drug companies that dump large amounts of their own pharmaceuticals into water supplies. The same AP investigation found that more than 270 million pounds of pharmaceutical compound residue is dumped every year into waterways nationwide, many of which serve as drinking water for millions of people. The U.S. isn’t the only place where Big Pharma is dumping its waste, either. In 2009, researchers found that India’s rivers are full of dangerous pharmaceuticals, too. One Indian river where 90 different pharmaceutical companies dump their waste tested positive for over 21 active drug ingredients. In one river alone, there was enough ciprofloxacin (a strong antibiotic) being dumped every day by drug companies to treat 90,000 people! (And scientists detected this in water that was supposedly purified by the drug companies before being released into the environment). The drug contamination levels found in India’s rivers were 150 times the detected levels found in the U.S. These findings prove that drug companies couldn’t care less how much drug residue they dump in water as long as they can get away with it. They don’t even believe that pharmaceutical contamination is a threat to the environment. “Based on what we now know, I would say we find there’s little or no risk from pharmaceuticals in the environment to human health,” explained microbiologist Thomas White, a consultant for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, in a Dallas Morning News article about the AP investigation. This is similar to BP’s CEO saying, after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, that the amount of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico was “tiny” compared to how big the ocean is. Studies show drug residue cocktails actually do cause harm Though the chemical and drug industries deny any danger from exposure to drug residue in the water, science (and common sense) says otherwise. A 2006 study conducted by researchers from the University of Insubria in Italy simulated drug-tainted water by creating a low-level mixture of various drug residues and testing it on embryonic cells. They discovered that, even at low doses, the drug residues actually stopped cells from reproducing. Even though current water contamination levels are measured in parts per million or parts per billion, there is no way to know just how much exposure people are actually experiencing. People drink contaminated water, shower in contaminated water and cook with contaminated water, so it’s illogical to suggest that there’s no harm being caused by widespread exposure, even at “low” doses, especially when the exposure is a combination of dozens of different drugs that have never been tested in combination. People are not the only beings that are affected by pharmaceutical contamination, either. The world’s aquatic ecosystems (and the plants and animals that belong to them) are all being negatively impacted. Drugs are being found in fish According to an MSNBC report back in 2009 , all kinds of drugs are being found in the bodies of fish near major U.S. cities. Researchers found drugs for high cholesterol, allergies, high blood pressure, bipolar disorder and depression in the livers and tissue of fish. Researchers are in agreement that aquatic species of all types are being harmed by continuous exposure to water contaminated with pharmaceuticals. Even though wastewater is treated in the U.S. before entering waterways, most treatment facilities do not have the proper filtering technology to remove dangerous drug residues from wastewater before it gets dumped. Many fish are experiencing reproductive problems as a result of exposure, as is explained in the following report: (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23504633/) Beyond having their sperm damaged, some fish are actually changing sexes. Males are becoming females and females are becoming males as a result of drug exposure in the water. Other water creatures are experiencing things like organ failure and the inability to grow. It makes a reasonable person ask “How long until these effects start to hit humans?” Or have they already? “We have no reason to think that this is a unique situation. We find pretty much anywhere we look, these compounds are ubiquitous,” explained Erik Orsak, an environmental contaminants specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in response to the findings. And it’s not just near American cities where fish are turning up with all kinds of drugs in their bodies. As of 2008, more than 100 different pharmaceutical compounds have been detected around the world, affecting fish and wildlife everywhere. These are chemicals that simply do not belong in our environment. And yet they are there, dumped into our waters by the pharmaceutical industry and its hospitals, pharmacies and consumers. Why we need more research on the toxicity of pharmaceutical contaminants Many animal studies have been or are being conducted on pharmaceutical exposure, and they are indicating that these drugs are causing widespread harm. But very few official human trials have been conducted, prompting many to push for increased efforts. If drug residue is building up in animals and wildlife, then of course it’s building up in humans as well, posing the risk of significant harm. Reproductive failure, thyroid dysfunction, cancer, osteoporosis — all of these diseases and more may be caused, at least in part, by prolonged exposure to low levels of all sorts of drugs in the water supply. Many states pushing for drug waste legislation Because the truth about drug contamination in water is no longer a secret, many states have begun enacting legislation to regulate drug disposal. Last August, Illinois passed the Safe Pharmaceuticals Disposal Act , which restricts hospitals from flushing drugs down the drain. California has a similar law in place, and New York is working on one as well, according to a recent report: (http://www.westfaironline.com/hudson-valley-biz/article/7668-drugs-down-the-drain.html) The same report indicates that there have been five bills introduced to regulate drugs at the federal level. While this addresses the hospital waste problem, there’s still the human and drug company waste problems. No matter how you look at it, pharmaceutical drugs are going to continue making their way into the water supplies because they will pass through the bodies of consumers first! Drug companies must be held responsible for their wastewater Since it’s already been revealed that drug companies are failing to properly treat their wastewater before dumping it into rivers (even though they claim to be treating it), U.S. regulatory agencies need to step up and correct the problem. Regular monitoring of wastewater contaminant levels is the only way to halt the chemical contamination of waterways. And if U.S. companies are polluting water supplies in other countries (such as India), they should be held accountable for their actions. There’s no excuse for U.S. companies to pollute anywhere in the world just because they’re operating outside domestic borders. Wastewater treatment plants should be retrofitted State and local legislators would do well to put forth their own legislation to upgrade wastewater treatment facilities so they can properly filter out pharmaceuticals (and dispose of them safely). Since there’s no way to stop human elimination of pharmaceuticals (apart from slowly educating the masses to stop swallowing dangerous pharmaceuticals), municipalities need to do their part to prevent these dangerous toxins from getting into water supplies in the first place. Together, these measures would help to drastically reduce the amount of pharmaceutical waste entering our environment. It’s the environment, stupid! The careless disposal of toxic pharmaceuticals is proving to be highly destructive, despite reassurances by some that it’s not that big of a deal. The health of the planet and all of its amazing biodiversity is now threatened by the steady poisoning of toxic chemical pharmaceuticals. And it’s not just pharmaceuticals, either. Chemical byproducts and waste from many different industries are polluting our environment at unprecedented rates. Mercury (from dental fillings), fluoride (dripped into the public water supply on purpose , if you can believe that!), and all sorts of other chemicals and heavy metals are showing up in food, water and the global environment. Haven’t we poisoned our planet enough already? Plants, animals and even humans can only take so much of this. That’s why we need to keep fighting against the corporations that are causing this harm and force them to stop destroying the world in which we hope to raise our children. After all, if we keep poisoning the planet at this rate, there won’t be much left to offer future generations except a toxic stew of patent-protected chemicals that all the corporations pretend pose no problem at all.

17 big questions about the handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill

(NaturalNews) What’s clear about the BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is that the independent journalists are doing a better job of asking the really tough questions than the mainstream media. Sure, CNN, Fox and others are bringing some attention to the matter, and they’ve done some solid reporting on it, but they haven’t yet found a way to ask the deeper questions like why the U.S. government seems to be colluding with BP to cover up the truth about the spill. Just the other day, I found an article entitled, “16 Burning Questions About The Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill” on the TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com site (http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/16-burning-questions-about-the-gulf-of-mexico-oil-spill-that-we-deserve-some-answers-to). It was a really insightful collection of important questions, so I’ve repeated them below. The author of these questions wasn’t mentioned on the page, so I regret I cannot properly attribute the list, but I do think they’re worth reviewing, so I’ve included my own commentary and an extra question below. Here are the 16 questions: #1) Barack Obama has authorized the deployment of more than 17,000 National Guard members along the Gulf coast to be used “as needed” by state governors. So what are all of these National Guard troops going to be doing exactly? Are the troops going to be used to stop the oil or to control the public? Mike’s comment: Good question. Much of the response activity to the spill seems to be about controlling the public’s perception and limiting media access to the spill site rather than actually cleaning up the mess. #2) Barack Obama has also announced the creation of a “Gulf recovery czar” who will be in charge of overseeing the restoration of the Gulf of Mexico region following the oil spill. So is appointing a “czar” Obama’s idea of taking charge of a situation? #3) Because it is so incredibly toxic, the UK’s Marine Management Organization has completely banned Corexit 9500, so if there was a major oil spill in the UK’s North Sea, BP would not be able to use it. So why is BP being allowed to use Corexit 9500 in the Gulf of Mexico? Mike’s answer: Because Corexit kills sea animals and makes them sink and disappear rather than allowing them to wash up on shore where the emotional outcry would be even worse than it is already. #4) It is being reported that 2.61 parts per million of Corexit 9500 (mixed with oil at a ratio of 1:1o) is lethal to 50% of fish exposed to it within 96 hours. That means that 1 gallon of Corexit 9500/oil mixture is capable of rendering 383,141 gallons of water highly toxic to fish. So why was BP allowed to dump 1,021,000 gallons of Corexit 9500 and Corexit 9527 into the Gulf of Mexico, and why aren’t they being stopped from dumping another 805,000 gallons of these dispersants that they have on order into the Gulf? Mike’s answer: Sadly, BP is running the show in the Gulf, not the government! The U.S. government has sold out to private corporations who now think they own the gulf and can run operations there however they see fit. #5) If these dispersants are so incredibly toxic to fish, what are they going to do to crops? What are they going to do to people? Mike’s answer: They’re obviously going to poison the entire Gulf Coast region if hurricanes whip up these chemicals and deposit them on land. We could be looking at a complete wipeout of the Florida citrus industry, for example, if all the worst conditions converge. #6) If the smell of the oil on some Gulf beaches is already so strong that it burns your nostrils, then what in the world is this oil doing to wildlife that encounter it? #7) Is it a bad sign that birds from the Gulf region are flocking north by the thousands? Mike answer: Remember the Tsunami in the Indian ocean a few years back? The animals fled first, while the clueless people stayed behind and got clobbered by the deadly wave. I think a similar thing could be happening in the Gulf. All it takes is one hurricane to turn the entire region into a toxic stew of chemical poison. #8) Why is BP being allowed to use private security contractors to keep the American people away from the oil cleanup sites? Mike’s answer: Yes, this is the real question. BP is running security in the Gulf the same way Halliburton runs security in the Middle East. The corporate contractors are now the police force in the area, and they’re running the Gulf as if they owned it! This is a clear indication that the corporations have taken over our government. #9) Why is BP openly attempting to manipulate the search results on sites like Google and Yahoo? #10) Why has the FAA shut down the airspace above the Gulf of Mexico oil spill? What don’t they want the American people to see? Mike’s answer: There are lots of answer to this one: The feds probably don’t want people in small airplanes taking aerial photos and posting them online (because the Obama administration is working overtime to cover up the truth here, much like the Bush administration did with the flag-draped coffins coming home from war in the Middle East). It could also be that they are planning something really crazy like a deep ocean nuke to collapse the well, and they don’t want civilians falling out of the sky when the mushroom cloud appears. #11) Senator Bill Nelson of Florida says there are reports that there are additional ruptures in the sea floor from which oil is leaking. If there are quite a few of these additional ruptures, then how in the world does BP expect to completely stop this oil leak? Mike’s answer: BP actually doesn’t expect to stop this leak anytime soon. They are clearly in full-on spin mode, just trying to deny the truth and spin the words to buy themselves more time to offload stock shares before the whole thing comes tumbling down. #12) Why are scientists finding concentrations of methane at up to 10,000 times normal background levels in Gulf waters? Mike’s answer: Because BP broke the ocean floor, and now huge volumes of gas hydrates (which contain methane) are bubbling up from places that were previously trapped safely underground. #13) At some testing stations in the Gulf of Mexico, levels of benzene have been detected at over 3000 parts per billion, and levels of hydrogen sulfide have been detected as high as 1192 parts per billion. Considering that these levels would be highly toxic to humans, why hasn’t the general public been warned? #14) Why are so many Gulf oil spill disaster workers showing up at local hospitals complaining of a “mysterious illness”? Mike’s answer: This is going to be the Gulf War Syndrome of the Gulf Coast. Or the 9/11 asbestos question affecting firefighters. There will be a wave of toxic side effects from the use of chemicals in the Gulf, and both BP and the federal government will predictably deny any link between the chemicals and the health effects for years to come. #15) If “70% or 80%” of the protective booms are doing absolutely nothing at all to stop the oil, then what is going to stop the millions of gallons of oil in the Gulf from eventually reaching shore? Mike’s answer: Nothing, of course. The oil is going to reach the shore, and there’s nothing BP or the feds can do to stop in. In fact, it seems as if they are trying to interfere with the cleanup by halting the barges that were supposed to be vacuuming oil just off the beaches. #16) It is being reported that the deep sea oil plumes are creating huge “dead zones” where all creatures are dying as they are deprived of oxygen. If this oil spill continues to grow could the vast majority of the Gulf of Mexico become one gigantic “dead zone”? Mike’s answer: Indeed, that is precisely what looks likely to happen. The Gulf of Mexico could become a massive dead zone, adding to the long list of humanity’s crimes against the planet. See my related CounterThink cartoon at: http://www.naturalnews.com/029015_atrocities_nature.html I’ve also added one more question of my own: #17) Why is our government colluding with BP to cover up the truth about the spill? Remember the BP press conferences on cable news? A U.S. Coast Guard representative was standing right there beside the BP spokesperson, almost as if she were a subordinate of BP. This is insane! If anything, the US Coast Guard should be telling BP what to do, not the other way around. And why is the US Coast Guard restricting reporters’ access to the spill areas, threatening them with arrest if they “trespass.” Trespass into PUBLIC waters? Doesn’t anybody realize that BP does not own the Gulf of Mexico and if we want to take our boats out into the Gulf to get some video of what’s really happening there, that’s our right! But the U.S. government is now working for BP, it seems, and they’re trying to protect BP’s image by restricting the freedoms of ordinary Americans. Sound familiar? That’s why I think this Gulf of Mexico disaster is another 9/11 reactionary freedom squasher in the works. Just wait… you’ll see what kind of freedom-destroying ideas are put forth by our lawmakers in response to this catastrophe. When it’s all said and done, it won’t only be British Petroleum that loses; it will be all of us. The Corporatocracy and government collusion What we’re really witnessing here with the BP disaster is our own government colluding with the powerful corporatocracy to cover up the truth all while making it worse by interfering with legitimate cleanup efforts. It’s almost as if the federal government were actively working to worsen the problem and expand the impact of the disaster. But that brings up the question: Why? Why would our own government worsen a catastrophe? The answer, of course, is right in front of you. Just visit ground zero in New York City and remind yourself of all the various ways the U.S. government expanded its power following the collapse of the twin towers. “Never waste a good crisis” is the mantra of Big Government today, and the easiest way to steal even more power away from the people is to turn a small disaster into a big disaster, then leap in with a “government solution” that enacts some large, oppressive new act that never would have been possible before the disaster. So what kind of oppressive new laws does the Obama administration want to put in place in response to this disaster? Perhaps government control over all oceans, or government control over all seafood. Maybe they want to outlaw oil over the next 25 years and force everybody to transition to some other form of energy (which may not actually be a bad idea from an ecological perspective, but at what price to freedom?). There are a thousand other conspiracy theories that try to guess at what the government’s true agenda might be in this moment. While it’s hard to say which of them (if any) might be true, one thing is crystal clear: The government does not seem interested in solving the problem in the Gulf of Mexico. It is covering up the truth, threatening mainstream journalists who try to photograph the region, restricting air travel over the well site, restricting boat travel anywhere near the spill, and basically lying to the public on a daily basis about what’s really happening there. That alone should make any thinking person suspicious. If the situation were really under control, why would they have to lie about it? US government poisons its own citizens There is precedent for believing that the U.S. government might try to poison its own citizens in order to achieve a political goal. During Prohibition, the U.S. government actually released poisoned alcohol in order to harm (or kill) those who were defying the law and drinking liquor. That story is published today here on NaturalNews.com. Read it to learn more about what our own government may be capable of doing when it wishes to exercise power of the People.

Not All Takeaways Pile On The Pounds

Obviously choosing something like a vegetable curry will be more healthy than something greasy and wrapped in batter. It’s all simply knowing what’s good and what’s bad for you, then you will be able to be healthy while enjoying a meal treat.
Hopefully here are a few tips for choosing the best and the worst items [...]

The Farmers Are Local, the Products Exotic

Many farms in Connecticut are specializing in exotic foods, like Caribbean grapefruit, manzano peppers and brown Indian cucumbers.