(NaturalNews Article by Mike Adams, The Health Ranger)

A University of Wisconsin (UW) study has found that patients who receive computed tomography (CT) scans for various abdominal and pelvic conditions often receive a slew of additional scans that are unnecessary and that expose them to excess radiation. The findings were presented at the meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

A typical CT scan involves taking images of the patient using an intravenous injection of an imaging chemical in order to contrast the image. Occasionally it is helpful to take more than one image, but many times doctors will order multiple images unnecessarily.

In many cases, doctors are not being careful to assess the doses of radiation they are administering to patients. Though they are supposed to take certain measures to accurately ensure that the radiation dosages are as minimal as possible while still achieving successful scans, Kristie Guite, M.D., of UW emphasized that many doctors do not follow this principle.

Study coauthor J. Louis Hinshaw, M.D., backed up this point by explaining that CT protocols are meant to be custom-tailored to a patient’s specific condition. In a great majority of cases, a one-size-fits-all approach is taken that puts the patient at increased risk.

Dr. Hinshaw suggests that patients who are prescribed CT scans should ask their doctors about the risks involved. They should also find out from the CT facility how many image exposures will need to be taken and if a lesser amount would suffice for their particular conditions.

Comments by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
These last few weeks have been huge for revelations about the dangers of medical imaging tests. It’s not just CT scans, either: Mammograms are also under fire for exposing women to excess radiation and actually causing cancer.

Western medicine is strangely preoccupied with the desire to visually map physical tissues in the body as part of a diagnostic process. Why is this so strange? Because most modern illnesses have nothing to do with the physical structure of tissues. Instead, they are expressions of the function of the body’s tissues and organs.

Some systems of medicine focus more on the functional relationship between organs than the physical, compartmentalized appearance of those organs, and they have far more success in helping patients without harming them. For example, I know a Chinese Medicine doctor who can tell you more about your heart, liver and kidneys by simply feeling your pulse than a whole hospital full of CT scans and MRI machines. Imaging your body is rarely necessary unless you’ve suffered some sort of acute physical trauma such as being struck by a flying pitchfork or hit upside the head with a heavy stack of health insurance forms. For most health conditions that exist today, medical imaging tests are not merely unnecessary, they are dangerous!

Medical imaging radiation isn’t good for you. Just one CT scan exposes you to as much radiation as 100 chest X-rays. Shockingly, many doctors don’t know this! And they fail to take medical imaging radiation into account when prescribing these procedures for patients.

The next time a doctor wants to subject you to medical imaging tests, ask WHY you need the test and WHAT the test might reveal that could be helpful to your physician. You might also ask if there’s a safer alternative that could provide the same diagnostic information without the radiation shower.

And if you don’t believe me, just ask yourself this: How come every time you get a chest X-ray, a mammogram or a CT scan, the doctor flees the immediate area and only returns after the imaging is done? The reason, of course, is because they’re not stupid enough to hang out in the radiation zone and be exposed to the very same radiation they’ve ordered for you.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-11/rson-ucs112409.php

Original Natural News Post

More Thoughts from Mellisa McJunkin – Health and Wellness Advocate

Question: What are you without an immune system?

Answer: You are dead.

Morbid as it sounds, it true. When your immune sytem is weak, you get sick and you acquire disease. Ultimately, when your immune system completely fails, you die.

If I could show you how you can not ONLY strengthen, boost and fortify, but ALSO educate your Immune System right now with the ONE and ONLY patent protected product on the market proven effective in 100% of subjects tested to raise the level of IaG Antibodies by an average of 73% and proven to raise Natural Killer Cell activity by up to 437%, would you be interested in knowing more? Well then, what are you waiting for? More sickness and disease to take over? Good Health is not expensive, it’s priceless.

Get Healthy and Wise today with Extreme Health 4Life

• The 5 Most Common Diet Myths When it comes to dieting over the past 100 years, there have been so many new techniques and advice books that they could literally fill a library all on their own. With these new techniques have come a lot of myths that have been ingrained in our consciousness. We may......
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• Keeping the Right Perspective During Your Diet Dieting is not for the faint hearted, and it is not easy. If you fail to keep the right perspective during your diet, it is all too easy to give into cravings, to fall off the wagon and simply give up. Before you even think about going on a diet,......

(NaturalNews by Ethan Huff)

A recent study published in the November 2009 issue of Archives of Neurology revealed that the greater muscle strength a person has, the more likely he or she is to maintain proper cognitive function over time. The study examined 970 men and women and found that those individuals who ranked in the top ten percent for muscle strength were 61 percent less likely to develop progressive cognitive degeneration when compared to those in the bottom ten percent.

Dr. Patricia Boyle, the author of the study, and her research colleagues from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago examined men and women between the ages of 54 and 100, testing their strength in nine different muscle categories. The study patients were followed for a period of four years in which their cognitive capabilities were examined along the way. The stronger patients were found to have maintained the best brain function.

The research team performed a similar study back in June that investigated the link between motor decline and participation in social activities. The report revealed a significant increase in cognitive degeneration among those who participated the least in social activities.

According to Aron S. Buchman, MD, from the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center and department of neurological sciences at Rush University Medical Center, each point of decrease on the social activity scale used in the study was the equivalent of a person being five years older at the study’s baseline. In other words, increased social activity plays an enormous role in prolonging functional motor skills and vice versa.

Among all the studies performed on the subject, researchers have clearly found that physical exercise, cognitive activity, and social participation all contribute to healthy brain function. Rather than rely on medication, Dr. Buchman recommends a multidisciplinary approach to help aging people retain strong mental health.

Improved brain function can also be achieved by ensuring the body receives the necessary nutrients for such a task. Alpha lipoic acid (ALA), sometimes referred to as the “universal antioxidant”, is a necessary compound that converts energy from food and mitochondria for use throughout the body. Acetyl L-carnitine (ALC) works to transport fat through cell membranes into cell mitochondria where it produces cellular energy through oxidation. Together, these nutrients work wonders to promote a strong memory and a vibrant nervous system.

Phosphatidylserine (PS) is another valuable nutrient that fortifies and protects the integrity of cell membranes by defending them against age-associated degeneration. It has been proven in published research to improve cognitive neural function and memory.

Sources:

Association of Muscle Strength With the Risk of Alzheimer Disease and the Rate of Cognitive Decline in Community-Dwelling Older Persons – Archives of Neurology

Declining Muscle Strength Linked to Alzheimer’s Disease = Medscape Today

Social Activity in Late Life Associated with Better Motor Function – Medscape Today

About the author
Ethan Huff is a freelance writer and health enthusiast who loves exploring the vast world of natural foods and health, digging deep to get to the truth. He runs an online health publication of his own at http://wholesomeherald.blogspot.com.

From Natural News Original post

More Thoughts From Mellisa McJunkin – Health and Wellness Advocate

Question: What are you without an immune system? 
Answer: You are dead.

I know it sounds a bit morbid, but it is true. When your immune system is weak you get sick and diseased. When your immune system completely fails you die.

If I could show you how you can NOT ONLY strengthen, fortify, boost but ALSO educate your Immune System right now with the ONE and ONLY patent protected product on the market,  proven to boost Natural Killer Cell activity by up to 437% and proven effective in 100% of subjects tested in raising the level of IaG Antibodies by an average of 73% and proven to raise your Natural Killer Cell Activity by up to 437% wouldn’t you be interested in knowing more?

Well then, what are you waiting for? More sickness and disease to take over? Good Health is not expensive, it’s priceless. Wouldn’t you say?

Get Healthy and Wise today with Extreme Health 4Life

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Compliments of Mercola.com

Noted British psychiatric researcher Malcolm Peet conducted a provocative cross-cultural analysis of the relationship between diet and mental illness. His primary finding was a strong link between high sugar consumption and the risk of both depression and schizophrenia.

There are at least two potential mechanisms through which refined sugar intake could exert a toxic effect on mental health. First, sugar actually suppresses activity of a key growth hormone in the brain called BDNF. BDNF levels are critically low in both depression and schizophrenia.

Second, sugar consumption triggers a cascade of chemical reactions in your body that promote chronic inflammation. In the long term, inflammation disrupts the normal functioning of your immune system, and wreaks havoc on your brain. Once again, it’s linked to a greater risk of depression and schizophrenia.

See Dr. Mercola’s Original post

More Thoughts from Mellisa McJunkin – Health and Wellness Advocate

Question: What are you without an immune system?

Answer: You are dead.

Morbid as it sounds, it true. When your immune sytem is weak, you get sick and you acquire disease. Ultimately, when your immune system fails, you die.

If I could show you how you can not ONLY strengthen, boost and fortify, but ALSO educate your Immune System right now with the ONE and ONLY patent protected product on the market proven effective in 100% of subjects tested to raise the level of IaG Antibodies by an average of 73% and proven to raise Natural Killer Cell activity by up to 437%, would you be interested in knowing more? Well then, what are you waiting for? More sickness and disease to take over? Good Health is not expensive, it’s priceless.

Get Healthy and Wise today with Extreme Health 4Life

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by: S. L. Baker, Features Writer – NaturalNews.com
Ever since the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force took a look, finally, at the scientific evidence and announced new recommendations earlier this month for routine mammograms — specifically that women under 50 should avoid them and women over 50 should only get them every other year — the reactions from many women, doctors and the mainstream media have reached the point of near hysteria (http://www.naturalnews.com/027558_mammograms_cancer_industry.html). Not getting annual mammograms, some say, means countless women will receive a virtual death sentence because their breast tumors won’t be discovered. But what is rarely discussed about mammograms is this: the tests could actually be causing many cases of breast cancer.

In fact, a new study just presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), concludes the low-dose radiation from annual mammography screening significantly increases breast cancer risk in women with a genetic or familial predisposition to breast cancer. This is particularly worrisome because women who are at high risk for breast cancer are regularly pushed to start mammograms at a younger age — as early as 25 — and that means they are exposed to more radiation from mammography earlier and for more years than women who don’t have breast cancer in their family trees.

“For women at high risk for breast cancer, screening is very important, but a careful approach should be taken when considering mammography for screening young women, particularly under age 30,” Marijke C. Jansen-van der Weide, Ph.D., an epidemiologist in the Department of Epidemiology and Radiology at University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands, said in a statement to the media. “Further, repeated exposure to low-dose radiation should be avoided.”

Dr. Jansen-van der Weide and colleagues analyzed peer-reviewed, published medical research to investigate whether low-dose radiation exposure affects breast cancer risk among high-risk women. Out of the six studies included in this analysis, four looked at the effect of exposure to low-dose radiation among breast cancer gene mutation carriers. The other two studies traced the impact of radiation on women with a family history of breast cancer. The researchers took the combined data from all these research projects and then calculated odds ratios to estimate the risk of breast cancer caused by radiation.

The results? All the high-risk women in the study who were exposed to low-dose mammography type radiation had an increased risk of breast cancer that was 1.5 times greater than that of high-risk women who had not been exposed to low-dose radiation. What’s more, women at high risk for breast cancer who had been exposed to low-dose radiation before the age of 20 or who had five or more exposures to low-dose radiation were 2.5 times more likely to develop breast cancer than high-risk women not exposed to low-dose radiation.
Bottom line: any supposed benefit of early tumor detection using mammograms in young women with familial or genetic predisposition to breast cancer is offset by the potential risk of radiation-induced cancer. “Our findings suggest that low-dose radiation increases breast cancer risk among these young high-risk women, and a careful approach is warranted,” Dr. Jansen-van der Weide said in the press statement.

The mammogram scam exposed
Incredibly, although it is rarely reported in the mainstream media, the new study follows on the heels of several others that have already sounded the warning that mammograms may cause breast cancer. For example, NaturalNews covered a Johns Hopkins study published earlier this year in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (http://www.naturalnews.com/025560_cancer_brst_cancer_mammograms.html) that warned radiation exposure from annual mammograms could trigger breast malignancies in women with a strong family history of breast and/or ovarian cancers who have altered genes (identified as BRCA1 or BRCA2).
And it may not be only women with a familial risk for breast cancer who are at extra risk from mammography radiation. As NaturalNews covered last year, a report published in the American Medical Association’s Archives of Internal Medicine found breast cancer rates increased significantly in four Norwegian counties after women there began getting mammograms every two years. In fact, the start of screening mammography programs throughout Europe has been linked to an increased incidence of breast cancer (http://www.naturalnews.com/024901.html).

Comments by the Health Ranger, Editor of NaturalNews.com
Mammogram pushers now have nothing left to stand on. The complete and utter hoax of mammography has now been wholly discredited through a flurry of groundbreaking studies performed by conventional medicine researchers! Yes, even the industry’s own former advocates now admit mammography harms far more women than it helps.

Why? Because mammography causes the very disease it claims to “detect”. It’s much like a clever sleight-of-hand magician’s trick where they reach for your ear and suddenly produce a coin that was presumably hidden there. But as everybody knows, they put it there themselves! Mammograms offer a similar kind of sleight-of-hand trick (or sleight-of-breast, as the case may be) by actually generating the very disease they claim to find. If so many women hadn’t already been harmed by mammography, the whole thing would be quite hysterical.

“Early detection saves lives,” they say. Except they stupidly forget to tell women the other side of the story: “Mammograms cause cancer.” And if you’re gullible enough to actually irradiate your breasts every year, don’t be surprised — shocked! — if they someday find tumors in them.

For more information:
http://www.naturalnews.com/mammography.html

Original post from Natural News

Notes from Mellisa McJunkin- Health and Wellness Advocate

Question: What are you without an immune system?
Answer: You are dead.

I know it sounds a bit morbid, but it is true. When your immune system is weak, sickness and disease can set in. When your immune system completely fails, you die.

If I could show you how you can not ONLY strengthen, fortify, and boost but ALSO educate your Immune System now with the ONLY patent protected product on the market proven effective in 100% of subjects tested to raise the level of IaG Antibodies by an average of 73% and proven to raise Natural Killer Cell Activity by up to 437%, wouldn’t you be interested in knowing more. Of course you would.

So, what are you waiting for? More sickness and disease to take over? Good Health is not expensive, it’s priceless.

Get Healthy and Wise today with Extreme Health 4Life

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On a recent episode of “The Dr Oz Show”, Shaun T, the creator of Hip Hop Abs shows America’s favorite Heart Surgeon turned talk show host his secret to rock hard abs, and it doesn’t require a single crunch. Woop Woop!
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