In the first evidence of a natural intervention triggering stem cell-based regeneration of an organ or system, a study in the June 5 issue of the Cell Stem Cell shows that cycles of prolonged fasting not only protect against immune system damage — a major side effect of chemotherapy — but also induce immune system regeneration, shifting stem cells from a dormant state to a state of self-renewal.

University of Southern California News

Interesting article over at BBC News. The interesting takeaway from it all is this list comparing children of fathers 24 years old with those 20 years older:

• autism was more than three times as likely


• a 13-fold increased risk of ADHD


• double the risk of a psychotic disorder


• 25 times more likely to have bipolar disorder


• 2.5 times more likely to have suicidal behaviour or problems with drugs


• lower scores at school

Now that is quite an impact.

Article.

In Pakistan, adding Iodine can get you killed though as there has been common stories about how the west is trying to sterilise them to stop future generations...

When you go Pakisan, you will see a lot of people with inflamed necks/throats. This is also due to iodine defficiency and it can be cured for around 5 years from first inflammation. After that it can become permanent.

To be fair to Pakistanis, the CIA did use the polio vaccine program as a major front in their hunt for Bin Laden. When people lise trust with medical programs, this causes problems, like the recent rise in Measles in the UK following the MMR vaccination scare a decade or so ago.

Leprosy has officially been eliminated in India, yet 130,000 new cases are diagnosed every year. Richard Cookson and Seyi Rhodes report on the plight of the patients shunned by society

Narsappa was just 10 years old when he was told he had leprosy, but the news changed the course of his life forever. People in his Indian village immediately began to shun him and told his parents that he had to leave. He says his mother started grieving for him "as if I was already dead". Shortly afterwards, his father took him to a hospital two hours away from home and left him there. No one ever came to visit him and Narsappa never went home again.

Now 42, he now lives in a leprosy colony on the outskirts of Hyderabad and campaigns on behalf of people affected by the disease. "I lie awake at night thinking about how I was treated and how I can stop others from going through the same thing," he says.

Read more @ The Guardian

Depression's Evolutionary Roots

Depression seems to pose an evolutionary paradox. Research in the US and other countries estimates that between 30 to 50 percent of people have met current psychiatric diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder sometime in their lives. But the brain plays crucial roles in promoting survival and reproduction, so the pressures of evolution should have left our brains resistant to such high rates of malfunction. Mental disorders should generally be rare — why isn’t depression?

...

This analytical style of thought, of course, can be very productive. Each component is not as difficult, so the problem becomes more tractable. Indeed, when you are faced with a difficult problem, such as a math problem, feeling depressed is often a useful response that may help you analyze and solve it. For instance, in some of our research, we have found evidence that people who get more depressed while they are working on complex problems in an intelligence test tend to score higher on the test...

Read more @ Scientific American

Smoking a shisha pipe is as bad for people as smoking tobacco, the Department of Health and the Centre for Tobacco Control Research has found.

People who smoke shisha, or herbal tobacco, can suffer from high carbon monoxide levels, its research revealed.

It found one session of smoking shisha resulted in carbon monoxide levels at least four to five times higher than the amount produced by a cigarette.

High levels of carbon monoxide can lead to brain damage and unconsciousness.

Shisha is an Arabic water-pipe in which fruit-scented tobacco is burnt using coal, passed through an ornate water vessel and inhaled through a hose.

Read more @ BBC News

Eating fatty food appears to take an almost immediate toll on both short-term memory and exercise performance, according to new research on rats and people.

Other studies have suggested that that long-term consumption of a high-fat diet is associated with weight gain, heart disease and declines in cognitive function. But the new research shows how indulging in fatty foods over the course of a few days can affect the brain and body long before the extra pounds show up.

Read more @ New York Times blog