The Story of Cosmetics, released on July 21st, 2010, examines the pervasive use of toxic chemicals in our everyday personal care products, from lipstick to baby shampoo. Produced with Free Range Studios and hosted by Annie Leonard, the seven-minute film by The Story of Stuff Project reveals the implications for consumer and worker health and the environment, and outlines ways we can move the industry away from hazardous chemicals and towards safer alternatives. The film concludes with a call for viewers to support legislation aimed at ensuring the safety of cosmetics and personal care products.
Archive for category Health
A big part of coping with life is having a flexible reaction to the ups and downs. Now, a study which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people choose to respond differently depending on how intense an emotion is. When confronted with high-intensity negative emotions, they tend to choose to turn their attention away, but with something lower-intensity, they tend to think it over and neutralize the feeling that way.
Emotions are useful—for example, fear tells your body to get ready to escape or fight in a dangerous situation. But emotions can also become problematic – for example, for people with depression who can’t stop thinking about negative thoughts, says Gal Sheppes of Stanford University, who cowrote the study with Stanford colleagues Gaurav Suri and James J. Gross, and Susanne Scheibe of the University of Groningen. “Luckily, our emotions can be adjusted in various ways,” he says. Read the rest of this entry »
The secret to mother-baby bonding might be breast milk, according to new research that determines that breast-feeding mothers are more likely than formula-feeding moms to bond with their infants in the months after they’re born. They also demonstrate stronger brain responses when they hear their baby cry, according to a study published in the May issue of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
Researchers at the Child Study Center at Yale University divided moms into two groups — nine breast-feeders and eight formula-feeders — and performed functional MRIs (fMRI) on them about a month after their babies were born.
While participants lay in a scanner and listened to clips of their own baby and an unknown child crying, researchers tracked what areas of their brains lit up. All mothers’ brains were more active when listening to their own baby’s cry, but the changes in the breast-feeding mothers’ relevant brain regions were far more significant.
Breastfeeding is the least expensive and most effective way to improve and protect your baby’s health, and now a first-of-its-kind study also suggests that breastfeeding may have a direct impact on a mother’s brain, promoting ‘maternal behavior’ and increasing emotional bonding between the mother and child.
This is not altogether surprising, since breastfeeding promotes the increased release of oxytocin, also known as the “love hormone,” or “bonding hormone.”
Sources:
Mercola.com
Time Magazine May 20, 2011
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry April 18, 2011; [Epub ahead of print]
Medical News Today May 30, 2011
Pediatrics May 29, 2011 [Epub ahead of print]
Birth: Issues in Perinatal Care May 20, 2011 [Epub ahead of print]
Food Matters asked seven experts a simple question: “What foods do you avoid?” Here are some of their eye-opening responses:
Canned Tomatoes
- An endocrinologist won’t go near canned tomatoes — the cans are lined with a resin containing BPA, and tomatoes are especially dangerous because their acid breaks the BPA down in dangerous amounts.
Conventional Beef
- Conventional cattle are fed grain, corn and soy to make them fat, even though studies show that grass-fed beef higher in important vitamins, minerals and heart-healthy, anti-inflammatory fats.
Microwave Popcorn
- Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) lines microwave popcorn bags, and when they are heated the compound, which has been linked to infertility, leaches onto the food.
Conventional Potatoes
- Non-organic potatoes are heavily sprayed with herbicides, pesticides and fungicides — many potato growers don’t eat the potatoes they sell, but instead and grow their own separate plots without all the chemicals.
Farmed Salmon
- Farmed salmon are stuffed into pens and fed chicken feathers and pellets. A scientific study on fish contamination showed high levels of carcinogens such as DDT and PCBs.
Conventional Milk
- Dairy cows are fed growth hormones to maximize milk production, which results in increased incidence of udder infection and pus in the milk.
Conventional Apples
- Apples are heavily and frequently doused with pesticides — pesticides that have been linked to Parkinson’s
The American Cancer Society
May 24
The 130-page document linked below explains in detail why the American Cancer Society may be far more interested in accumulating cash than curing any disease. The ACS has close ties to the mammography industry, the cancer drug industry, and the pesticide industry.
It is riddled with conflict of interest.
And in fact, according to the report, the ACS has a reckless, if not criminal record on cancer prevention. Over and over again, they have promoted drugs and screening while ignoring environmental causes.
The report states, in part:
“The ACS … [has] long continued to devote virtually exclusive priority to research on diagnosis and treatment of cancer, with indifference to prevention, other than faulty personal lifestyle, commonly known as ‘blame the victim,’ … Not surprisingly, the incidence of cancer over past decades has escalated.”
Sources:
“The eye is a unique window into health,” says ophthalmologist Andrew Iwach, spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) and executive director of the Glaucoma Center of San Francisco. “It’s the only place in the body where, without surgery, we can look in and see veins, arteries, and a nerve (the optic nerve).”
The eyes’ transparency explains why common eye diseases such as glaucoma, cataracts, and macular degeneration can be detected early with regular eye exams.
“Unfortunately, people get busy and delay not only eye exams but regular physicals. That’s why eye doctors sometimes discover other issues, like diabetes or high blood pressure,” Iwach says. Especially vulnerable, he says: People like caregivers, who worry about others around them while neglecting care for themselves.
Look out for these 14 problems: Read the rest of this entry »
Ever wonder what’s in your food?
We are very fortunate that the manufacturers are legally obligated to label their products with the ingredients in them. Imagine how pissed off people would become if there were no labels and you had to blindly accept whatever you thought was in that package of food. Well, no one ever bothers to read the labels, despite this luxury, and those who do read them are lost in complex terminology.
Get your head right, learn the terms, read the labels and fight bad food by eating right!
With Spanish subtitles, former pharmaceutical representative and Doctor spends 7 minutes explaining that big pharma wants you to be on drugs instead of wanting you to actually get healthy. Big pharma does not have to test or prove their drugs against placebo trials and they earn enough money through life-long customers to pay for big TV campaigns that trick you into thinking drugs actually work.
The good doctor is advocating that you become educated and take control of your health.
Dr. Paul Connett, Professor of Chemistry at St. Lawrence University in New York, gives a damning interview on the history of water fluoridation, the collusion of major industries to put certified toxic waste into your drinking water, and why government health authorities refuse to conduct scientific studies into the dangers of fluoridation. After watching this video, you will never look at tap water the same way again.
Posted By Dr. Mercola | January 22 2011
A new study has found that the protective shield fluoride forms on teeth is up to 100 times thinner than previously believed. This raises questions about how this renowned cavity-fighter really works.
It has long been believed that fluoride changes the main mineral in tooth enamel, hydroxyapatite, into a more-decay resistant material called fluorapatite. But the new research found that the fluorapatite layer formed in this way is only 6 nanometers thick — meaning it would take almost 10,000 such layers to span the width of a human hair. According to Science Daily:
“The scientists question whether a layer so thin, which is quickly worn away by ordinary chewing, really can shield teeth from decay”.
Another new study shows that exposure to fluoride may lower children’s intelligence. In addition to toothpaste, fluoride is added to 70 percent of U.S. public drinking water supplies. PR Newswire reports:
“About 28 percent of the children in the low-fluoride area scored as bright, normal or higher intelligence compared to only 8 percent in the ‘high’ fluoride area … in the high-fluoride city, 15 percent had scores indicating mental retardation and only 6 percent in the low-fluoride city.” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted By Dr. Mercola | January 26 2011
Unfortunately your body is under constant daily assault by toxic substances, a great many of which are hard or impossible to completely avoid.
Besides the industries that pump or dump known toxins into your air, food and water, there are also synthetic chemicals in most products on your supermarket shelves.
“Better living through chemistry” really has become the accepted standard for our modern world.
But as we are learning the hard way through the explosion of degenerative diseases in the modern world, many chemicals, especially man-made ones, can do much more harm to your body than good!
In my opinion, one of the biggest hazards to your health comes from something you are likely taking for granted.
The water you drink, the water you bathe in, and the water you run through your appliances. It is vitally important for you to secure a good, clean source of water, and this is easily done by installing one or more types of water filtration systems in your house — I will talk more about that in a minute.
Your Body Is Mostly Water
On a percentage basis your body is over 99 percent water, or hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Read the rest of this entry »
