Children’s brains needlessly exposed to cancer-linked radiation

(NaturalNews) Are you a parent? Here’s a simple question to ask yourself: if your youngster receives a bump on the head, would you rather keep an eye on your child for 4 to 6 hours to make sure he or she suffered no serious trauma — or would you prefer that doctors zap your child’s brain with ionizing radiation from costly computed tomography (CT) scans just to make you feel better immediately? Most moms and dads would probably prefer the simple “watchful waiting” approach if they thought there was little chance their offspring had serious head trauma. And it turns out, according to a huge study of more than 40,000 kids with blunt head trauma just published online in the journal Pediatrics , simple observation is the best approach and also the healthiest — because it doesn’t expose children to ionizing radiation. So why do about half of all US children taken to hospital emergency departments (EDs) for a head injury receive a head CT scan? Remarkably, the scientists behind the new research claim it is “often to ease worried parents’ concerns”. Simply put, parents are blamed for the outrageously common practice of exposing children needlessly to radiation for a bump on the head. In a statement to the media, the research team, led by Children’s Hospital Boston and UC Davis, pointed out that true traumatic brain injury is uncommon. Their multi-center study of children with minor blunt head trauma provides compelling evidence that simply allowing a period of observation can reduce the use of head CT by as much as half — without putting the kids in danger and without exposing children to ionizing radiation. This change in medical practice would not only slash healthcare costs, but is better medicine, the researchers concluded. “Only a small percentage of children with blunt head trauma really have something serious going on,” Lise Nigrovic, MD, MPH, of Children’s Hospital Boston (who co-led the study with Nathan Kuppermann, MD, MPH, chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at UC Davis) said in a media statement. “If you can be watched in the ED for a few hours, you may not need a CT.” Nigrovic, Kuppermann and colleagues found that simply opting for an observation period of kids who had received a blow to the head did not compromise safety. Clinically important traumatic brain injury (defined by an injury resulting in death, neurosurgical intervention, intubation for more than 24 hours or hospital admission for two nights or more) was equally uncommon in the kids who were simply observed for several hours and those who were not observed but sent for CT scans. The scientists pointed out that cranial CT scans present additional risks for children because youngsters’ growing brain tissue is far more sensitive to ionizing radiation than that of adults. And, because of their longer life expectancy, children’s lifetime risk of developing a radiation-induced cancer is greater. However,as NaturalNews has previously reported, there is evidence that CT scans increase the risk of cancer in adults, too(http://www.naturalnews.com/026001_CT_scans_cancer_risk.html). “CT isn’t bad if you really need it, but you don’t want to use it in children who are at low risk for having a significant injury,” Nigrovicn stated. “For parents, this means spending a couple of extra hours in the ED in exchange for not getting a CT. It’s the children in the middle risk groups — those who don’t appear totally normal, but whose injury isn’t obviously severe — for whom observation can really help.” So exactly how long should you keep a watchful eye on a child who has received a blow to the head? Practice guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend a child be carefully observed for 4 to 6 hours after injury. “There is a clear need to develop appropriate and safe guidelines for decreasing the number of inappropriate head CT scans that we do on children,” Kuppermann said in the press statement.” The results of this analysis demonstrate that a period of observation before deciding to use head CT scans on many injured children can spare children from inappropriate radiation when it is not called for, while not increasing the risk of missing important brain injuries.” For more information: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/ http://www.naturalnews.com/029577_CT_scans_radiation.html

USDA to allow Monsanto to perform its own GMO studies

(NaturalNews) Last August, a federal judge admonished the USDA for approving genetically modified seeds without first doing the required environmental impact study. Now, the USDA has a solution–allow the biotech industry to conduct the studies itself. This means that Monsanto and other biotech companies will decide whether to approve their own products. In the case brought last August by environmentalists and the Center for Food Safety, Federal Judge Jeffrey White ruled that the USDA violated the National Environmental Policy Act in deregulating Monsanto’s Roundup Ready sugar beet seeds in 2005 and banned planting of the crop until the environmental impact study was complete. The USDA ignored the ban, according to Popular Science (http://bit.ly/kc8H9M), and ignored White’s subsequent order to destroy the crops once they had been planted. The USDA ignored the directives because, according to a recent Grist article (http://bit.ly/fniqCr) it worried a GMO sugar beet ban would cause sweetener prices to rise. “Thus the USDA places the food industry’s right to cheap sweetener for its junk food over the dictates of a federal court” Grist says. Roundup Ready sugar beets would likely not stand up to an independent environmental impact assessment, the Grist article noted. Sugar beets are largely grown in an area of Oregon the produces crops closely related to sugar beets, such as chard. The GM beets could damage the organic and non-GMO crops through cross-pollination. Also, problems with Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide would likely come to light. Heavy applications of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide on its other herbicide-resistant GM crops, such as corn and soy, have created the increasing problem of herbicide-resistant “superweeds.” According to another Grist article (http://bit.ly/9unbhp), farmers had to abandon thousands of acres in the South due to new strains of giant pigweed. The article also showed a major ingredient in Roundup to be much more harmful to the environment than previously proclaimed. Part of the reasoning for the USDA to allow the biotech industry to do its own studies is that a draft environmental assessment can cost anywhere from $60,000 to $1 million, Grist says. Letting companies do the studies would save money and fast-track the process. Critics of GM crops argue the set-up is likely to result in biased and inaccurate information, according to agriculture journal Capital Press. By allowing biotech developers to conduct their own environmental assessments, the process becomes subject to conflicts of interest, said Bill Freese, science policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety. “It’s like asking BP to write an assessment of an offshore drilling operation,” he said. “The pilot program basically treats the environmental review process as a ‘rubber stamp’ for getting biotech crops to market more quickly.” Sources for this article include: Grist: USDA moves to let Monsanto perform its own environmental impact studies on GMOs — http://www.grist.org/industrial-agriculture/2011-04-19-usda-to-let-monsanto-do-own-environmental-impact-studies-on-gmos Grist: USDA downplays own scientist’s research on ill effects of Monsanto herbicide — http://www.grist.org/article/usda-downplays-own-scientists-research-on-danger-of-roundup Capital Press: USDA plans to outsource biotech studies — http://www.capitalpress.com/mobile/mp-biotech-process-041511 Popular Science: Government Says Biotech Companies Can Be Their Own Safety Testers, Letting the fox guard the henhouse? — http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-04/government-oks-biotech-companies-performing-their-own-environmental-tests

Japanese government censors Fukushima reports that contradict official story

(NaturalNews) Censorship of the truth about what is really going on at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility has been taken to a whole new level of corruption. According to a recent report from the Shingetsu News Agency, the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication (MIAC), in conjunction with the National Police Agency and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), has established a special project team to crack down on independent and freelance news agencies that criticize or otherwise scrutinize the official Japanese government position concerning Fukushima. The Japanese government appears to be working closely with both the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the nation’s mainstream media outlets to maintain the facade that everything is just fine, and that the nuclear meltdown situation is largely mitigated and under control. But recent prodding and questioning by certain media sources outside this “good ol’ boys” club have struck a nerve with authorities, sparking the new crackdown on those who oppose the official story. Authorities say such scrutiny is a threat to national security. For the most part, the mainstream Japanese media has been the only type of media invited to most of the press conferences concerning Fukushima. And the reporters who attend these events merely reiterate what TEPCO and others are saying about the situation, without asking any hard questions or investigating the situation. But the few press conferences at which independent and freelance reporters have been permitted to attend have been rife with the tough, hardball questions that nobody else has been asking — and this has caused quite an upset. “Freelance journalists and foreign media are pursuing the facts, even going into the radiation exclusion zone,” explained Uesugi Takashi, an independent journalist that has been pushing the Japanese government to be more forthcoming with the truth about the situation. “However, surprisingly, the Japan government continues to prevent freelance journalists and overseas media from gaining access to official press conferences at the prime minister’s house and government.” One of the biggest and most obvious questions that many independent journalists, as well as Japanese citizens, are asking concerns the near-total blackout of information on the current status of Fukushima. Authorities continue to repeat that the situation is under control, but where is the actual evidence to back this claim? And if those in power have nothing to hide, then why have all the meetings between TEPCO officials and the government been private, closed-door meetings that exclude actual journalists? Meanwhile, empty reassurances that the Fukushima situation is essential “over” have drawn many citizens who previously evacuated the Fukushima exclusion zone back into these dangerous areas. This occurs, of course, as radiation readings around the world continue to rise in response to the Fukushima disaster (http://www.naturalnews.com/032048_radiation_milk.html). Sources for this story include: http://japanfocus.org/-Makiko-Segawa/3516

Three new studies reveal children are dumbed down by pesticide exposure in womb

(NaturalNews) Does it ever seem like the population is being “dumbed down”? Maybe that is literally happening — even before birth. And at least one of the culprits appears to be organophosphate pesticides that are widely used on food crops throughout the U.S. The evidence for the intelligence robbing effect of these poisons isn’t some obscure study in lab animals, either. This is a major discovery involving human children in multiple studies. The results of three separate research papers have just been published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives and all document this alarming fact: pesticides could be robbing many humans of their maximum intelligence potential. “These associations are substantial, especially when viewing this at a population-wide level,” said study principal investigator Brenda Eskenazi, UC Berkeley professor of epidemiology and of maternal and child health, in a statement to the media. “That difference could mean, on average, more kids being shifted into the lower end of the spectrum of learning, and more kids needing special services in school.” This isn’t a problem limited to children living near farms where pesticides are regularly sprayed, either. The other two studies, one conducted by scientists at Mt. Sinai Medical Center and the other by researchers at Columbia University, investigated pesticide exposure in urban populations in New York City. The Mt. Sinai research involved assessing toddlers at 12 and 24 months of age using standardized testing that measures cognitive and psychomotor development in young children. Then, when the children were between six and nine years old, the researchers administered skill and intelligence tests. The results? Just as the UC Berkeley researchers found, the Mt. Sinai scientists discovered that exposure to organophosphates negatively impacted perceptual reasoning. In plain English, that means the children did not have the level of nonverbal problem-solving skills that normal, healthy kids are expected to have. Both the UC Berkeley and Mt. Sinai research teams measured pesticide metabolites in maternal urine; the scientists at Columbia measured umbilical cord blood levels of a specific pesticide, chlorpyrifos. And, it’s important to note, the Columbia study is the first to look at neurotoxicity of chlorpyrifos exposure before birth to see how it impacts cognitive development as children reach school age. Although it was banned for indoor use in homes by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2001, chlorpyrifos was once an extremely popular organophosphate pesticide for residential use and still lingers in the environment. The Columbia researchers found that the amount of chlorpyrifos in babies’ blood was linked to neurodevelopmental problems by age three and these deficits persisted at least through age seven — with possible long-term educational implications. What’s more, consider this extremely important finding: the decline in intelligence test scores began at the lowest exposure to the pesticide. The test scores spiraled down more with increasing exposure levels. This suggests, the scientists said in a press statement, there is “..no evidence of a threshold, below which exposures are completely safe.” “These observed deficits in cognitive functioning at 7 years of age could have implications for school performance,” Virginia Rauh, ScD, deputy director of the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health (CCCEH), and lead author of the Columbia study, said in a statement to the press. “Working memory problems may interfere with reading comprehension, learning and academic achievement, even if general intelligence remains in the normal range.” Since the EPA ban took effect, exposure to the organophosphate has measurably declined somewhat. However, agricultural use of chlorpyrifos is still permitted in the U.S. and pregnant women, especially in agricultural communities, are still being exposed to this potentially intelligence-zapping chemical. “Manufacturers withdrew chlorpyrifos and diazinon, two types of organophosphate pesticides, from the residential market. Despite this, general population exposure to organophosphate pesticides is ongoing,” Stephanie Engel, PhD, who led the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine study , explained in the media statement. For more information: Bouchard et al., “Prenatal Exposure to Organophosphate Pesticides and IQ in 7-Year-Old Children,” http://ehponline.org/article/info:doi/10.1289/ehp.1003185. Engel et al., “Prenatal Exposure to Organophosphates, Paraoxonase 1, and Cognitive Development in Childhood,” http://ehponline.org/article/info:doi/10.1289/ehp.1003183. Rauh et al., “7-Year Neurodevelopmental Consequences of Prenatal Exposure to Chlorpyrifos, a Common Organophosphate Pesticide,” http://ehponline.org/article/info:doi/10.1289/ehp.1003160

Plutonium found in soils near Fukushima, but governments say there’s nothing to worry about

(NaturalNews) In the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown catastrophe, plutonium has now been found in soil samples taken from five locations around Fukushima. Yes, plutonium. But here’s the real whopper: The media is reporting “Officials insist that the plutonium poses no threat to humans.” (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/video/2011-03/29/c_13803152.htm) Seriously. I never thought I’d read in the press that “plutonium poses no threat to humans,” but then again, there’s practically nothing in the news these days that isn’t distorted in order to either misinform or de-educate the masses. Along similar lines, the TSA today applauded the publication of a new study in a conventional medical journal which claims that airport naked body scans are also perfectly safe for you (just like plutonium, eh?) (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-28/airport-full-body-scans-pose-little-radiation-risk-for-fliers-study-finds.html). On both the TSA’s naked body scanners as well as nuclear meltdowns , the message from the government is exactly the same: Don’t worry, what’s a little fallout anyway? It’s all good for ya! Oh yeah, and mammograms are good for you, too. So is chemotherapy, and vaccines, and mercury fillings and fluoride in the water. Why not just dispose of all the radioactive water from Fukushima by dumping it into the public water supply and announcing it “prevents cavities?” (Don’t repeat this too loudly, or some bureaucrat might actually overhear you and run with this idea…) Latest status of the six reactors • Reactor No. 1: Cooling systems still not functional. Reactor core damaged. Lights are on inside the building. • Reactor No. 2: High radiation. Partial core meltdown admitted. Containment vessel likely damaged by the explosion. • Reactor No. 3: Deadly MOX fuel. Very high radiation detected in cooling water. Partial core meltdown admitted. Cooling pumps are not working and radiation is too high to allow workers to fix them. Building severely damaged by explosion. Cooling pool may also be damaged. • Reactor No. 4: Cooling water levels are low and efforts are being made to replenish the water levels. • Reactor No. 5: Cooling pumps are working, the situation appears stable. This reactor was offline when the tsunami hit. • Reactor No. 6: Appears to be safely under control. Cooling pumps are operating. This reactor was offline when the tsunami hit. Source: http://articles.cnn.com/2011-03-26/world/japan.nuclear.status_1_reactor-tokyo-electric-power-turbine-building/3?_s=PM:WORLD Meltdown events now confirmed • A partial meltdown is now confirmed to have occurred at Reactor No. 2, where Chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano now admits the highly radioactive water present in the plant had to have come into contact with a partially melted fuel core. (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/partial-meltdown-at-crippled-plant/story-e6frg6so-1226029609261) • A similar meltdown almost certainly must have occurred in Reactor No. 3 where highly radioactive water is collecting in the basement of the power plant. “We’re trying to prevent a deterioration of the situation,” said Prime Minister Naoto Kan (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-03-28/reactor-core-may-be-leaking-at-damaged-fukushima-plant.html). • The source of radioactive water in reactors 2 and 3 remains a mystery. Plant engineers can’t figure out exactly where it’s coming from, and at the same time, the very high levels of radiation in the water make it too dangerous for people to walk through it. (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0328/Japan-nuclear-mystery-Where-are-pools-of-radioactive-water-coming-from) • MSNBC has gone into total spin mode with its “happy happy” propaganda news about how safe and “natural” nuclear power will now become. In a puff piece entitled “New nuclear plants designed to be safest ever,” MSNBC.com actually states, “The key is humility. The next generation of plants must be built to work with nature — and human nature — rather than against them. They must be safe by design, so that even if every possible thing goes wrong, the outcome will stop short of disaster.” (http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/42258191/ns/business-world_business/) That’s a whole lot of wishful thinking, of course, but it’s no surprise to hear it from a news organization that’s largely owned by none other than General Electric, the manufacturer of the Fukushima power plant. Anyone who thinks they can get honest reporting on nuclear power from MSNBC is suffering from serious self delusion. • Three reactors remain badly damaged, prompting BusinessWeek to publish this quote from UCS: “The cores of three reactors are still badly damaged and it’s not clear that cooling can be restored to all the reactors, Edwin Lyman, a researcher at the Washington, D.C.-based Union of Concerned Scientists said.” (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-03-28/reactor-core-may-be-leaking-at-damaged-fukushima-plant.html) • The plan to restart the cooling pumps that would circulate water through the water pools that cool the spent fuel rods has turned out to be all but impossible to pursue. NISA spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama said in an article on The Australian , “The problem is that right now nobody can reach the turbine houses where key electrical work must be done. There is a possibility we may have to give up on that plan.” (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/partial-meltdown-at-crippled-plant/story-e6frg6so-1226029609261) Watch for more reporting on this incident here at NaturalNews.com, and subscribe to our daily email alerts to be kept up to date on the situation: http://www.naturalnews.com/ReaderRegistration.html

Japanese government admits potassium iodide pills should have been distributed earlier

(NaturalNews) A Japanese nuclear safety official has now publicly admitted the Japanese government improperly withheld potassium iodide from the public for three days following the Fukushima power plant explosion. Kazuma Yokota says the Japanese government was “caught off guard” by the nuclear catastrophe and didn’t realize its people needed potassium iodide until three days later. Associated Press distributed this statement, which has been carried by hundreds of mainstream news organizations: “A Japanese nuclear safety official, Kazuma Yokota, acknowledged that the government only belatedly realized the need to give potassium iodide pills that help reduce chances of thyroid cancer to those living within 12 miles (20 kilometers) of the nuclear complex.” This explanation defies logic, of course. How can a person whose job is to assure the safety of the nuclear industry not realize that an exploding nuclear power plant might be dangerous to its people? This should have been the very first action item made public: Take your potassium iodide! A nuclear plant has just exploded, and radiation is leaking into the environment… what to do? That the explosion at Fukushima did not trigger an immediate announcement for people to take potassium iodide is yet more evidence of Japanese government incompetence or perhaps even a cover-up. It’s almost as if the government didn’t want people to think the explosion was a big deal, so they downplayed the whole scenario and didn’t bother to warn people to take action. Encouraging people to take potassium iodide might have “frightened” them, they probably figured. If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because President Obama has taken exactly the same non-action in the United States, too. Last week, he publicly urged people to do nothing to prepare against the very real possibility of radioactive fallout reaching California (http://www.naturalnews.com/031735_Obama_radioactive_fallout.html). When it comes to taking intelligent action following this nuclear catastrophe — which already ranks as the second worst nuclear accident in the history of human civilization — our governments all earn an “F” grade. Because they failed to warn the citizens to take because precautionary steps, and in doing so, they are setting in motion a sequence of events that will get people killed. Thousands of cases of future cancers may be attributable to the radiation already emitted from Fukushima. Had the Japanese government acted sooner, some of those cancers might have been avoided with potassium iodide. That’s what the substance exists for, after all. If you don’t use it following a nuclear power plant explosion, then why have it at all? We will be fortunate, indeed, if the Fukushima nuclear power plant situation is resolved without further radiation leaks. A close brush with nuclear catastrophe, no doubt. One lesson we can all learn from this is that those who wait for their governments to tell them what to do may pay for their lack of action with their lives. Sources for this story include: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/some-progress-reported-in-japans-efforts-to-ease-crisis-at-stricken-nuclear-plant/2011/03/20/AB9Zqq2_story_1.html http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c19ed90e-5328-11e0-86e6-00144feab49a.html#axzz1HBOSYxAx

New research: "smart" vitamin A plays multiple roles in the immune system, depending on the body’s needs

(NaturalNews) It’s been known for a long time that a lack of vitamin A can make you susceptible to infections. On the other hand, some research has shown vitamin A can suppress the immune system. What gives? Now researchers think they know. It turns out vitamin A is a remarkably “smart” vitamin. It integrates both pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory immune responses in the gastrointestinal tract (GI), depending on what the body needs. So vitamin A pumps up the pro-inflammatory response when necessary to zap GI infections and it cools down the immune system to help prevent autoimmune responses. That’s the conclusion of a study recently published by Cell Press in the journal Immunity . Researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases found the vitamin A metabolite retinoic acid (RA)and one of its receptors (RAR) have specific anti-inflammatory properties which induce production of regulatory T cells. The result? A dampening of the immune response to self and foreign antigens, including the bacteria that are normally present in the gastrointestinal tract. However, the scientists also found evidence that RA helps stimulate a pro-inflammatory immune response, when needed, to overcome infection. Dr Jason Hall, primary author of the study, and colleagues demonstrated through their new research that immune responses to infection and vaccination were compromised when there was a lack of vitamin A. They also documented that RA triggers the T cells driving these responses. Based on their findings, the research team thinks the vitamin A metabolite RA influences the immune response during the early stages of activation and can pump up the capacity of the host to develop regulatory or inflammatory responses. This is especially important in the GI tract. After all, the gastrointestinal system needs to tolerate constant exposure to food and the beneficial microbes that colonize the GI tract while at the same time maintaining the capacity to rapidly respond to encounters with any disease-causing infectious agents. “These conflicting pressures confront the immune system responsible for defending the gastrointestinal tract with a unique challenge. In our study, we identified RA/RAR signaling pathway as a fitting system to accomplish these identified RA/RAR tasks, promoting generation of regulatory T cells and likely tolerance during normal conditions and adaptive T cell responses when faced with pathogens,” senior study author Dr. Yasmine Belkaid explained in a statement to the media. Simply put, the research team’s studies reveal a fundamental role for vitamin A in the development of both regulatory and inflammatory arms of GI immune responses. These findings add to the growing body of evidence that nutritional status is a broad regulator of the immune system. For more information: http://www.eurekalert.org/jrnls/cell/pages/immunity.php

Japanese officials admit partial nuclear meltdown now underway at nuke power plants

(NaturalNews) Contradicting earlier reports that claimed the Fukushima nuclear power plant suffered no reactor core damage, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano today admitted that a “partial core meltdown” is now underway. This is being reported at the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/12/AR2011031205493.html?hpid=topnews), Nikkei.com (http://e.nikkei.com/e/fr/tnks/Nni20110312D12JFF03.htm) and elsewhere. The conflicting reports coming out of Japan over the last 24 hours point to the very likely possibility of a massive Japanese government cover-up where government officials are telling the public everything is fine while desperately pumping sea water into the reactor cores to prevent them from going Chernobyl. While it’s important to be optimistic in such circumstances, the Japanese government is performing a great disservice by not disclosing the full truth about what’s really happening there. If a core meltdown is underway — as has now been admitted — people need to be evacuating the entire Northern half of the country (as that’s where radioactive fallout will have the worst impact if a total core meltdown does occur). Kurt Nimmo at PrisonPlanet.com is reporting a media cover-up of the entire event (http://www.prisonplanet.com/media-coverup-of-massive-chernobyl-event-underway-in-japan.html), and new information now being made available to the press supports the notion that the Japanese government withheld vital information from its own citizens about the status of this potential nuclear power plant meltdown. This emergency is not over. A meltdown could still occur. And now, it seems that we cannot trust the government of Japan to give us accurate information about this incident. We can only hope that the ingenuity of Japanese engineers can overcome the laws of physics and find a way to cool these nuclear fuel rods in the next 24 hours. If they fail to do so, the cost of this failure in human lives and environmental damage could be far greater than that of the infamous Chernobyl event. NaturalNews will seek to keep you posted on this event as it unfolds. For those in Taiwan, China or other regions who are concerned about the possibility of radioactive fallout from Japan, be sure to read up on potassium iodide , which can prevent radioactive fallout from destroying your thyroid gland. Potassium iodide, however, does not “shield” your entire body from radiation. It merely prevents it from being concentrated in one place in your body.

Scientists say higher vitamin D intake will slash cancer, MS, and diabetes risk by half

(NaturalNews) In findings just published in the journal Anticancer Research , scientists at the University of California (UC) San Diego School of Medicine and Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha have reported that most people need a much higher intake of vitamin D. And that simple step added to your life could slash your risk of developing serious diseases — including cancer — by about 50 percent. The new study involved a survey of several thousand volunteers who took supplements containing 1000 to 10,000 IU per day. The researchers ran blood tests to measure the level of 25-vitamin D, which is the form of almost all vitamin D circulating in the bloodstream. “We found that daily intakes of vitamin D by adults in the range of 4000 to 8000 IU are needed to maintain blood levels of vitamin D metabolites in the range needed to reduce by about half the risk of several diseases — breast cancer, colon cancer, multiple sclerosis, and type 1 diabetes,” Dr. Cedric Garland, professor of family and preventive medicine at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, said in a statement to media. He added that the amount of vitamin D needed for disease prevention is far higher than the minimal dosage of 400 IU per day that was originally prescribed in the 20th century to treat and prevent rickets. However, upping vitamin D intake into the 4000 IU daily range and higher appears to be safe, according to a December 2010 report from the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine. “Most scientists who are actively working with vitamin D now believe that 40 to 60 ng/ml is the appropriate target concentration of 25-vitamin D in the blood for preventing the major vitamin D-deficiency related diseases, and have joined in a letter on this topic,” Dr. Garland stated. “Unfortunately, according to a recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, only 10 percent of the US population has levels in this range, mainly people who work outdoors.” Robert P. Heaney, MD, of Creighton University, a distinguished biomedical scientist, said he was not surprised by the new study’s results based on his decades of research into the health benefits of vitamin D. “Now is the time for virtually everyone to take more vitamin D to help prevent some major types of cancer, several other serious illnesses, and fractures,” Dr. Heaney said a statement to the press. For more information: http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2010/Dietary-Reference-Intakes-for-Calcium-and-Vitamin-D.aspx http://www.naturalnews.com/vitamin_d.html

Alzheimer’s breakthrough: scientists discover omega-3s override the bad gene causing Alzheimer’s

(NaturalNews) Scientists tend to describe their research and findings with facts and figures only, leaving out any emotion. But Prof. Daniel Michaelson of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Neurobiology has uncovered something so potentially groundbreaking he called it “exhilarating” in a statement to the press. What news could have this scientist so excited? A diet high in omega-3s, the fatty acids found in fatty fish like salmon as well as walnuts, appears to significant block the negative effects of the APOE4 gene — the “bad” APOE gene found in 50% of all Alzheimer’s patients and in about 15% of the population. Having the APOE4 gene greatly ups your risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease, a dreaded and deadly form of dementia affecting about five million Americans. Scientists have found that in all there are five molecules known to affect or cause Alzheimer’s. But just how dangerous these molecules are is linked to environmental factors including diet and lifestyle. One of these five molecules, APOE, is created by the apolipoprotein E. gene found in all of our bodies. But, according to Prof. Michaelson, there is a “good” APOE gene and a “bad” APOE gene, which is dubbed APOE4. He has used animal studies to investigate the effects of diet and environment on carriers of APOE4. So far, his results show a diet high in omega-3 oils and low in cholesterol significantly reduce the negative effects of the Alzheimer’s causing APOE4 gene in mouse models. “The main take-away message here is that good diets can alleviate the effects of bad genes. Of course nutritionists have had this general idea for a while, but it’s nice to be able to show that this approach can be applied to specifically counteract the negative effects of Alzheimer’s disease-related genes,” Prof. Michaelson said in a statement to the media. As NaturalNews has previously reported, other researchers have found many natural ways to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s, including drinking green tea (http://www.naturalnews.com/030984_green_tea_dementia.html). Walking regularly and briskly for exercise has also been shown to lower the risk for dementia (http://www.naturalnews.com/030180_walking_Alzheimers.html). The results of Prof. Mchaelson’s discoveries with more details are slated to be presented at an international conference in Barcelona, Spain this March. Editor’s note: NaturalNews is opposed to the use of animals in medical experiments that expose them to harm. We present these findings in protest of the way in which they were acquired. For more information: http://www.aftau.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=13946 http://www.naturalnews.com/Alzheimers.html

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