health

Urgent Action Requested!

Your government is using your tax dollars to poison you! So put down your cheese burger and fries and read on to see what you can do to stop it...

The United States is under going a huge epidemic. One third of us are affected. That is the largest epidemic in our history.

We are facing an obesity and diabetes epidemic. This epidemic is predicted to cause the next generation of Americans to have a shorter life span than the previous generation. This is another first in our history.

The reason that people are fat? There is just too much food and people are over eating, right? Wrong. We now realize that something in our diet has triggered a hormone cascade that is telling our bodies, at least for some of us, to hang on to every calorie and convert it to fat. That something is also telling our bodies to get depressed, move less, have pain, snore, destroy our blood vessels and our hearts and a host of other serious noxious things. Years of research have gone into figuring out what it is that is causing this change in people and we now think we have some idea about what is happening. Higher sugar intake is causing higher insulin levels which in turn create inflammation and trigger the hormone cascade.

music to your ears: this year with hiv/aids

This year, 2007, there is some good news about the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The percentage of people living with AIDS has leveled off and the number of new cases has fallen. This is attributed to the prevention programs. However, risk remains high in sub-Saharan Africa. Eight sub-Saharan African countries represent one-third of all new cases and total deaths around the globe. This year there are still 33.2 million people living with AIDS, 2.5 million newly infected, and 2.1 million deaths. (Read the 2007 AIDS epidemic update) As with all good reports, "much good has been done, but more is needed." Events are happening all across the continent with dedication and promises. The theme of this year's World AIDS Day is leadership and "Stop AIDS, Keep the Promise!" While there is a lot of talk (read the statements) already this year about what will be done about the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The Republican War on Science and Environmental Health Perspectives

Crossposted at Daily Kos

The Republican war on science is systematic and multi-faceted and very difficult to keep up with. One episode which recently came to my attention involves my favorite technical journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP), which is published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and best of all, is open access.

Cancer is purple.

Crossposted from Town Called Dobson & My Left Wing


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