Month: September 2010

That's no exaggeration, either. A position paper just released by the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) calls for mandatory flu vaccine for all healthcare personnel. And if you work in the healthcare field and refuse? SHEA, which is organization of epidemiologists and infectious disease physicians, says you should be fired from your job or, if you are applying for one, denied employment.

The paper, published in this month's Infection Control and Healthcare Epidemiology journal and endorsed by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), specifically demands that influenza vaccination of healthcare personnel should be a condition of both initial and continued employment in healthcare facilities. In fact, according the SHEA paper, it doesn't matter whether a healthcare professional has direct patient contact — or even whether he or she is directly employed by a healthcare facility — they should be forced to have a flu shot to have a job.

Bottom line: even if you telecommute and do paperwork from afar, it appears SHEA wants you to be forced to have a flu shot if your work in anyway involves healthcare.

The SHEA policy also applies to students, volunteers, and contract workers. The only healthcare workers who would be let off the hook and allowed to escape having a forced flu vaccination, say the epidemiologists and infectious disease physicians, are those who can prove the shot is medically contraindicated.

"Mandatory vaccination is the cornerstone to a comprehensive program designed to prevent the spread of influenza," said Neil Fishman, MD, president of SHEA, in his statement to the media. "Healthcare providers are ethically obligated to take measures proven to keep patients from acquiring influenza in healthcare settings."

Of course, a lot of people would argue there's nothing ethical about forcing healthcare workers, even those not in contact with patients, to have flu shots in order to have a job.

SHEA's demands may be greeted with defiance from many healthcare workers. According to a RAND Corporation survey last year, 39 percent of healthcare professionals stated they had no intention of getting vaccinated despite the media hysteria and push for flu shots centered around H1N1 in 2009.

Small children cough, sneeze, and chew on grocery cart handles. Shoppers also grasp these handles after handling packages of raw chicken and meat. In a study, sponsored by the Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station, researchers from the Department of Nutrition and Food Science sampled 825 packages of raw meat obtained from supermarkets in the greater Washington, D.C. area. The meat in 179 of these packages contained E. coli bacteria.

A recent Akron, Ohio Beacon Journal article and the ABC Evening News revealed that Ohio had become part of a multi-state investigation trying to determine the cause of a salmonella outbreak that had sickened 94 people and accounted for two deaths. These illnesses occurred in 20 Ohio counties; Ohio worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to track the source of these outbreaks. Nationally, 600 people in 42 states had become infected. Their ages ranged from two months to 98 years of age; however, children under 5 were found to be five times more likely to get salmonella than others. Could dirty grocery carts be a factor?

Several products are being made available to the grocery industry. Mike Richardson, an industry analyst of the Fredonia Group in Cleveland, Ohio, stated that cart wipes are being made available twice as fast as other types of wipes. Still, relatively few shoppers reach for these wipes. Originally, only 5 percent of customers used them; now, their use has expanded to 15-20 percent.

In Chevy Chase, Maryland, a supermarket uses a type of cart wash which mists carts with a disinfecting solution of peroxide. The cart wash represents the latest effort on the part of grocers to take the "gross" out of grocery carts. Other grocery cart products have emerged, including protective covers to minimize infants' contact with the seat, full-cart liners, and portable snap-on handles. So, the next time you go grocery shopping, look around for some of these products to help make your cart more germ-free. If none are available, request that the management provide them for your shopping convenience and safety.

What are some of the possible dietary causes of early puberty?

Eating Meat: Typical Western diets and, more specifically, American diets contain large portions of meat. Most meat available for purchase and consumption comes from CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations). CAFOs fatten up their animals quickly, usually using growth hormones, steroids, and unnecessary antibiotics. Christina Pirello (a food authority) concludes that what Americans feed their food animals eventually feed people as well. If an animal ingests large amounts of hormones, those hormones will likely end up in a person's body, doing what hormones do, and one of the things hormones do is cause the onset of puberty.

Bisphenol A (BPA): BPA is a plastic used for a variety of things, from water bottles to the coating inside cans used to store food. The problem with BPA is that it leaches into the liquids found inside the bottle or can, and BPA has been proven to affect hormone levels. BPA has been linked to many hormonal problems, and there's no reason not to think that it could affect puberty as well.

Obesity: Few people today will argue that the standard American diet, consisting of high-fat and high-sugar processed foods, is linked to the rising rates of obesity in the United States. However, childhood obesity can likely even cause the early onset of puberty. Joyce Lee from the University of Michigan states that her research points to childhood obesity leading to early onset puberty; she says that it might be caused by the additional fat cells releasing hormones.

CAFOs, BPA, and large numbers of obese children were not factors in a Western diet 100 years ago, and 100 years ago the onset of puberty occurred at later ages. It is not easy to dismiss the likelihood that a Western diet has a large effect on the onset of puberty. And the early onset of puberty can cause many other problems, such as risky sexual behavior and breast cancer. With this knowledge, perhaps Americans can prevent future generations from sexual maturation at earlier ages.

The government warning came after a study conducted by researchers from the Nuffield Orthopedic Center in Oxford found that 4 percent of patients who had received a hip resurfacing operation needed a new operation due to pseudotumors. Women under the age of 40 were particularly at risk, with 13 percent requiring a new operation.

According to the suit, J&J was paying kickbacks to Omnicare to promote its drugs above those of other manufacturers, and convincing doctors that switching to J&J drugs was in their patients' best interests. The arrangement also included whitewashing these kickbacks as "performance rebates" that would be issued as "year-end bonuses."

"Residents were overcharged for their medications, had additional medications administered and were unlawfully switched to Johnson & Johnson drugs," explains the lawsuit. These medications included Floxin, Levaquin, Risperdal, Ultram, Duragesic, Procrit and Aciphex.

During their joint meetings to discuss "performance goals," J&J allegedly trained Omnicare employees to use "scripted communications" to convince physicians to switch their patients to J&J drugs as opposed to whatever they were currently on. This was included as part of the J&J's "Active Intervention Program," which basically is just a fancy name pushing its drugs on seniors.

J&J even went out of its way to bypass federal laws that protect the interests of the Medicaid program. Medicaid provisions include a "best price law" that is designed to keep costs low for Medicaid reimbursement and when drug discounts and rebates exceed a certain threshold, the drug company would have to then pass those on to Medicaid. But J&J is said to have worked with Omnicare to develop a scheme to avoid this threshold.

If the threshold was breached, Omnicare would have to initiate a retroactive price adjustment in order not to lose its kickback. So the company participated with J&J to make sure that didn't happen.

If the allegations are true, J&J has demonstrated itself to be unscrupulous in its business practice, willing to do whatever it takes to rake in the highest profit. Not only this, it will also have violated federal law.

The class-action suit includes two groups of patients: those nationwide and those specifically in the state of California. Any nursing home patients who received drugs or services under Omnicare between April 1, 1997, and the present are eligible to participate in the suit.

Even eligible patients who have since passed away can have their estate included in the suit.

According to researchers from New York University in Binghamton, yawning is the body's way of regulating the temperature equilibrium so that we can think better. This is why many people feel the need to yawn when sitting in warm rooms regardless of whether or not they are physically tired.

The research is contradictory to older research that pegged yawning as a response to reduced brain oxygen levels, and instead attributes it to a reenergizing process by which the body is able to transition from one state of mind to another, such as from being asleep to being awake.

"Yawning helps us relax," explains Patt Lind-Kyle, therapist and educator, in her book Heal Your Mind, Rewire Your Brain. "It lifts our moods. It's good stuff. And it's free."

Other research indicates that yawning acts similarly to antidepressants in that it helps block the reuptake of serotonin in the brain so that these neurotransmitters can instead be more readily available for use in brain receptors.

Andrew Gallup, author of the 2007 study that made these discoveries, was cited in a recent Chicago Tribune article as saying that sleep deprivation can raise body and brain temperature as well, so there can be a connection between yawning and sleepiness.

While he encourages the sleep deprived to get more sleep, he also believes that doing things to cool yourself down, such as taking a cold shower or jumping in a pool, will help to alleviate yawning as well.

According to a January 2010 article at kpcnews.com, yawning is also associated with an increase in dopamine, the "pleasure and relationship-bonding" chemicals in the brain. Dopamine levels are raised in response to yawning, and vice versa, bringing about feelings of happiness and connectedness with the people around us.

Wrinkles can be those fine surface lines as well as the deep furrows. The areas usually most affected are the sensitive skin near the eyes, the lips and neck. If the collagen and elastin in the connective tissues of our skin is weakened or if they decrease in number, wrinkles can then appear. Skin damaged in such a way appears thinner and loses fat content, elasticity and smoothness. Gravity also plays a part as it allows the lax tissue to sag. Skin ages all over the body but the process can be hastened where there has been excessive sun exposure. Apart from these two reasons, there are many other ways in which skin damage, and of course wrinkles, can be caused:

– Dryness and lack of moisture
– Excessive work or leisure time outdoors
– Tanning booths
– Heredity
– Gravity
– Injury or surgery to the skin
– Acne and various other skin diseases which have a tendency to scar
– Smoking which hastens the aging process while cigarette smoke is one of the biggest culprits for premature wrinkles
– Pollution such as air pollutants, dust, chemicals and harsh lights
– Muscle movement or repeated actions such as squinting, smiling and frowning
– The use of drugs
– Stress
– Weight loss because the volume of the fat cells is drastically reduced
– Lack of Vitamin E which can cause the quality of the skin to deteriorate

Over the counter anti-wrinkle potions and lotions may well contain harmful toxins such as parabens, mineral oil, paraffin, petrolatum, and many others and should be avoided. Skin is thin and easily penetrable so whatever you apply to your skin quickly enters the bloodstream.

Keep those wrinkles at bay naturally by:

– A twice daily regime of cleansing the skin of all impurities and make up. Use natural products and avoid hot water as the heat causes an increase in the chemical reactions in the chlorine in your water supply. Pat dry rather than rubbing and scrubbing with the towel.
– Applying a natural moisturizer. It improves the water holding capacity of the skin.
– Using a natural eye cream for the delicate area round the eyes using the 3rd finger because that digit has the lightest touch.
– Using a natural anti wrinkle cream at night with added nutrients. Coconut oil, body butter or a pure essentials oil wrinkles treatment will nourish but not clog your skin.
– Mashing 1/4 banana until it is a creamy consistency. Gently massage into your face, leaving it on for 30 minutes or more before rinsing off with warm water followed by a dash of cold. Gently pat dry.
– Applying flaxseed oil which is the richest vegetable source of omega-3 fatty acids, essential for lubricated and supple skin.
– Sleeping on your back to reduce the gravitational pull on the skin on your face and to avoid puffiness in the morning.
– Drinking your 8 glasses of water every day. The skin is the first organ to suffer if you are dehydrated.
– Eating a healthy diet which includes plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables. Blueberries are especially packed with antioxidants to fight skin-damaging free radicals.
– Not smoking.

Although wrinkles are part of the process of getting older, their appearance can be diminished with extra care and good natural treatment.

The report also revealed that one in five children are being regularly given prescription drugs, and nine out of ten seniors are on drugs.

All these drugs came at a cost of over $234 billion in 2008. The most commonly-used drugs were:

• Statin drugs for older people
• Asthma drugs for children
• Antidepressants for middle-aged people
• Amphetamine stimulants for children

America has become a nation of druggies. The seniors are being drugged for nearly every symptom a doctor can find, children are being doped up with (legalized) speed, and middle-aged soccer moms are popping suicide pills (antidepressants).

Prescription drug addictions are on the rise, too. Prescription drugs are so dangerous that now even the DEA is hosting "take back your pills" day allowing citizens to anonymously surrender their unused prescription painkillers to DEA agents. (http://www.herald-dispatch.com/news…)

Interestingly, DEA agents will only accept "legal" amphetamine drugs such as Ritalin but not "illegal" methamphetamine drugs. You're only off the hook if you paid monopoly prescription prices for your drugs.

And it's only going to get worse
The percentage of Americans taking prescription drugs is expected to rise even further as the health reform insurance regulations kick in. Much of the bill was specifically designed to favor pharmaceutical industry interests by putting even more people on medication. Expect to see more "screening" too — a thinly disguised drug recruitment method that primarily seeks to ensnare new patients in a high-profit drug regimen.

The mass medication of American citizens has reached a disturbing tipping point where the future of the nation itself is at risk. That's because pharmaceuticals cause cognitive decline, and once you get to the point where over 50 percent of the voters can't think straight, you're trapped in a crumbling Democracy.

And that doesn't even take into consideration the financial cost of America's addiction to drugs: With nearly one out of every five dollars out of the entire U.S. economy now being spent on sickness and disease, America finds herself stuck in a cycle of high-cost drug treatments that cure no one.

That's right: No one gets healthier from taking prescription drugs. They don't cure anyone and they don't prevent disease. They only maintain patients in a kind of "pre-death stasis" where they're alive just enough to keep buying more medication. Drug companies don't want you dead because that would cut off their profits. But they don't want you healthy, either, because then they wouldn't have you as a customer. So their drugs are actually designed to keep you in a state of ongoing disease without curing your condition but also without killing you outright.

You sort of chemically limp along, shelling out dollars while your memory fades and your skin starts to show signs of severe toxicity. Big Pharma is not merely sapping the life out of you; it's also draining you financially.

Isn't it obvious that pharmaceuticals don't work?
If pharmaceuticals really worked to make people healthy, then the half of America currently taking pharmaceuticals would be the healthiest half, and the people who don't take pharmaceuticals would be unhealthy, right?

But in fact it's the other way around: People who take pharmaceuticals remain unhealthy and really never get cured of anything. Meanwhile, those who avoid taking pharmaceuticals are, by and large, far healthier individuals.

If America were running a grand experiment to determine whether pharmaceuticals really work — and trust me, the country really is running precisely that experiment — any reasonable observer would have to conclude that pharmaceuticals really don't improve the health of those who take them. The more pharmaceuticals you take, in fact, the sicker you will become. That's because drugs cause an imbalance in the body that soon leads to the emergence of other side effects.

At the same time, many of the drugs people take actually cause the very things they claim to prevent. Osteoporosis drugs cause hip fractures. Cancer drugs cause cancer. Antidepressants cause suicidal thoughts. The list goes on and on.

The people who are really, truly healthy in America are those who avoid pharmaceuticals. (http://www.naturalnews.com/028789_p…) They take care of their own health through regular exercise, time in nature, sensible sunshine exposure and healthy eating. They distrust the pharmaceutical industry and they don't let television advertising hypnotize them into making poor decisions like getting a flu shot (http://www.naturalnews.com/029641_v…).

Yet even though it is blatantly obvious that pharmaceuticals really don't work to improve the health of any population, the drug industry insists the only thing wrong with America's health is that not enough people are taking medication!

If we could only get 100% of the population on drugs instead of 50%, they seem to be saying, then we'd all be healthy!

The logic is absurd, of course. And that goal has nothing to do with actual health but everything to do with increasing drug company profits. While drug companies may not know much at all about health, they do know one thing: How to commit marketing fraud by making outrageous benefit claims for their drugs while whitewashing the very real dangerous side effects.

Big Pharma will bankrupt America
Mark my words: Big Pharma will bankrupt America. And quite possibly the UK as well. Any nation that hands over its health care system to the drug industry is committing financial suicide.

That's because Big Pharma absolutely will not halt its single-minded mission to extract as much money as possible from the population, corporations and governments. It will do anything and everything it can to accomplish this goal: Bribe researchers to commit research fraud, engage in false and fraudulent marketing, lie to the public, hide negative study results, conduct experiments on children in third-world countries, pollute the planet with drug factory runoff, influence legislators with campaign finance contributions, dominate the pages of medical journals with false and misleading advertising, submit "scientific" articles to the journals ghost-written by the drug companies themselves… this list never ends.

Drug companies will knowingly keep dangerous drugs on the market that kill tens of thousands of people. They will knowingly withhold research from the FDA if it might make their drugs look bad. They will knowingly distort clinical trial data to eliminate whatever outcome they don't want to see.

This is all "routine" in the drug industry. These aren't exceptions, mind you: They are the way the drug industry operates on a daily basis.

The worst part of it is that Big Government is now fully in bed with Big Pharma. I already exposed Sen Harry Reid's efforts to swing a sweet deal for Big Pharma in the recent health care reforms (http://www.naturalnews.com/029450_H…). The FDA's collusion with drug companies, meanwhile, is legendary: There is hardly a decision made by the FDA that doesn't in some way protect drug company profits.

The med schools and science journals have been overrun by drug company influence. Drug companies are so large and powerful now that the U.S. government considers them "too big to nail." When Pfizer was recently found guilty of felony crimes, the government allowed it to create a shell company to take the hit so that Pfizer itself could remain in business and keep selling drugs to the government. (http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/0…)

A federal prosecutor actually went on the record saying, "If we prosecute Pfizer… a lot of people who work for the company who haven't engaged in criminal activity would get hurt."

Therefore, the logic goes, they have to let Pfizer off the hook.

And so it goes; Big Government protecting the criminals in the drug industry, making excuses for looking the other way when scientific fraud and marketing fraud is routinely being carried out right under their noses. The Dept of Justice isn't even interested in taking down criminal drug companies!

How this will end
So where does this medication madness ever end? It will end, I predict, with the economic downfall of the United States of America. When the nation is too broke, too medicated and too chemically compromised to stay afloat, it will suffer an enormous economic collapse.

Following the financial failure of big government, Big Pharma will implode virtually overnight. Without the government buying its products, Big Pharma will find few willing private customers. Ordinary people will seek out affordable and safer natural remedies, and the drug industry will collapse to perhaps 10% of its current size.

This will be a great day for the health of all Americans who have suffered under the chemical assault of Big Pharma. To live without the daily onslaught of Big Pharma's chemicals is to live a healthier life with improved brain function and awareness. Once people get off all their drugs, we might have hope to thoughtfully rebuild a nation based on nutrition rather than monopoly-priced medications.

I've said this at least a hundred times, and I'll say it again: No nation that ignores the nutritional health of its citizens has any real future. A successful long-term society MUST, at its core, invest in real nutrition and the holistic health education of its citizens. Without good nutrition, every society is ultimately doomed to fail.

Modern medicine, in other words, is destroying our country. And the "cure" for this disease is to throw out what doesn't work (pharmaceuticals) and start embracing the things that do work (nutrition and superfoods) to keep people healthy.