The Importance of Vitamin B12 - NewsGrabs Thursday 5 March 2009
Low levels of vitamin B12 may increase risk for neural tube defects
Children born to women who have low blood levels of vitamin B12 shortly before and after conception may have an increased risk of a neural tube defect, according to an analysis by researchers at the National Institutes of Health, Trinity College Dublin, and the Health Research Board of Ireland.Women with the lowest B12 levels had 5 times the risk of having a child with a neural tube defect compared to women with the highest B12 levels.
The view, held by some health department officials, that RDA levels of vitamins are sufficient and should constitute the maximum levels of vitamins allowed in any product, is shown more and more to be a mere article of faith - and a bad one at that. See the ANH comment on this study: More evidence of B12 requirement for women
Many middle-aged and older Americans not getting adequate nutrition
Micronutrients such as calcium, magnesium, potassium and vitamin C play essential roles in maintaining health. As older adults tend to reduce their food intake as they age, there is concern that deficits in these micronutrients lead to medical problems.An interesting point about potassium, which in the US is limited to a ridiculously low 99 milligrams per tablet: "The study also found that potassium intake was very much below the RDA whether supplements were taken or not. This could point to a need to reformulate supplements to deliver higher potassium doses."
Three positive nutrient studies in one scientific journal!
There are two overwhelming conclusions from these studies:a) whether you're looking at the B vitamins in the AMD study, the association between calcium intake and cancer or that of vitamin D in reducing upper respiratory tract infections, it was the high doses that delivered the best results.
b) the dosages to which European regulators want to limit us are far below those that delivered the best results in these studies. For example, in the AMD study, the folic acid level was 12.5 times over the European RDA, while that of vitamin B6 was 25 times over and of vitamin B12 1000 times over. And by the way, no adverse effects were reported (are you really surprised.....?!)
Wiki health site aims to provide sound medical information
Currier didn't know much about medicine, but he knew a lot about the Internet. So he has launched Medpedia (www.medpedia.com), a wiki-style health site where the information is written only by those boasting M.D.s or Ph.D.s - instead of just anyone with an opinion and idle time."We were quite taken with the idea that this would be a kind of open system," said Dr. Henry Lowe, senior associate dean for information resources and technology at Stanford University School of Medicine. "All the information in Medpedia would be high quality, reliable, up-to-date and obtained by experts - and it would be made available to the world at-large, free and unrestricted."
One word of caution: Medicine is not perfect. The common shortcomings of medical knowledge, which has been gravely slanted by pharmaceutical producers' influence, will of course find their way into this new medical encyclopedia. So all you get is a collection of what's current in consensus medicine.
Petition: Kill the poison, save the Bees!
Agricultural poisons, either sprayed on the fields or produced by genetically modified plants, are suspected of killing of millions of bees. Although I do not think the jury is in yet as to the exact cause, I support the petition to do something. At least let's lessen the toxic load that we know about. Our survival may depend on it! Bees first, humans soon after...
Organic Consumers & Health Freedom Groups Join in Launch of Grassroots Health Revolution Petition
The petition -- which is endorsed by NaturalNews, the Organic Consumers Association, the Life Extension Foundation, the American Association for Health Freedom and other health freedom groups -- calls for an end to FDA and FTC oppression of free speech about dietary supplements. Its ten provisions also call for full income tax deductions on health-enhancing products and services, a halt to the psychiatric drugging of children, the end of mandatory vaccination policies and the legalization of healing practices across the country.The petition aims to gather 100,000 signatures in 2009, after which it will be distributed to each member of Congress as well as President Obama and his staff.
France Reduces Subsidies to Large Farms to Increase Support for Organics and Small Farms
After 46 years of shovelling farm subsidies to its richer, more polluting farmers, France yesterday took a historic step towards a greener and fairer European agriculture policy.Paris announced that from next year it would confiscate over 20 per cent of the billions of euros of European taxpayers' money paid to its ranch-like cereals farms and divert the cash to hill farmers, grazing land, shepherds and organic agriculture.
Way to go! There is much too much hypocrisy in the distribution of EU aid to farmers. We are mainly supporting polluting industrial farming which makes money instead of nutritious food.
European Commission unable to end Austrian and Hungarian bans on GM
21 out of 27 European Member States are not willing to see two of their fellow Member States—Austria and Hungary—forced to lift their bans on the cultivation of two transgenic varieties of GM maize, Monsanto's MON810 and Bayer's T25.This is the fourth time the Commission has been outvoted in their attempt to force Member States to repeal safeguard clauses that allow them, under EU law, to implement a ban on cultivation of GM crops.
Science of the Organism & Sustainable Systems - Implications for Agricultural Policies
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho of the UK Institute for Science in Society calls for a shift away from the obsolete mechanistic science that has helped create the current food, fuel, and financial crisis. The new science of the organism re-establishes our connection with nature and with indigenous knowledge systems worldwide. Europe's agricultural policies must rise to the challenge, to support and promote organic, localised agriculture and food and energy systems that offers the most effective way out of the current crisis, to deliver health, wealth and happiness to the world's nations.
Video: Presentation of the Science Commons
Director Jesse Dylan – the director of the Emmy- award winning Yes We Can Barack Obama campaign video – has teamed up with Science Commons to produce a short video explaining why science is the ultimate remix. It’s a great primer on the special challenges facing scientists in sharing and collaborating, and it’s licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.”
Bio-piracy of Traditional Knowledge
The traditional knowledge, particularly, related to the treatment of various diseases has provided leads for development of biologically active molecules by the technology rich countries. In other words, traditional knowledge is being exploited for bio-prospecting.Bio-piracy of codified Indian traditional knowledge continues, since, this information exists in regional languages, and there exists a language barrier due to which the patent offices are unable to search this information as prior art, before granting patents. Formulations used for the treatment of human ailments from traditional knowledge are time-tested since they have been in practice for centuries. The reliability of the traditional medicine systems coupled with the absence of such information with patent offices, provides an easy opportunity for interlopers for getting patents on these therapeutic formulations derived from traditional medicine systems.
US Supreme Court Rejects Limits on Drug Lawsuits
The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a $6.7 million jury award to a musician who lost her arm because of a botched injection of an anti-nausea medication. The court brushed away a plea for limiting lawsuits against drug makers. In a 6-3 decision, the court rejected Wyeth Pharmaceuticals' claim that federal approval of its Phenergan anti-nausea drug should have shielded the company from lawsuits like the one filed by Diana Levine of Vermont.
Drug maker accused of fraud over illegal marketing of Celexa and Lexapro
In a civil complaint filed by the United States attorney’s office in Boston, federal prosecutors alleged that former top executives at Forest concealed for several years a clinical study that showed that the drugs were not effective in children and might even pose risks to them, including causing some to become suicidal.From 2001 to 2004, Forest heavily promoted results from another clinical trial it had financed that showed that the drugs were effective, without disclosing the negative study to those researchers, its own medical advisers or its sales representatives, the complaint said.
Is pharmaceutical medicine useless?
From industrial medicine to ecological medicine
The global market for pharmaceuticals in 2007 was estimated at US $712 billion. The BMJ Clinical Evidence website documents that only 13% of medical treatments examined have been demonstrated to have a beneficial effect, and the largest proportion, 47%, are of unknown effectiveness.
Black and gay: Doubly at risk — not from HIV, from HIV/AIDS theory
The fact is — and it’s been clear for many years — that African ancestry brings a probability of testing “HIV-positive” that’s an order of magnitude greater than with non-African ancestry. Black people test “positive” at rates anywhere from 5 times to 100 times more frequently than Caucasians (and Caucasians test “positive” 50% more often than Asians).Those racial disparities are seen among blood donors, gay men, pregnant women, babies, drug abusers, military personnel — in every social group and in every country and culture. They are OBVIOUSLY not the result of differences in “risky behavior” — even apart from the fact that many actual studies of sexual behavior have found that white Americans are more likely to practice “risky behavior” than are African Americans.
TESTING “HIV-POSITIVE” DOES NOT SIGNIFY INFECTION BY A PATHOGEN.
T-Cells Don't Predict Health
“CD4 cell count monitoring does not accurately identify individuals with virologic failure among patients taking ART,” according to a recent study.Comment by RTB: TCells fail again and again as surrogate markers; TCells do not correlate with Viral Load (”Virologic Failure”). What’s left? How about paying closest attention to actual health?
A revolution in responsiveness
Want better clothes? Don't ask the Gap. Want better software? Don't ask Microsoft. Want better cars? Don't ask Detroit. Want better music? Don't ask record labels. Want better healthcare? Don't ask big pharma. Want to hold on to your money? Don't ask a banker.Umair Haque assesses the Obama administration's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and has some good things to say. The reason it's positive is that Obama has understood that the current crisis is essentially one is reponsiveness.
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In this universe of matter, energy, space and time, seemingly the only thing that remains constant is change. So health supreme's newsgrabs will not be an exception - I am starting to publish more often but less regularly.Instead of every Sunday as I have been doing for some time now, I will be posting more unpredictably ... whenever I feel I have a sufficient number of stories and news. So subscribe by RSS or by email or check back more often to see the latest post.
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More information out there...
There is much I cannot cover but other sources for this kind of information exist and are active.
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Dr Mercola's health blog, Mike Adams' Natural News and the One Click Group in the UK have good health information. The Dr Rath Foundation is also putting out a weekly collection of health related news. Here is the link to their Newsletter Archive.
The Alternative Medicine Yahoo Group and the healthfreedom ning group are places to discuss and exchange information on what is happening in the world of natural health.
For the influence of electromagnetic waves from radio, mobile phones and other radio emitting devices, check out the emr-updates group on Yahoo. Genetic modification and issues around agriculture and foods are reported on the Organic Consumers Association site.
A few sites to keep up to date with the other side of world affairs, the stuff you won't necessarily find on your tv or in the papers:
http://therealnews.com/
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com
http://www.commondreams.org
http://www.globalresearch.ca/
http://www.truthout.org/The individual is supreme and finds its way through intuition
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Thursday March 5 2009
updated on Wednesday August 15 2012URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2009/03/05/the_importance_of_vitamin_b12_newsgrabs_thursday_5_march_2009.htm
