Sugar is "Like Cigarettes and Alcohol, And Killing Us"

from 6 Easy Makeup Tips for a Gorgeous Green Makeover : TreeHugger

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The amount of sugar in a single can of pop. Image credit Lloyd Alter The New York Times Magazine cover article has the provocative title Is Sugar Toxic? which they have ever so kindly let loose outside their new pay wall. Author Gary Taubes has become convinced it isn't the dietary fat that is causing the explosion of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and hypertension, but the sugar. It is a thesis put forward by Robert Lustig of University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, who says "sugar should be thought of, like cigarettes and alcohol, as something that's killing us."...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Quarter of US Meat Samples Carry Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria, Factory Farms to Blame: Study

from 6 Easy Makeup Tips for a Gorgeous Green Makeover : TreeHugger

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photo: Anthony Albright/Creative Commons In the first national study of the US meat supply looking at drug resistant strains of the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus, just under 25% of of samples were found to contain the so-called Read the full story on TreeHugger

The Daily Meal: The Food World's Secret Vices

from Shira Hirschman Weiss: Makeup Tips for Dry Eye Sufferers by The Daily Meal

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Ferran Adrià secretly enjoys an occasional Bollycao, a chocolate-filled Spanish cousin of the Twinkie. Julia Child once admitted that she sometimes ate hot dogs for breakfast, and considered Burger King French fries to be "very good." Auguste Escoffier could never resist pulling into any KFC he passed for a Double-Down.

Actually, I made that last one up. But, hey, who's to say that the father of modern French cooking wouldn't have enjoyed a cholesterol-bomb of fried chicken, bacon, and two kinds of cheese once in a while after a hard day at the Ritz? The point is that many people in the food world -- chefs, restaurateurs, writers, and the rest -- "eat down," which is to say that they indulge at least occasionally in victuals that are far more commonplace (dare we say "junky"?) than the cuisine they cook themselves or extol in the culinary media.

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Study says that people survive strokes better if they know their neighbors

from beauty contest News by Aishwarya Bhatt

New York, April 18 (THAINDIAN NEWS) A new study which was published in the journal, Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association, suggests that older Americans who live in sociable neighborhoods have higher chance of surviving than those in other neighborhoods. The study however found that for reasons not yet understood, the trend was not the [...]

Meal Snap: iPhone App Counts Calories From Photos Of Your Food

Calorie counts can now be made with a flick of your iPhone. Meal Snap, by health and fitness brand DailyBurn ($2.99 on iTunes), allows users to calculate calories for any food item in the app's 500,000-item database, from an apple to a bag of chips, simply by snapping its picture. Users can then choose to log it into a food diary, to keep track of daily intake, or share findings on Twitter, if you're a lifestyle pusher.

The Economic Disparity of Children's Mental Health Care

Seven-year-old Jarrod was a classic bully. He hit and kicked other children at school when he didn't get what he wanted. He even bit one of his classmates for not giving him a toy. The principal and teacher at Jarrod's school had been very patient with him because they knew that his parents had recently divorced. His mother was going it alone more or less as a single parent, with Jarrod's father having only infrequent visitation. But now the parents of other children were starting to complain about Jarrod's bullying, and his teacher thought he should be evaluated for ADHD or oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). A friend suggested to Jarrod's mother that she try family therapy before seeking a medical evaluation. She checked with her health insurance and found that it would cover family therapy. That is how I met Jarrod and his family.

In the first 50 minute session, the root of the boy's problem became clear. Jarrod confided to me that he was worried about his father because his father cried every time he had to drop him off at his mother's house. "Daddy wants to spend more time with me and mommy won't let him," he continued. I started to get the picture. Jarrod's parents had been through a messy divorce, and they were still squabbling over visitation. And, as often happens in this kind of situation, the parent's hostility toward each other was affecting their son. A young child is closely connected to his family system, and a disturbance in that system can affect the child's behavior and feelings in unexpected ways. Jarrod was feeling his father's pain and acting it out toward everyone around him.

The path of therapy was clear cut. I would have to help the parents renegotiate their post-divorce parenting relationship to something more civil. I met first with Jarrod's mother and a few days later with Jarrod and his father. I could see the joy on Jarrod's face when he saw his father in my office. With tears in his eyes, the father explained that he missed his son terribly and wanted more time with him. He and his ex-wife could not communicate about the subject of visitation without getting embroiled in an unpleasant argument. He felt hopeless. In a separate session, I explained to Jarrod's mother that the visitation issue was affecting her son's behavior. I managed to get her to agree to Jarrod's spending more time with his father. I helped the mother get over her anger at the way her ex-husband had treated her. I met with the mother for two more sessions, and we worked out a new visitation arrangement. After his father began spending more time with him, Jarrod's bullying stopped. His teacher said it was "like night and day." He seemed like a different child.

Because Jarrod's mother had a good job, which provided her with health insurance that covered family counseling, I had time to meet with everyone involved and figure out what to do. Jarrod was fortunate. Other children, whose parents do not have private health insurance, are not so fortunate.

Let us now consider a fictional 7-year-old boy named Charles, whose bullying behavior is almost identical to Jarrod's. His family situation is also similar, with his parents having recently gone through a hostile divorce and his father having little visitation. The difference is that Charles's health coverage is Medicaid. Unlike Jarrod's mother, Charles's mother does not have the option of consulting a family therapist because Medicaid does not cover talk therapy. What Medicaid does cover is psychiatry and psychiatric medication.

When Charles's school complains about the boy's misbehavior, his mother consults a list of Medicaid providers and chooses a child psychiatrist. The doctor meets with Charles and his mother for, at best, 30 minutes, and listens to the story of Charles's aggressive behavior. The psychiatrist then diagnoses Charles with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) or ADHD, for which he prescribes one or more medications. Even if the psychiatrist preferred a more humanistic approach and believed that talk therapy could have a beneficial effect on Charles, he also knows that Medicaid does not cover talk therapy. He would not have the luxury of delving more deeply into Charles's family story even if he wanted to do so.

Charles would see the psychiatrist for a 15-minute med check every six weeks. In the best case, the medication would sedate the boy and curb his aggressiveness. Ultimately, however, since the real stressor in Charles's family situation is never addressed, medication will not suffice. His aggressiveness eventually re-emerges, and he continues to act out the hostility between his parents. He is labeled a "bully" and a "troublemaker." Without a stable father-figure in his life, he eventually finds his self-identity in a violent gang. After a few years, Charles could well be diagnosed with bipolar disorder and given a much stronger medication. With the family problem at the root of his misbehavior never being addressed, the ending of Charles's story would be quite different from Jarrod's.

The tales of Jarrod and Charles illustrate the grave inequality that exists in the mental health care of America's children. This inequality is one chapter in the larger story of the widening chasm between health services available to the rich and those available to the poor. Charles's story is writ large in the millions of underprivileged children in our country who are diagnosed each year with psychiatric disorders and medicated. No country in the developed world diagnoses and medicates its children in numbers proportionate to the United States, and poor children in our country are given psychotropic drugs four times as often as middle class children.

In my view, the inequality in mental health care for children could be corrected if Medicaid adopted a mental health care model similar to that of health insurance companies. Many private health insurers have realized the effectiveness of brief talk therapy as an adjunct to psychiatry for problems of children. Six or eight sessions of family therapy could well resolve Charles's bullying behavior without either the risks or the expense of psychiatric medications. With the family system problem being addressed and resolved in therapy, Charles's story would have a happy ending like Jarrod's.

How can they afford to put a walgreens/riteaid on every corner?

Make sure you read all the way past the list of the drugs. The woman that signed below is a Budget Analyst out of federal Washington , DC offices.
>
> Did you ever wonder how much it costs a drug company for the active ingredient in prescription medications? Some people think it must cost a lot, since many drugs sell for more than $2..00 per tablet.
>
> We did a search of offshore chemical synthesizers that supply the active ingredients found in drugs approved by the FDA. As we have revealed in past issues of Life   Extension a significant percentage of drugs sold in the United States contain active ingredients made in other countries.
>
> In our independent investigation of how much profit drug companies really make, we obtained the actual price of active ingredients used in some of the most popular drugs sold in America ..
>
> Celebrex:100 mg
> Consumer price (100 tablets): $130.27
> Cost of general active ingredients: $0.60
> Percent markup: 21,712%
>
>
> Claritin:10 mg
> Consumer Price (100 tablets): $215.17
> Cost of general active ingredients: $0.71
> Percent markup: 30,306%
>
>
> Keflex:250 mg
> Consumer Price (100 tablets): $157.39
> Cost of general active ingredients: $1.88
> Percent markup: 8,372%
>
>
> Lipitor:20 mg
> Consumer Price (100 tablets): $272.37
> Cost of general active ingredients: $5.80
> Percent markup: 4,696%
>
>
> Norvasc:10 mg
> Consumer price (100 tablets): $188.29
> Cost of general active ingredients: $0.14
> Percent markup: 134,493%
>
>
> Paxil:20 mg
> Consumer price (100 tablets): $220.27
> Cost of general active ingredients: $7.60
> Percent markup: 2,898%
>
>
> Prevacid:30 mg
> Consumer price (100 tablets): $44.77
> Cost of general active ingredients: $1.01
> Percent markup: 34,136%
>
>
> Prilosec: 20 mg
> Consumer price (100 tablets): $360.97
> Cost of general active ingredients $0.52
> Percent markup: 69,417%
>
>
> Prozac:20 mg
> Consumer price (100 tablets) : $247.47
> Cost of general active ingredients: $0.11
> Percent markup: 224,973%
>
>
> Tenormin:50 mg
> Consumer price (100 tablets): $104.47
> Cost of general active ingredients: $0.13
> Percent markup: 80,362%
>
>
> Vasotec:10 mg
> Consumer price (100 tablets): $102.37
> Cost of general active ingredients: $0.20
> Percent markup: 51,185%
>
>
> Xanax:1 mg
> Consumer price (100 tablets) : $136.79
> Cost of general active ingredients: $0.024
> Percent markup: 569,958%
>
>
> Zestril:20 mg
> Consumer price (100 tablets) $89.89
> Cost of general active ingredients $3.20
> Percent markup: 2,809%
>
>
> Zithromax:600 mg
> Consumer price (100 tablets): $1,482.19
> Cost of general active ingredients: $18.78
> Percent markup: 7,892%
>
>
> Zocor:40 mg
> Consumer price (100 tablets): $350.27
> Cost of general active ingredients: $8.63
> Percent markup: 4,059%
>
> Zoloft:50 mg
> Consumer price: $206.87
> Cost of general active ingredients: $1.75
> Percent markup: 11,821%
>
>
> Since the cost of prescription drugs is so outrageous, I thought everyone should know about this.  It pays to shop around! This helps to solve the mystery as to why they can afford to put a Walgreen's on every corner.
>
> On Monday night, Steve Wilson, an investigative reporter for Channel 7 News in Detroit , did a story on generic drug prices gouging by pharmacies. He found in his investigation that some of these generic drugs were marked up as much as 3,000% or more. So often we blame the drug companies for the high cost of drugs, and usually rightfully so. But in this case, the fault clearly lies with the pharmacies themselves. For example if you had to buy a prescription drug, and bought the name brand, you might pay $100 for 100 pills.
>
> The pharmacist might tell you that if you get the generic equivalent, they would only cost $80, making you think you are saving $20.. What the pharmacist is not telling you is that those 100 generic pills may have only cost him $10!
>
> At the end of the report, one of the anchors asked Mr. Wilson whether or not there were any pharmacies that did not adhere to this practice, and he said that Costco consistently charged little over their cost for the generic drugs.
>
>
> I went to the Costco site, where you can look up any drug, and get its online price. It says that the in-store prices are consistent with the online prices. I was appalled. Just to give you one example from my own experience I had to use the drug Compazine which helps prevent nausea in chemo patients.
>
> I used the generic equivalent, which cost $54.99 for 60 pills at CVS. I checked the price at Costco, and I could have bought 100 pills for $19.89. For 145 of my pain pills, I paid $72.57. I could have got 150 at Costco for $28.08.
>
> I would like to mention that, although Costco is a 'membership' store, you do NOT have to be a member to buy prescriptions there as it is a federally regulated substance. You just tell them at the door that you wish to use the pharmacy, and they will let you in.
>
> I am asking each of you to please help me by copying this letter and sending it to everyone you know with an e-mail address.
>
> Sharon L. Davis
> Budget Analyst
> U.S.  Department of Commerce
> Room 6839

Shirley Maclaine Urges Teachers To Consider Spirituality Lessons

Movie veteran Shirley Maclaine has blamed outdated education methods for mankind's spiritual ignorance - and the wars we fight around the world.

The Terms of Endearment actress, who has a strong belief in reincarnation, insists spirituality and meditation should be taught to young schoolchildren in the west - so we can learn how to stay in touch with the past and the true value of peace.

She tells U.S. talk show host Oprah Winfrey, "If they (educators) would teach us from the time we're little to meditate and get in touch with all that our soul knows we wouldn't fight so much."

"Limitless" By Hannah Rishel Collegian Staff Writer

It has been said that we only use a small percentage of our brains.

But imagine what the human race could do if we could access 100 percent. “Limitless” strives to answer this question.

Bradley Cooper plays Eddie, a down-on-his-luck writer who was just kicked to the curb by his girlfriend, Lindy, played by Abbie Cornish. As he’s walking home, he runs into his ex-wife’s brother, Vernon, who takes him out for a drink, even though it’s only mid-afternoon.

Vernon gives him a pill called NZT that turns his entire brain into Google. Instead of accessing the small fraction humans usually do, Eddie has power over 100 percent of his brain.

After his first dose, he’s hooked, so he goes back to Vernon looking for more. A flag should have been raised when Eddie finds Vernon killed, but he steals the stash of NZT hidden in the oven anyway.

With the drug he’s able to remember everything he’s ever read or heard. He works through his writer’s block and finishes his novel at break-neck speed. He uses the small amount of money he still has to play poker and invests his winnings in the stock market, which of course pays off for him. He’s also able to win back Lindy, who is charmed by the new man he’s become.

It all seems too good to be true, because it is.

NZT appears to have similar qualities to speed, since Eddie goes on an obsessive cleaning spree, and he can’t seem to sleep or eat. He also becomes a daredevil: driving fast and jumping off ocean-side cliffs.

NZT is quite the jagged little pill. It is super addictive and going cold turkey seems to result in death. Eddie is challenged with finding more NZT before his stash from Vernon runs out.

He also has to deal with a mobster, who snagged some NZT from Eddie by force and now wants to reap the benefits Eddie is enjoying.

While Eddie is dealing with this, he also has to work on impressing Carl Van Loon, played by Robert De Niro, one of the richest men in America, who hires Eddie as an investment consultant. Eddie’s work fluctuates as he deals with his limited supply of NZT.

It’s interesting to see Cooper transform from a scrub with a matted ponytail to a suave-looking member of society. The audience is supposed to like Eddie and cheer him on throughout the movie, but I couldn’t really find any redeeming qualities about him.

De Niro is good, as he always is. But his character is rather one-dimensional. It would have been nice if he was given a more complex character, which he is more than capable of playing.

The special effects of “Limitless” were probably one of the better parts of the movie. Though the zoom-in shots made me feel slightly nauseous, one of my favorite parts was when Eddie gets to work on his novel and the letters fall down in piles around him.

Another good effect in the film was that the lighting matched whether Eddie was on the drug or not. When he was taking NZT everything was bright and clear, but when he was off all the colors seemed muted.

Unfortunately these details aren’t enough to save the entire movie.

There’s a subplot with a murder that Eddie may or may not have committed that never gets wrapped up, and the ending is a bit of a cop-out.

While “Limitless” has an interesting premise, it doesn’t seem to follow through. If only it could take some NZT and reach its own maximum potential.