Popular Statin Found to Cut Exercise Benefits

The HMG-CoA reductase pathway, which is blocked by statins via inhibiting the rate limiting enzyme HMG-CoA reductase. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

University of Missouri researchers have found that a popular cholesterol-lowering drug, typically prescribed to prevent heart disease, may actually hinder the positive benefits of exercise among obese and overweight adults.

SPECIAL: These 4 Things Happen Right Before a Heart Attack — Read More.

 

The finding that simvastatin — a generic type of statin sold under the brand name Zocor — may cut the benefits of exercise underscores new questions about the pros and cons of taking such cholesterol-lowering medicines.
 

"Fitness has proven to be the most significant predictor of longevity and health because it protects people from a variety of chronic diseases," said John Thyfault, an associate professor of nutrition and exercise physiology at MU.

"Daily physical activity is needed to maintain or improve fitness, and thus improve health outcomes. However, if patients start exercising and taking statins at the same time, it seems that statins block the ability of exercise to improve their fitness levels."

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmaxhealth.com/Health-News/cholesterol-lowering-drug-statin/2013/05/16/id/504935#ixzz2TeSudqrP
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Why the Egyptians only had sex in the summer: Researchers find key time for conception was in July and August to coincide with the Nile flooding

Ancient Egyptians primarily had sex in the summer, new research reveals.
The most popular time for love-making was July and August meaning that 20 per cent more babies were born in March and April than in other months.

As a consequence, most deaths among women of childbearing age also occurred in these months.

A Roman mosaic depicting the flooding of the Nile from the 1st century BC. Researchers say beliefs about the impact of Nile floods on fertility may explain birth patterns in the region

Archaeologists working at a cemetery in the Dakhleh Oasis in Egypt excavated 765 graves and were able to establish the month of each person’s death because the graves were all pointed towards the rising sun.

Live Science reported that they uncovered the graves of 124 babies that had died 18 to 45 weeks after conception – putting these two pieces of information together enabled the researchers to piece together the most popular time for love-making.
The findings are particularly surprising because in other ancient Mediterranean cultures fewer babies are thought to have been conceived during the hot summer months because the heat lowered libido and possibly affected sperm count.

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It is thought that in ancient Egypt beliefs about fertility and the Nile flood may have been responsible for the baby booms.

The residents of the Dakhleh Oasis believed that the river was the key to their land’s fertility and the floods occurred during the summer months meaning that there were widespread celebrations.

The researchers believe that the peak in spring births continued until the 1920s or 30s.

The medina district in the settlement of Al-Qasr in the Dakhla Oasis of western Egypt, where the researchers studied the skeletons of children to find the time of the year they were born

In contrast, conception rates fell to annual lows in January and this is believed to have been because Christian believes required abstinence during Advent and Lent.
Additionally, it is thought that early Egyptian Christians were encouraged to avoid sex on Saturdays, Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Finally, it is believed that some form of contraception must have been in use and it is thought that recipes including crocodile dung were so unpleasant that they put people off intercourse altogether.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2326247/Why-Egyptians-sex-summer-Researchers-key-time-conception-July-August-coincide-Nile-flooding.html#ixzz2TaNOEIOf
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Your doctor's diet is a death wish

Fruits and vegetables, rich in vitamins, potassium and fiber, represent an important feature of hunter-gatherer diets. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Recently while driving through the wilds of South Dakota, I stopped at a rest stop and found a newsletter called “Add 15 Years.com,” with topics such as “Obesity-Diabetes Fix Known Since 1890,” “Factory Raised Meat = Health Disaster” and “Too Late, Fructose Overwhelmed Diabetics” (actually, it read “Frutose Overwhelmced Diabetics,” so I knew it was a homemade product without the benefit of an editor).

I bought the journal for a dollar and read it aloud to my friend. As far as I can tell, the author, Harlan Jacobsen, is not a doctor, a dietician or any other of the titled “knowledgeable” people in medicine. He is a patient who developed diabetes and took it upon himself to read everything he could find on the subject. And he found what some of us in medicine have lately discovered – classic medicine and the dieticians have got it wrong.

After reading the works of Weston A. Price and many others outside the purview of “groupthink” medicine, Jacobsen changed his diet to one of high-fat natural foods, and his diabetes has disappeared. He eats essentially a Paleolithic diet: Grass-fed meat with its fat, nuts and berries, a few vegetables and little of the new, high-sugar hybridized fruits, and he supplements with fish oil and Vitamin D. He is 81, and not on prescription meds.

A few of his quotes are great: “Check your acquaintances. Bet every fat friend eats nothing but low fat, (high sugar) …”

“Your body was made to run on fat.”

“You have bought into the ‘big lie.’”

“Most of my high school buddies are at least 50 pounds overweight. Many have had either a hip or knee replacement [or] bypass surgery.”

“Personally, I feel lonely as the only one not on any prescription drugs.”

“Eliminate sugar, flour, eat all the animal fat, olive oil, coconut oil and protein you want:

more

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Good gut bacteria could provide new treatment for obesity and diabetes

Scientists have discovered a type of gut bacteria that could protect against obesity and help treat type 2 diabetes.
The breakthrough suggests foods that stimulate the production of the bacteria in the digestive system could help burn off pounds quicker than by eating less or exercising more.

A study found that the levels of gut bacteria Akkermansia muciniphila were compromised in obese and type-2 diabetic mice. 

Scientists discovered that probiotics - fibres found in foods such as bananas - helped maintain gut bacteria that boost a person's metabolism

But feeding them oligofructose prebiotics - a dietary supplement to promote the growth of beneficial bacteria - boosted the bacteria back to normal levels.
This in turn led to a faster metabolism which helped the lab rodents shed weight. They also suffered less inflammation and lowered their insulin resistance, a symptom of type 2 diabetes.

The amount of chemicals called endocannabinoids that control glucose also rose, according to the findings published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2323945/Good-gut-bacteria-provide-new-treatment-obesity-diabetes.html#ixzz2TCwNsn5W
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

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Science: Sunlight Could Reduce Death Rate From All Causes

Heather Callaghan
Activist Post

Here's something I never thought we'd hear in this lifetime:

We suspect that the benefits to heart health of sunlight will outweigh the risk of skin cancer.

A lot of us are secretly, boldly basking for reasons like vitamin D, mood enhancement, happiness, skin issues, liver health, pain and more. Now there's never a reason to fear harm or feel guilty - you could save your heart - and prevent an untimely death!

The espoused fear for about 50 years has been skin cancer rates (which continue to rise), but researchers are finally surmising that years of hiding from the sun could lead to increased heart attacks - a much sooner demise than the risk of skin cancer in later years. Sunlight does so much more than vitamin D production.

A recent landmark study could turn the modern thought on sun exposure right on its head...

Read more »

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Drinking Coffee Kills Pain, Lifts Mood and Sharpens the Mind

Sayer Ji
Activist Post

New clinical research confirms why office work and coffee go so closely hand in hand. The new study published in the journal BMC Research Notes found that drinking coffee reduces the development of pain during computer work. [i]

Study participants who had consumed coffee (1/2-1 cup) on average 1 hour and 18 minutes before performing a simulated computer office-work task found to provoke pain in the neck, shoulders, forearms and wrists, were found to have "attenuated pain development compared with the subjects who had abstained from coffee intake."

While the researchers attributed the observed effect to the caffeine content in coffee, we believe there is more going on here...

Read more »

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Death by Prescription Drugs Is A Growing Problem

Death by medicine is a twenty-first century epidemic, and America’s war on drugs is clearly directed at the wrong enemy. – Dr. Joseph Mercola [2]

Shelley White
Activist Post

I have briefly focused on mushrooms and cannabis as medicine sources. Now, it is only fair to shine the spotlight on the other side of the medicinal spectrum: prescription drugs. One could go through and list the pros and cons of each individual prescription drug or, to save some time, one could first approach prescription drugs as a whole. Doing so exposes an alarming truth, ringing louder than the individual benefits of each drug. Prescription drugs are currently responsible for more deaths annually than illegal drugs.

 According to Tom Frieden, the CDC director himself, “it’s a big problem, and it’s getting worse [3].”

Out of the 783,936 annual deaths from conventional medicine mistakes, approximately 106,000 of those are the result of prescription drug use [1]. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, two-hundred and ninety people in the United States are killed by prescription drugs every day [4].

Even if prescription drugs do not literally kill a patient, though, they slowly kill their mind and body. This alters their ability to innately feel deeply and compassionately, the patient can be stripped piece by piece of their inner awareness and inner consciousness, the very essence of their being.

Read more »

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How To Clean Your Arteries With One Simple Fruit

Sayer Ji
Activist Post

The future of cardiovascular disease prevention and treatment will not be found in your medicine cabinet, rather in your kitchen cupboard or in your back yard growing on a tree.

Pomegranate Found To Prevent Coronary Artery Disease Progression

A new study published in the journal Atherosclerosis confirms that pomegranate extract may prevent and/or reverse the primary pathology associated with cardiac mortality: the progressive thickening of the coronary arteries caused by the accumulation of fatty materials known as atherosclerosis.[i]

Mice with a genetic susceptibility towards spontaneous coronary artery blockages were given pomegranate extract via their drinking water for two weeks, beginning at three weeks of age. Despite the fact that pomegranate treatment actually increased cholesterol levels associated with very low density lipoprotein-sized particles, the treatment both reduced the size of the atherosclerotic plaques in the aortic sinus (the dilated opening above the aortic valve) and reduced the proportion of coronary arteries with occlusive atherosclerotic plaques.

Remarkably, the researchers also found that pomegranate extract treatment resulted in the following beneficial effects:

Read more »

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The Evidence Against Aspirin And For Natural Alternatives

Sayer Ji
Activist Post

As far back as the 5th century BC the Greek physician Hippocrates wrote about the use of a bitter powder extracted from willow bark that reduced fevers and eased aches and pains. Native Americans also used an infusion of willow bark for similar purposes. What was this remarkable "healing" principle within the bark that relieved disease?

Known as salicylic acid (from the Latin salix, willow tree), this pain-killing compound is widely distributed throughout plants, where it functions as a hormone. The more vegetables and fruits you consume, the more likely you are to have a physiologically significant concentration of salicylic acid in your blood. This is why, for instance, vegans and vegetarians generally have higher levels than most grain- and meat-based consumers. [1]

The chemical acetyl-salicylic acid, commonly known as aspirin, is a synthetic form of salicylic acid, a compound which is formed when salicin, a bitter compound naturally found within plants like white willow bark, is broken down within the human body. Salicylic acid can also be synthesized endogenously from benzoic acid, and its urinary metabolite, salicyluric acid, has been found to overlap levels in patients on low-dose aspirin regimens. Cell research indicates that salicylic acid compounds (known as salicyclates) actually compare surprisingly well to aspirin in reducing inflammatory activity.[2]

Read more »