FDA takes action against soy-product firm
WASHINGTON, June 7 (UPI) -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says a California maker of ready-to-eat soy products will stop operations until it complies with federal sanitary rules.
The FDA said Lifesoy Inc. of San Diego was accused of preparing, packing and holding articles of food under unsanitary conditions. Officials Monday said the company entered into a U.S. District Court consent decree of permanent injunction that requires the firm to stop manufacturing and distributing food products until it registers with the FDA and complies with federal laws regarding sanitary practices.
Lifesoy makes sweetened and unsweetened soy milk, fried tofu, fresh tofu, soybean pudding and other soy products for human consumption.
The government also accused Lifesoy and its owner, Long Lai, of failing to hold and store foods under proper refrigeration conditions to prevent the growth of micro-organisms.
© 2010 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Monday, October 18, 2010
Stand UP 4 Your Health
Stand Up For Your Health
Physiologists And Microbiologists Find Link Between Sitting And Poor Health
June 1, 2008 — Physiologists analyzing obesity, heart disease, and diabetes found that the act of sitting shuts down the circulation of a fat-absorbing enzyme called lipase. They found that standing up engages muscles and promotes the distribution of lipase, which prompts the body to process fat and cholesterol, independent of the amount of time spent exercising. They also found that standing up uses blood glucose and may discourage the development of diabetes.
You're probably sitting down right now. Well, by the time you're done reading this, you may see sitting in a whole new way!
"Chair time is an insidious hazard because people haven't been told it's a hazard," Marc Hamilton, Ph.D., a professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri in Columbia, told Ivanhoe.
That's right -- the time you sit in your chair could be keeping your body's fat burning in park! More than 47 million adults in the United States have metabolic syndrome, which causes obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Biomedical researchers from the say the reason so many of us have the condition is because we sit too much!
"The existing data, by numerous studies, are starting to show that the rates of heart disease and diabetes and obesity are doubled or sometimes even tripled in people who sit a lot," Dr. Hamilton explains. One reason, he says, is an enzyme called lipase. When it's on, fat is absorbed into the muscles, but when we sit down, lipase virtually shuts off.
"Instead, the fat will recirculate in the blood stream and go and be stored as body fat or it can clog arteries and cause diseases," Dr. Hamilton says. And it's not a small amount of fat. Plasma samples were taken from the same person after eating the same meal. When they ate sitting down, the sample was cloudy, but when they ate while standing up, it was clear.
Physiologists And Microbiologists Find Link Between Sitting And Poor Health
June 1, 2008 — Physiologists analyzing obesity, heart disease, and diabetes found that the act of sitting shuts down the circulation of a fat-absorbing enzyme called lipase. They found that standing up engages muscles and promotes the distribution of lipase, which prompts the body to process fat and cholesterol, independent of the amount of time spent exercising. They also found that standing up uses blood glucose and may discourage the development of diabetes.
You're probably sitting down right now. Well, by the time you're done reading this, you may see sitting in a whole new way!
"Chair time is an insidious hazard because people haven't been told it's a hazard," Marc Hamilton, Ph.D., a professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri in Columbia, told Ivanhoe.
That's right -- the time you sit in your chair could be keeping your body's fat burning in park! More than 47 million adults in the United States have metabolic syndrome, which causes obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Biomedical researchers from the say the reason so many of us have the condition is because we sit too much!
"The existing data, by numerous studies, are starting to show that the rates of heart disease and diabetes and obesity are doubled or sometimes even tripled in people who sit a lot," Dr. Hamilton explains. One reason, he says, is an enzyme called lipase. When it's on, fat is absorbed into the muscles, but when we sit down, lipase virtually shuts off.
"Instead, the fat will recirculate in the blood stream and go and be stored as body fat or it can clog arteries and cause diseases," Dr. Hamilton says. And it's not a small amount of fat. Plasma samples were taken from the same person after eating the same meal. When they ate sitting down, the sample was cloudy, but when they ate while standing up, it was clear.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Health Insurers on the Attack
From MotherJones
By Kevin Drum
Wed Jan. 13, 2010 9:12 AM PST
Guess what? It turns out that health insurance companies oppose healthcare reform and are spending millions of dollars to defeat it. That wouldn't be a big surprise except for the fact that healthcare reform is supposed to be a boon to the insurance industry, providing them with millions of new customers (courtesy of an individual mandate that forces everyone to buy insurance). So why are they fighting it? Matt Yglesias takes a stab at explaining: [1]
The fact of the matter is that even though the new mandate/subsidy structure will give at least some insurers a bunch of new customers, the medium-run trajectory of reform is bad for private insurers. Right now, insurers are largely shielded from competition and are almost 100 percent immune to needing to please their actual customers, getting to deal with HR bureaucracies instead. In an Exchange-based world, individuals will be choosing from among several plans and insurers will be accountable to customers. What’s more, the principle that it’s the government’s job to make health care work will lead to pressure for further regulations and further squeezing of industry profit margins.
I think that's pretty much right, and I'd add that community rating (which requires insurers to charge everyone the same price) will add to this pressure. With risk adjustment taken away from insurance companies, they become purely administrative middlemen, and that's a dangerous thing to be. Pure paper shufflers are a lot easier to compare to Medicare's administrative bureaucracy, and they won't benefit from that comparison. The political pressure for them to continually cut costs and profits will just keep growing.
On the other hand, this has always been the case, so why did the insurance industry play nice at first and only turn on the attack ads recently? Hypothesis 1: It took them a while to figure this out. I'm skeptical of this. Hypothesis 2: They feared this all along, but figured the alternatives were even worse. Now, however, they're starting to believe that they might be able to defeat healthcare reform completely, so they're throwing caution to the wind.
All the more reason for Democrats to get their act together and hammer out a compromise that can pass the House and the Senate. Unfortunately, Josh Marshall rounds up some evidence here [2] that Dems are stuck in their usual circular firing squad and aren't making much progress, even though the differences between the House and Senate bills are, frankly, fairly minor. But as a friend of mine likes to say, "Republicans are evil and Democrats are idiots." I sure hope they prove him wrong for once.
Source URL: http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/01/health-insurers-attack
Links:
[1] http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2010/01/insurers-oppose-health-reform.php
[2] http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/01/are_the_dems_going_to_blow_this.php
By Kevin Drum
Wed Jan. 13, 2010 9:12 AM PST
Guess what? It turns out that health insurance companies oppose healthcare reform and are spending millions of dollars to defeat it. That wouldn't be a big surprise except for the fact that healthcare reform is supposed to be a boon to the insurance industry, providing them with millions of new customers (courtesy of an individual mandate that forces everyone to buy insurance). So why are they fighting it? Matt Yglesias takes a stab at explaining: [1]
The fact of the matter is that even though the new mandate/subsidy structure will give at least some insurers a bunch of new customers, the medium-run trajectory of reform is bad for private insurers. Right now, insurers are largely shielded from competition and are almost 100 percent immune to needing to please their actual customers, getting to deal with HR bureaucracies instead. In an Exchange-based world, individuals will be choosing from among several plans and insurers will be accountable to customers. What’s more, the principle that it’s the government’s job to make health care work will lead to pressure for further regulations and further squeezing of industry profit margins.
I think that's pretty much right, and I'd add that community rating (which requires insurers to charge everyone the same price) will add to this pressure. With risk adjustment taken away from insurance companies, they become purely administrative middlemen, and that's a dangerous thing to be. Pure paper shufflers are a lot easier to compare to Medicare's administrative bureaucracy, and they won't benefit from that comparison. The political pressure for them to continually cut costs and profits will just keep growing.
On the other hand, this has always been the case, so why did the insurance industry play nice at first and only turn on the attack ads recently? Hypothesis 1: It took them a while to figure this out. I'm skeptical of this. Hypothesis 2: They feared this all along, but figured the alternatives were even worse. Now, however, they're starting to believe that they might be able to defeat healthcare reform completely, so they're throwing caution to the wind.
All the more reason for Democrats to get their act together and hammer out a compromise that can pass the House and the Senate. Unfortunately, Josh Marshall rounds up some evidence here [2] that Dems are stuck in their usual circular firing squad and aren't making much progress, even though the differences between the House and Senate bills are, frankly, fairly minor. But as a friend of mine likes to say, "Republicans are evil and Democrats are idiots." I sure hope they prove him wrong for once.
Source URL: http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/01/health-insurers-attack
Links:
[1] http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2010/01/insurers-oppose-health-reform.php
[2] http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/01/are_the_dems_going_to_blow_this.php
Health & Medicine: Secret Archive
Medicine's secret archives
ScienceDaily (2010-06-06) -- Researchers have compiled over 60 examples illustrating how the dissemination of medical knowledge has been impeded. For this purpose, they assessed hundreds of citations. A wide range of interventions was affected: from drugs and vaccines to medical devices such as ultrasound or devices for wound care. The collection reads like the script for a crime series. ... > read full article
A New Look at Fibromyalgia?
If there were to be something coming from this story I'd like to see proper thyroid testing, nutritional counseling, and supplement support.
I say this because I worked for several years as a resource person for a large urban hospital FMS/CFIDS group.
I also worked with an MD and an LMP to develop and monitor a natural approach to fibromyalgia.
Guess What? Many of our group lost the FMS and the diagnosis!
I say this because I worked for several years as a resource person for a large urban hospital FMS/CFIDS group.
I also worked with an MD and an LMP to develop and monitor a natural approach to fibromyalgia.
Guess What? Many of our group lost the FMS and the diagnosis!
New criteria proposed for diagnosing fibromyalgia
ScienceDaily (2010-06-06) -- The American College of Rheumatology is proposing a new set of diagnostic criteria for fibromyalgia that replaces the tender point test with a rating system that includes common symptoms such as fatigue, sleep disturbances, and cognitive problems, as well as pain. ... > read full article
GMO Corn Linked to Organ Failure
At our mothership, Creating Health Institute, we' ve been precautioning against GMO food for more than half-a-dozen years. Now another good report is out to support our opinion.
Read this new article
Check the 30 + articles at Natural Health News on GMO, here's a couple for starters:
http://naturalhealthnews.blogspot.com/2009/02/stop-gmo-corn-now.html
http://naturalhealthnews.blogspot.com/2009/01/damaging-effects-of-genetically.html
and see this propaganda piece too
Read this new article
Check the 30 + articles at Natural Health News on GMO, here's a couple for starters:
http://naturalhealthnews.blogspot.com/2009/02/stop-gmo-corn-now.html
http://naturalhealthnews.blogspot.com/2009/01/damaging-effects-of-genetically.html
and see this propaganda piece too
"Effects were mostly concentrated in kidney and liver function, the two major diet detoxification organs, but in detail differed with each GM type. In addition, some effects on heart, adrenal, spleen and blood cells were also frequently noted. As there normally exists sex differences in liver and kidney metabolism, the highly statistically significant disturbances in the function of these organs, seen between male and female rats, cannot be dismissed as biologically insignificant as has been proposed by others. We therefore conclude that our data strongly suggests that these GM maize varieties induce a state of hepatorenal toxicity....These substances have never before been an integral part of the human or animal diet and therefore their health consequences for those who consume them, especially over long time periods are currently unknown."
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