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One of the most contentious issues in the vast literature about alcohol consumption has been the consistent finding that those who don’t drink actually tend to die sooner than those who do. The standard Alcoholics Anonymous explanation for this finding is that many of those who show up as abstainers in such research are actually former hard-core drunks who had already incurred health problems associated with drinking.

But a new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that — for reasons that aren’t entirely clear — abstaining from alcohol does actually tend to increase one’s risk of dying even when you exclude former drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers’ mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers.(See pictures of booze under a microscope.)

Moderate drinking, which is defined as one to three drinks per day, is associated with the lowest mortality rates in alcohol studies. Moderate alcohol use (especially when the beverage of choice is red wine) is thought to improve heart health, circulation and sociability, which can be important because people who are isolated don’t have as many family members and friends who can notice and help treat health problems.

But why would abstaining from alcohol lead to a shorter life? It’s true that those who abstain from alcohol tend to be from lower socioeconomic classes, since drinking can be expensive. And people of lower socioeconomic status have more life stressors — job and child-care worries that might not only keep them from the bottle but also cause stress-related illnesses over long periods. (They also don’t get the stress-reducing benefits of a drink or two after work.)

But even after controlling for nearly all imaginable variables — socioeconomic status, level of physical activity, number of close friends, quality of social support and so on — the researchers (a six-member team led by psychologist Charles Holahan of the University of Texas at Austin) found that over a 20-year period, mortality rates were highest for those who had never been drinkers, second-highest for heavy drinkers and lowest for moderate drinkers.(Watch TIME’s Video “Taste Test: Beer With Extra Buzz.”)

The sample of those who were studied included individuals between ages 55 and 65 who had had any kind of outpatient care in the previous three years. The 1,824 participants were followed for 20 years. One drawback of the sample: a disproportionate number, 63%, were men. Just over 69% of the never-drinkers died during the 20 years, 60% of the heavy drinkers died and only 41% of moderate drinkers died.

These are remarkable statistics. Even though heavy drinking is associated with higher risk for cirrhosis and several types of cancer (particularly cancers in the mouth and esophagus), heavy drinkers are less likely to die than people who have never drunk. One important reason is that alcohol lubricates so many social interactions, and social interactions are vital for maintaining mental and physical health. As I pointed out last year, nondrinkers show greater signs of depression than those who allow themselves to join the party.

The authors of the new paper are careful to note that even if drinking is associated with longer life, it can be dangerous: it can impair your memory severely and it can lead to nonlethal falls and other mishaps (like, say, cheating on your spouse in a drunken haze) that can screw up your life. There’s also the dependency issue: if you become addicted to alcohol, you may spend a long time trying to get off the bottle.(Comment on this story.)

That said, the new study provides the strongest evidence yet that moderate drinking is not only fun but good for you. So make mine a double.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2014332,00.html?hpt=C2#ixzz0y92gkUWf

A new study found that mobile phones contain 18 times the amount of bacteria as a toilet handle, the Telegraph reports:

Swabs and analysis of 30 mobile handsets found that seven had high or warning levels of environmental bacteria. One contained such an intense concentration of bacteria, including faecal coliforms, that anyone using it could have faced a serious stomach upset.

According to hygiene expert Jim Francis “The levels of potentially harmful bacteria on one mobile were off the scale. That phone needs sterilizing.” The tests showed how easily bacteria could linger on the surface of a phone, which could be passed on to other people if they held the handset to look at photos or other applications.

You got an app for that?

They make a good point about the hormones in milk making these girls body develop much earlier in life which leads them to be sexually active and sought out by older men. I myself have seen girls 14 who have bodies like grown women, so I agree with the doctor on that point strongly. It is not just milk either alot of our foods are pumped with hormones.

Dr. Ivor Horn says that higher hormone levels  often found in obese girls  make them  develop breasts and menstruate as early as 7 or 8 years old.

My thoughts: Be more cautious about what you put in your body. Just because you’ve been eating something for years and feel great doesn’t mean it won’t have a long term effect on you. Your body is rotting from the inside out when you eat and drink more than 80% of the products out there. You can’t see what’s happening to you so you assume everything is ok, but it’s not.

by Lori Deschene

“Don’t wait for people to be friendly. Show them how.” ~Unknown

When I was a teenager—right around the time I knew everything—my mother used to tell me I only remembered the bad things.

When I told stories about my family, they didn’t revolve around family beach trips, barbecues, and vacations; the focused on my parents’ fights and all the ways they “ruined my life.”

The same applied to friends and milestones in my life. I chronically remembered and rehashed the worst experiences.

In fact, straight through college I followed up every introductory handshake with a dramatic retelling of my life story, focusing on a laundry list of grievances about people who had done me wrong.

It was as if I was competing for most royally screwed over in life, like there was some kind of prize for being the most tragic and victimized. (Full disclosure: I hoped that prize was compassion cum unconditional love. It was more like discomfort and avoidance).

Not everyone is as negative or needy as woe-is-me-younger Lori was, but I’ve noticed that many of us have something in common with my misguided past self: we focus on how we’ve been hurt far more than how we’ve been helped.

Psychologists suggest that to some degree we complain because we’re looking to connect with people who can relate to the universal struggles we all face (though in some cases, complaining is a constructive way to find solutions to problems as opposed to a chronic need to vent negativity). I think there’s more to it, though.

When we complain about everything that’s gone wrong, or everyone who has done us wrong, we’re drowning in our self-involvement.

It’s an epidemic in an individualistic culture where self-reliance, autonomy and the pursuit of personal gain can leave us feeling isolated and pressured to succeed. This may not be true for everyone, but I know when I get caught up complaining, nine out of ten times what I need to do is stop obsessing about the circumstances of my life.

It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve learned we don’t need to live life in a constant state of reaction to things that seem difficult or unfair. We don’t have to be the victims of bad coming at us. Our lives don’t have to be the sum of our problems—not if we take responsibility for putting good into the world.

That starts by fostering a greater appreciation for our interdependence. We are not alone. The world is not against us, and we don’t have to be against each other. We don’t have to let our fears, insecurities and wants boil over inside us until we’re all a bunch of incompatible toxic chemicals waiting to explode the second we collide.

You can always find a negative story to tell—some situation when another person was insensitive, selfish, uncaring, unfair, or just plain wrong. You can also find an underlying struggle that doesn’t justify but might explain their behavior.

If you absolutely can’t channel that compassion and patience, you can always find at least one good thing someone did in your day.

When that stranger held the elevator open, when your coworker let you take the lead in your meeting, when your mother called just to say she loves you; they’re all reminders people are looking out for you—maybe not all of them, and maybe not all the time, but probably more than you notice.

An even better way to honor our interconnection: be someone else’s positive story. Be the kindness that reminds someone else the world is not against them. Give them an anchor of positivity to find later if their circumstances seem overwhelming.

If you’ve ever ended a stressful day with a long hug—the type that’s so needed and loving it’s near impossible not to relax and receive—you know the power of a simple gesture.

Need some ideas for simple kindnesses? I recommend checking out the Tiny Buddha Facebook page, where I recently asked friends, “What’s the kindest thing you can do for someone else?”

Some of my favorite suggestions (out of 158) include:

1. Try to accept people with an open mind and refrain from making judgments, which are often wrong anyway. (Brandon Hartford)
2. Let them know how much you appreciate them. (Florence Leedy)
3. Any deed done for someone else is a kind one when you don’t expect something in return. (Courtney Olsen)
4. Do little things like hold doors open or let folk go in or out first. Little things can make a big difference for someone who’s not having a great day. (Elke Wallace)
5. Accept them for who they are and who they strive to be. (Dylan Clauson)
6. Let them know they’ve made you smile. (Monika Sylvestre)
7. Be with them when they need you. For the rest of the time, let them be free. (Rohin Khanna)
8. Tell them the truth. (Krista Hale)
9. Tell them why they make a difference in your life that no one else could possibly make—why their particular brand of “special” makes the world a better place for everyone they meet in it. (Jennifer Hudson Green)
10. Help them help themselves and be independent. (Frantz Art Glass)
11. Believe in them and give them hope. (Melessia Todd)
12. Give a simple well meaning smile. (Jennie McCluskey)
13. The kindest thing you can do for someone else is to take good care of your own mind, body and soul. This enables kindness in all things. (Shyloh Robinson)
14. Spend time listening with the intent of learning. I joined an art guild that is mostly made up of elderly artists who have the most amazing life stories and the best tips and trick for creating artwork. I feel like I get so much more in return for doing nothing more than enjoying their company! (Suzi Ra)
15. The best thing my parents ever taught me—the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you! (Tracy Bruce Laughlin)
16. Be there for them when they fall and not say I told you so. (Ana Stuckart)
17. Give them the space to be. (Natassia Callista Alicia)
18. Lend your shoulder to cry on. (Bryan Tankersley)
19. Thank them for being themselves. (Jen Ghrist)
20. Take a moment to send someone a note thanking them for something they have done for you in the past. For example, a good teacher or a good manager, or someone who was a mentor or role model. (Dave Hughes)
21. Treat each person with respect for his or her individuality. (Shirley Wright)
22. Offer encouragement after a failure. Acceptance of even the weirdest things they possess. A tap for a job well done. A “thank you” to every simple yet life-changing encounter. (Ako Ang Uso)
23. Forgive. (Ivan Kl)
24. Pay attention to them. From the clerk at the store to your kids at home, most people just want to be heard and acknowledged. Understanding comes later, but everyone can pay attention now. (Angela Birt)
25. Listen to someone without trying to fix their problem. (Jane Lynahan Karklin)

via: TinyBuddha

via: Huffington Post
Now here’s something you wouldn’t expect. Coca-Cola is being sued by a non-profit public interest group, on the grounds that the company’s vitaminwater products make unwarranted health claims. No surprise there. But how do you think the company is defending itself?

In a staggering feat of twisted logic, lawyers for Coca-Cola are defending the lawsuit by asserting that “no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitaminwater was a healthy beverage.”

Does this mean that you’d have to be an unreasonable person to think that a product named “vitaminwater,” a product that has been heavily and aggressively marketed as a healthy beverage, actually had health benefits?

Or does it mean that it’s okay for a corporation to lie about its products, as long as they can then turn around and claim that no one actually believes their lies?

In fact, the product is basically sugar-water, to which about a penny’s worth of synthetic vitamins have been added. And the amount of sugar is not trivial. A bottle of vitaminwater contains 33 grams of sugar, making it more akin to a soft drink than to a healthy beverage.

Is any harm being done by this marketing ploy? After all, some might say consumers are at least getting some vitamins, and there isn’t as much sugar in vitaminwater as there is in regular Coke.

True. But about 35 percent of Americans are now considered medically obese. Two-thirds of Americans are overweight. Health experts tend to disagree about almost everything, but they all concur that added sugars play a key role in the obesity epidemic, a problem that now leads to more medical costs than smoking.

How many people with weight problems have consumed products like vitaminwater in the mistaken belief that the product was nutritionally positive and carried no caloric consequences? How many have thought that consuming vitaminwater was a smart choice from a weight-loss perspective? The very name “vitaminwater” suggests that the product is simply water with added nutrients, disguising the fact that it’s actually full of added sugar.

The truth is that when it comes to weight loss, what you drink may be even more important than what you eat. Americans now get nearly 25 percent of their calories from liquids. In 2009, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health published a report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, finding that the quickest and most reliable way to lose weight is to cut down on liquid calorie consumption. And the best way to do that is to reduce or eliminate beverages that contain added sugar.

Meanwhile, Coca-Cola has invested billions of dollars in its vitaminwater line, paying basketball stars, including Kobe Bryant and Lebron James, to appear in ads that emphatically state that these products are a healthy way for consumers to hydrate. When Lebron James held his much ballyhooed TV special to announce his decision to join the Miami Heat, many corporations paid millions in an attempt to capitalize on the event. But it was vitaminwater that had the most prominent role throughout the show.

The lawsuit, brought by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, alleges that vitaminwater labels and advertising are filled with “deceptive and unsubstantiated claims.” In his recent 55-page ruling, Federal Judge John Gleeson (U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York), wrote, “At oral arguments, defendants (Coca-Cola) suggested that no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitamin water was a healthy beverage.” Noting that the soft drink giant wasn’t claiming the lawsuit was wrong on factual grounds, the judge wrote that, “Accordingly, I must accept the factual allegations in the complaint as true.”

I still can’t get over the bizarre audacity of Coke’s legal case. Forced to defend themselves in court, they are acknowledging that vitaminwater isn’t a healthy product. But they are arguing that advertising it as such isn’t false advertising, because no could possibly believe such a ridiculous claim.

I guess that’s why they spend hundreds of millions of dollars advertising the product, saying it will keep you “healthy as a horse,” and will bring about a “healthy state of physical and mental well-being.”

Why do we allow companies like Coca-Cola to tell us that drinking a bottle of sugar water with a few added water-soluble vitamins is a legitimate way to meet our nutritional needs?

Here’s what I suggest: If you’re looking for a healthy and far less expensive way to hydrate, try drinking water. If you want to flavor the water you drink, try adding the juice of a lemon and a small amount of honey or maple syrup to a quart of water. Another alternative is to mix one part lemonade or fruit juice to three or four parts water. Or drink green tea, hot or chilled, adding lemon and a small amount of sweetener if you like. If you want to jazz it up, try one-half fruit juice, one-half carbonated water.

If your tap water tastes bad or you suspect it might contain lead or other contaminants, get a water filter that fits under the sink or attaches to the tap.

And it’s probably not the best idea to rely on a soft drink company for your vitamins and other essential nutrients. A plant-strong diet with lots of vegetables and fruits will provide you with what you need far more reliably, far more consistently — and far more honestly.
To learn about inexpensive and healthy foods and beverages, and practical steps you can take toward greater quality of life and economic freedom, read John Robbins’ critically acclaimed new book The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less. For more information about his work, or to sign up for his email list, visit johnrobbins.info

A gene-engineered fish, top, and a natural one of the same age.

The Food and Drug Administration is seriously considering whether to approve the first genetically engineered animal that people would eat — salmon that can grow at twice the normal rate.

The developer of the salmon has been trying to get approval for a decade. But the company now seems to have submitted most or all of the data the F.D.A. needs to analyze whether the salmon are safe to eat, nutritionally equivalent to other salmon and safe for the environment, according to government and biotechnology industry officials. A public meeting to discuss the salmon may be held as early as this fall.

FULL STORY HERE…