A summary of the latest research on myopia (The myopia boom : Nature News & Comment) published in Nature 2015 March 18 correlates increasing rates of myopia – especially in East Asia – with lack of outdoors time. The mechanism may be the effect of bright light on developing eyeballs. Given the cardiovascular benefits of…
Category: Conditions
Exposure Therapy
A recent study of children allergic to peanuts indicates that ‘exposure therapy’ – supervised feedings of progressively larger quantities of peanut (pureed into baby food) – may significantly reduce the risk of an infant developing a peanut allergy. Gideon Lack, professor of pediatric allergy, Kings College London; lead author of the Learning About Peanut Allergy…
Books on Dealing With Health Conditions
Books that include diet and lifestyle changes to address specific health conditions. Broad Inflammation The Inflammation Free Diet Plan by Monica Reinagel with Consulting Editor Julius Torelli, M.D. Explanation of the Inflammation Factor (IF) system for selecting what to eat. Includes recipes and tables of IT ratings for a wide array of food items. (More…
Books on Food Production and Health
Farming Farmacology: What Innovative Family Farming Can Teach Us About Health and Healing by Daphne Miller tells how to apply lessons learned from sustainable farming in improving personal health. Minimally Processed Food Eating on the Wild Side by Jo Robinson offers a guide to optimize nutrition (and taste) when selecting (whole) foods to purchase and…
Heavy Metals
Heavy metals persist in the environment and in the human body (stored in fat tissues) and are tied to a number of nervous disorders. Lead A study discussed in the 2012 September 21 Living on Earth connected children’s exposure to lead and mercury to ADHD. Adolescents with elevated blood levels of lead were 4 to…
Diarrhea
From the 2012 September 19 Savage Love column: “Semen contains prostaglandins — “a group of lipid compounds that are derived enzymatically from fatty acids and have important functions in the animal body,” says Wiki — and some people experience explosive diarrhea shortly after ingesting the prostaglandins in semen.”
Malic Acid
Food Business News | Technology makes flavor enhancers out of raw materials. – 2012 August 16 In talking about deriving malic acid from ‘raw materials’ (presumably first generation, unprocessed plant material), a 2012 August 16 article in Food Business News on flavor enhancers implies that currently most commercially produced malic acid is derived from (petroleum)…
Toxoplasmosis
Toxoplasma gondii – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20120702/cat-litter-parasite-may-raise-suicide-risk – WebMD – 2012 July 3 Recent findings of a correlation between human suicide and toxoplasmosis (infection with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii) coupled with past findings linking toxoplasmosis to schizophrenia and fetal damage raises a number of questions. How do we keep cats from getting infected? Do…