Household Hormonal Danger

Carl Lowe, September 11, 2012

An everyday chemical in many cosmetics, supplements, medicines, laundry soaps and air fresheners may be lowering your testosterone, disrupting your thyroid, making you vulnerable to diabetes and adding inches to your waistline. You can and should reduce your exposure to this chemical today before you become another one of its victims.

Research shows that a family of chemicals called phthalates is responsible for a whole host of health problems that besiege Americans. These chemicals are used as plasticizers in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic products to keep them durable and flexible. They are also used in household products with synthetic fragrances like cosmetics, lotions and shampoos to help disperse their scents. Plus, phthalates called dibutyl phthalate (DBP) and diethyl phthalate (DEP) are included as inactive ingredients in some medications and dietary supplements. They are used to slow absorption and make these pills and capsules “time release” their ingredients into the intestinal tract.

Reproduction Questions
A large body of research has indicated that exposure to phthalates is connected to the reduction of testosterone in men. Studies also show that these chemicals may be linked to extra inches around the waistline, insulin resistance and an increased risk for diabetes.

“Substantial declines in testosterone levels and sperm quality have been observed in the United States and other countries over the last several decades and it urgently requires explanation. While we can’t say yet that phthalates are a definite cause, I am certain they are on the list of chemicals that demands careful study,” notes researcher Richard Stahlhut, a preventive medicine resident at the University of Rochester.

In Stahlhut’s research, men who had the highest exposure to phthalates had more belly fat and insulin resistance than other men.

Studies on the effects of phthalates on women come up with similar results. When researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston looked at the phthalates in the urine of more than 2,300 women, they found that:

• Women with the highest levels of the chemicals mono-benzyl phthalate and mono-isobutyl phthalate had almost double the risk of diabetes compared to women with the lowest levels of those chemicals.
• Women with higher than median levels of the chemical mono-(3-carboxypropyl) phthalate experienced approximately a 60 percent increased risk of diabetes.
• Women with moderately high levels of the chemicals mono-n-butyl phthalate and di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate suffered approximately a 70 percent increased risk of diabetes.

Thyroid Disruption
Phthalates also interfere with the vital functions of the thyroid. When researchers at the University of Michigan analyzed the blood and urine of more than 1,300 adults and 300 adolescents, they found that greater concentrations of urinary phthalate metabolites (as well as BPA, another chemical in plastics) were associated with greater impacts on serum thyroid measurements.

One study showed the strongest relationship between thyroid disruption and DEHP, a phthalate commonly used as a plasticizer. Other studies have shown that most of the DEHP we absorb is in the form of pollutants in our food. Urine samples showing the highest 20 percent of exposure to DEHP was associated with as much as a 10 percent decrease in certain thyroid hormones compared to urine samples at the lowest 20 percent of exposure.

Reduce Your Exposure To Phthalates
While you may not be able to avoid all exposure to phthalates, you can significantly reduce the presence of these chemicals in your personal environment:

• Avoid taking medications or supplements that list the ingredients dibutyl phthalate (DBP) and diethyl phthalate (DEP). These may also be ingredients in perfumes, nail polish, lotions, hair treatments, shampoo, deodorants and cologne.
• Watch out for BzBp (benzylbutyl phthalate), which may be an ingredient in cosmetics, flooring and other plastic products.
• Avoid insect repellents that list DMP (dimethyl phthalate) as an ingredient.
• Use unscented, hypoallergenic cosmetics and personal-care products. Any product that lists the words “fragrance” or “parfum” on the package may contain phthalates.
• Instead of a plastic shower curtain, use a cloth one made of cotton or another fabric that you can wash and reuse.
• Store refrigerated food in glass — not plastic.
• Don’t use plastic food containers in the microwave. The high temperatures may cause chemicals from the plastic to migrate to your food.
• Do not use air fresheners unless they incorporate pure essential oils instead of synthetic fragrances.
• Use unscented laundry soap.
• Other ingredients to avoid include: Di(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP), Bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, dioctyl phthalate (DOP), and dimethyl phthalate (DMP).

Unfortunately, phthalates are part of the ocean of chemicals that surround us in daily life. And recent studies even link these chemicals to asthma. So if you want to breathe a little easier and lower your risk of many of the illnesses that modern flesh is heir to, avoid these toxins as much as you can.

The Astounding Health Benefits Of One Simple Action

One simple activity can exert a tremendous influence over your health, lowering your risk of Alzheimer’s, protecting your heart, defending against cancer, decreasing your risk of disability, controlling your weight and increasing your life expectancy. Scientific research proves the health-power of this activity, but most people don’t seem to understand how much it can improve their lives.
Medical researchers have been astonished by the health-promoting effects of simply walking every day. While most Americans seem addicted to a couch potato lifestyle, scientists have proven that a daily walk (or, even better, several walks a day) improves the health of just about every part of the body.

The benefits of walking go from head to toe.

Brain Protection
Research at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania shows that walking can slow the development of memory problems and even slow the development of Alzheimer’s disease.
“We found that walking five miles per week protects the brain structure over 10 years in people with Alzheimer’s and MCI (mild cognitive impairment), especially in areas of the brain’s key memory and learning centers,” says researcher Cyrus Raji, Ph.D. “We also found that these people had a slower decline in memory loss over five years.”

Raji’s study showed that physical activities like walking are associated with larger brain size. Cognitively impaired people needed to walk at least 58 city blocks, or approximately five miles, every week to prevent brain shrinkage volume and slow cognitive decline. People with normal brains needed to walk at least 72 city blocks, or six miles, per week to maintain brain volume and significantly reduce their risk for cognitive decline.

Heart Protection
An exercise like walking also supports the health of the cardiovascular system and keeps the heart and arteries functioning better.

In a study where doctors worked with overweight heart patients, they found that long walks were the perfect way to lose weight and improve cardiovascular health.

“The higher-caloric exercise, consisting of almost daily long-distance walking, resulted in double the weight loss and a greater fat mass loss than standard cardiac rehabilitation exercise,” says researcher Philip A. Ades, M.D., director of cardiac rehabilitation and prevention at the University of Vermont College of Medicine in Burlington. “And probably most importantly, these patients improved their insulin sensitivity to a greater degree.”

Weight Loss
If other people in your family are overweight, you may have inherited a tendency to gain weight. But that genetic inheritance doesn’t have to be your immutable destiny. A walking program can cut that genetic liability by 50 percent, according to a study at the Harvard School of Public Health. On the other hand, if you bury yourself in the couch all day, watching television and snacking, you’re just telling your obesity genes to pack on the pounds.

“While previous studies have looked at how physical activity affects genetic predispositions, this is the first study that directly looked at the effect of the sedentary behavior of television watching on the body mass index (BMI) of individuals with a genetic predisposition to obesity,” says Qibin Qi, Ph.D., study author and a postdoctorate research fellow in the department of nutrition at Harvard.
“In our study, a brisk one-hour daily walk reduced the genetic influence towards obesity, measured by differences in BMI, by half. On the other hand, a sedentary lifestyle marked by watching television four hours a day increased the genetic influence by 50 percent.”

Walking Toward Health
A wide range of research on walking has established other impressive benefits:

• A study at Vanderbilt University shows that walking can reduce a woman’s risk for endometrial cancer by as much as 40 percent. “This adds to the growing body of literature indicating that high levels of physical activity are associated with reduced risk of some cancers, including endometrial cancer,” says lead author Charles E. Matthews, Ph.D.
• Older adults can decrease their risk of disability and increase their likelihood of maintaining independence by 41 percent when they walk regularly, according to research at the University of Georgia.
• Brisk walking can lower the risk of cancer progression in men diagnosed with prostate cancer, according to a study at the University of California, San Francisco and the Harvard School of Public Health. “The important point was the intensity of the activity — the walking had to be brisk for men to experience a benefit,” says Erin Richman, Sc.D., the first author on the study. “Our results provide men with prostate cancer something they can do to improve their prognosis.”

One Foot In Front Of The Other
The human body needs to walk and exercise every day to stay healthy. In contrast, the couch potato lifestyle kills. As one scientist who has researched the benefits of walking puts it, you should “walk often and walk far.”

You’ll be glad you did.

Carl Lowe -  Sep 04, 2012
About the Author: has written about health, fitness and nutrition for a wide range of publications including Prevention Magazine, Self Magazine and Time-Life Books. The author of more than a dozen books, he has been gluten-free since 2007

Vitamin B3 may be the cure for drug-resistant superbug infections

Tuesday, September 04, 2012 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer - Natural News

While the pharmaceutical industry is busy trying to conjure up new drugs to tackle the antibiotic-resistant "superbug" epidemic, a recent study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation explains how simple vitamin B3, also known as nicotinamide (NAM), taken in high doses may effectively thwart staph and other potentially life-threatening infections without the need for drugs.

Researchers from both Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in California and the Linus Pauling Institute (LPI) at Oregon State University (OSU) collaborated with one another to test the effects of high doses of NAM administered to both live mice and human blood infected with Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus). What they found was that vitamin B3 significantly boosts the number and effectiveness of neutrophils, or white blood cells that target infections.

It turns out that, when taken in doses far higher than those recommended by the federal government, vitamin B3 is capable of significantly boosting the body's own natural immune system to the point where many diseases simply cannot survive. According to the study, vitamin B3 is capable of increasing immune capacity by 1,000 times, allowing the body to naturally fight MRSA and other deadly pathogens.

"This could give us a new way to treat staph infections that can be deadly," said Adrian Gombart, an associate professor at LPI, about the dramatic findings. "It's a way to tap into the power of the innate immune system and stimulate it to provide a more powerful and natural immune response."

NAM is not just effective against S. aureus, though. Several other virulent pathogens, including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), also seem to respond favorably to NAM's dramatic immune-boosting capacity. By bolstering the immune system's natural defenses, NAM appears to facilitate the destruction and elimination of a host of deadly pathogens and viruses.

"NAM is not only effective against S. aureus, it also has demonstrated efficacy against other major human pathogens, such as K. pneumoniae (Klebsiella pneumoniae) and P. aeruginosa (Pseudomonas aeruginosa), in our human peripheral blood killing assay," wrote the authors in their discussion. "We have demonstrated that NAM, as an HDAC inhibitor, can improve host defense and thereby promote bacterial clearance."

And unlike antibiotic drugs, vitamin B3 does not destroy all the beneficial bacteria in the gut along with the harmful bacteria. So for most people, taking mega-doses of therapeutic vitamin B3 is preferable to taking immune-destroying antibiotics that can later promote the growth of Candida albicans and other harmful yeast overgrowths and bacterial imbalances within the body.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.jci.org/articles/view/62070?key=a39ce7efc2f764ede04

http://www.feedstuffs.com

http://www.foxnews.com