Just one more reason to grow your own.  And for those that ask me.  Well I would have to say make darn sure you know what you are buying in the grocery stores, before you bring it home for your family, no matter how cheap it is.

The FDA has admitted that meat and milk from the offspring of cloned mammals such as cows, pigs, goats and sheep could very well have already entered the food supply in the United States.

“It is theoretically possible,” agency spokesperson Siobhan DeLancey said.

In January, the FDA declared that foods derived from cloned animals and their offspring were safe for human consumption. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, however, asked food companies to voluntarily maintain a ban on products from clones.

The voluntary ban did not extend to the offspring of cloned animals.

Clones are organisms artificially developed directly from the DNA of a single organism, rather than the mixing that is difficult in sexual reproduction. They are made by implanting the nucleus of an adult cell into an egg cell, which is then incubated by a surrogate mother.

According to critics of the technology, very little research has been conducted on the safety of consuming meat or dairy products from clones or their offspring, thus making it premature to bring such products to market.

“It worries me that this technology is out of control in so many ways,” said Charles Margulis of the Center for Environmental Health. He said that the FDA’s announcement that clones’ offspring might already been food supply “is just another element of that.”

A number of major U.S. food producers have announced that they will not use any ingredients derived from cloned animals, due in part to safety concerns. Companies enforcing a ban on clone products include Smithfield Foods, General Mills, Campbell Soup, Nestle, California Pizza Kitchen, Supervalu, Kraft Foods and Tyson Foods, the largest meat company in the United States.

Kraft said that consumer demand influenced its decision.

“Research in the United States indicates that consumers are currently not receptive to ingredients from cloned animals,” said Director of Corporate Affairs Susan Davison.

I’ve been warning Folks about CFLs for years. It’s not only the fact that they cause headaches and skin problems, it’s also the fact that they contain mercury vapor, which is highly toxic to the nervous system if inhaled.

Compact fluorescent light bulbs are filling home and office environments with dangerous electromagnetic pollution, causing devastating health effects on some people. Neurologists are increasingly taking notice of the headaches and migraines being reported by people exposed to compact fluorescent light bulbs.

So what should you do in your home? Don’t buy compact fluorescent light bulbs! Buy LED lights and you’ll earn back the entire cost of the lights in just a couple of years due to savings on electricity expenditures. If you can’t afford LEDs, stick with regular incandescent light bulbs until a better solution comes along.

Makes One Think Huh???  Also, don’t forget my new gardening book which is coming out this spring. Sure wouldn’t want you folks to miss it!

People with high cholesterol live the longest. This statement seems so incredible that it takes a long time to clear one´s brainwashed mind to fully understand its importance. Yet the fact that people with high cholesterol live the longest emerges clearly from many scientific papers. Consider the finding of Dr. Harlan Krumholz of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at Yale University, who reported in 1994 that old people with low cholesterol died twice as often from a heart attack as did old people with a high cholesterol.¹ Supporters of the cholesterol campaign consistently ignore his observation, or consider it as a rare exception, produced by chance among a huge number of studies finding the opposite.

But it is not an exception; there are now numerous findings that contradict the lipid hypothesis. To be more specific, most studies of old people have shown that high cholesterol is not a risk factor for coronary heart disease. This was the result of my search in the Medline database for studies addressing that question.² Eleven studies of old people came up with that result, and a further seven studies found that high cholesterol did not predict all-cause mortality either.

Now consider that more than 90 % of all cardiovascular disease is seen in people above age 60 also and that almost all studies have found that high cholesterol is not a risk factor for women.² This means that high cholesterol is only a risk factor for less than 5 % of those who die from a heart attack.

But there is more comfort for those who have high cholesterol; six of the studies found that total mortality was inversely associated with either total or LDL-cholesterol, or both. This means that it is actually much better to have high than to have low cholesterol if you want to live to be very old.

Years ago the old saying was if your tired get some sleep.  I kind of think, that most us folks today should have listened to our old Mom & Dad.

CHICAGO – Just one extra hour of sleep a day appears to lower the risk of developing calcium deposits in the arteries, a precursor to heart disease, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

The finding adds to a growing list of health consequences — including weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure — linked to getting too little sleep.

“We found that people who on average slept longer were at reduced risk of developing new coronary artery calcifications over five years,” said Diane Lauderdale of the University of Chicago Medical Center, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

This is a link to what I have been telling folks since they brought them out on the market.  It starts off the video that is, with a advertising but let it play, it will soon start on to what I would like you folks to listen too.

GlobalTV.com | 16 x 9 – The Bigger Picture: Video

Interesting

An experimental infrared helmet has proven successful in not only halting but actually reversing the progression of dementia in at least one patient.

When 57-year-old businessman Clem Fennel began to rapidly lose the ability to function due to aggressive dementia, doctors told his family that nothing could stop his decline. Instead of giving up hope, however, they turned to an experimental device developed by British general practitioner Gordon Dogual. They flew Fennel to England, where Dougal began treating him with a helmet that radiates the brain with infrared light two times per day.

“Honestly I can tell you that within ten days, the deterioration was stopped; then we started to see improvements. He started to respond to people more quickly when they talked to him,” Fennell’s wife Vicky said.

“My husband, Clem, was fading away. It is as if he is back. His personality has started to show again. We are absolutely thrilled.”

Before receiving the treatment, Fennel was unable to complete regular daily tasks.

“When we go to the restaurant we usually have to order his meals for him, now he can order for himself,” Fennel’s daughter Maggie said. “Now we are okay about letting him go to the bank or the post office but he would not have been able to do that three weeks ago.”

The helmet has not yet been tested clinically, although a trial on 100 patients is scheduled to begin before the end of the year. Dougal noted that because the helmet has not been put through rigorous trials, there is no way to know if it will work the same on everyone.

“I made it clear to the Fennells that I didn’t know for a fact whether it would work or not, but the results are good,” Dougal said. “He was monosyllabic when I first saw him, but if I ring up now he will answer the phone. He didn’t have the verbal skills to do that three weeks ago.”

Something to think about. Hope they are right.

Drinking coffee in moderate amounts during middle age may reduce the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in the elderly, according to a new study.

Researchers in Finland and Sweden examined the records of 1,409 people whose coffee drinking habits had been recorded when they were at midlife.

Those who drank three to five cups of coffee per day in midlife were much less likely to have developed dementia or Alzheimer’s in follow-up checks two decades or more later, the researchers say in the January issue of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Interesting!

Consuming dairy products significantly boosts the risk of Parkinson’s disease in men, concludes a study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. A study surveying the dietary habits of 57,689 men found that those who consumed the most dairy products showed a 60 percent increase in the risk of Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative nervous system disorder that affects motor skills and speech.

Processed milk accounted for most of the dairy consumed by study subjects. “Processed” means the milk is pasteurized and homogenized rather than being consumed in its raw, natural state. These manufacturing processes impact the molecular structure of milk and may help explain why milk products have been found to promote Parkinson’s disease.

The pasteurization of milk kills harmful microorganisms that may be living in the milk, but it also “cooks” the milk and destroys many beneficial microorganisms that enhance digestive health. Homogenization is a process that splits fat molecules into tiny pieces, allowing the fat to stay in suspension in the milk liquid and preventing separation of the fat. While it makes the milk appear more cosmetically acceptable to consumers, homogenization is an unnatural process and it is widely suspected to be the primary reason why processed milk products have been linked to heart disease and other cardiovascular problems.

Raw, unprocessed milk is rapidly gaining popularity among health-conscious consumers. Many states are attempting to outlaw the sales of raw milk, saying it poses a health hazard to consumers with weak immune systems, but demand persists — especially among members of the raw foods community who use raw milk and active cultures to make their own kefir (fermented raw milk) at home. Kefir offers numerous health benefits and is a “living” food teeming with beneficial microorganisms.

Researchers are not yet sure why processed milk products increase the risk of Parkinson’s disease in men. No mechanism for the increase in the disease risk has been identified, and the fact that dairy products seem to increase the risk among men — but not women — remains a mystery. Epidemiologists do have theories on the link, however. Dr. Samuel Epstein, M.D., professor emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the University of Illinois School of Public Health is also author of the book, “What’s In Your Milk?” — a recently-published expose of how industry has covered up the dangers of drinking milk from cows treated with genetically-engineered recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), a chemical that has been banned for use in dairy cows in many other countries.

Milk from rBGH-treated cows, according to Dr. Epstein, poses a significant health risk to humans and appears to be linked to breast, colon and prostate cancers.

If for nothing else I think folks should be eating more fresh chemical free veggies and fruits.

Fruits rich in polyphenols may help protect against the oxidative stress that has been linked to cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study conducted by researchers from three Korean universities and published in the Journal of Food Science.

“Our study demonstrated that antioxidants in the major fresh fruits consumed in the United States  protected neuronal cells from oxidative stress,” the researchers wrote. “Therefore, additional consumption of fresh fruits such as apples, bananas, and oranges may be beneficial to ameliorate chemopreventive effects in neurodegenerative disease.”

Here is an intersting article on how honey being smuggled into different countries is being done and what effects it has on us humans or what could happen to us  humans. Kind of makes one think. just click on the link below.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/394…

Natural chemicals contained in black tea might mimic insulin’s effects in the body and help protect against diabetes, according to a study conducted by researchers from Dundee University and the Scottish Crop Research Institute, and published in the journal Aging Cell.

Should be read by folks that has a family member with Alzheimer’s.

When people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) ” act up” and show signs of neuropsychiatric symptoms such as aggression and agitation, they are often given antipsychotic drugs. Now, it turns out, that’s a practice that could be deadly. The result of a long-term study , just published online and in the February edition of The Lancet Neurology journal shows there’s a large increased risk of severe side effects and death in patients receiving these medications. What’s more, they hasten mental deterioration.

Dr. Clive Ballard of the Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases at King’s College in London and her colleagues are the first researchers to document long-term data for AD patients given antipsychotic drugs. They followed 165 patients with AD between the ages of 67 and 100 who resided in four United Kingdom facilities between 2001 and 2004. The research subjects were randomly assigned to take antipsychotic medications (thioridazine, chlorpromazine, haloperidol, trifluorperazine, or risperidone) or an oral placebo.

After a year, there was 70% survival in the antipsychotic group compared with 77% in placebo. But after two years, there was a far bigger difference in the death rate. Survival was 46% in the antipsychotic group and 71% in the placebo group. And at three years, the difference was even more stunning. Only 30% of people being given antipsychotics were still alive while almost 60 percent of those on placebos, inert substances with no drug activity, were still living. When the scientists computed the death rate for the AD patients throughout all the years, they found it was 42% lower in the placebo group than in the antipsychotic group.

So what adverse effects did the drugs have on the people with Alzheimer’s? Specifically, they were found to increase the incidence of Parkinson’s disease, sedation, edema, chest infections, stroke and death . Those taking antipsychotics also experienced an accelerated decline in their brain function. In a statement released to the media, the scientists said their research highlights the need to seek less harmful treatments for AD patients who exhibit neuropsychiatric symptoms.

“Our data add further serious safety concerns about the long-term use of antipsychotics in this population, and clinicians should certainly try to replace antipsychotics with safer management approaches. Several studies have shown that psychological management can replace antipsychotic therapy without any appreciable worsening of neuropsychiatric symptoms… Our opinion is that there is still an important but limited place for atypical antipsychotics in the treatment of severe neuropsychiatric manifestations, particularly aggression, of AD. However, the accumulating safety concerns, including the substantial increase in long-term mortality, emphasize the urgent need to put an end to unnecessary and prolonged prescribing,” the researchers stated.

Don’t forget to pick up a copy of my new Gardening Book early this spring.  You will be glad you did. No Brag Just Fact.

Cloudy apple juices contain much more antioxidant than clear cider. When you got to buy apples look for the older varieties of apples as the newer varieties tend to have lower nutrient content. The newer varieties are grown for eye appeal and for shelf life, not for nutrition.

Psychiatrists Now Calling Excessive E-Mailing a “Mental Illness”  Well there goes my E-Mail, darn.  LOL

“You have the power to tell agribusiness firms that you won’t buy sugar made from genetically modified sugar beets, or other foods”  ” I am one fellow who avoids genetically modified foods if given a choice. I do not like to be ‘forced’ to eat genetically modified sugar either because it is sneaked into my food on an undisclosed basis or because it is added into virtually all food and beverages.”  So there is my feelings on what they call G M Food or in other words Genetically Modified.