Common plastics chemical linked to human diseases

Plastic bottles leach chemicals into the drinks they contain. That's why I tell people be careful of bottled water. First of all, bottled water itself is less subject to testing and filtration than tap water. Secondly it's usually contained in a plastic bottle. Water is the universal solvent and it will cause toxic chemicals to leach from the plastic, especially if the bottle has been exposed to sunlight or heat.

This study concludes that a very common chemical called BPA leaches into bottled water. The people with the highest levels of BPA "were more than twice as likely to have heart disease and, or diabetes compared to the 25 percent of with the lowest levels."

Diabetes and heart disease are probably not the only diseases that are associated with BPA. They're just the first two which have been scientifically proven.

The best bet is a good home filtration system and a glass water bottle for the road.

And once again here is another great reason for a thorough detoxification program!

Common plastics chemical linked to human diseases

Tue Sep 16, 2008 11:52am EDT
By Michael Kahn

LONDON (Reuters) - A study has for the first time linked a common chemical used in everyday products such as plastic drink containers and baby bottles to health problems, specifically heart disease and diabetes.
Until now, environmental and consumer activists who have questioned the safety of bisphenol A, or BPA, have relied on studies showing harm from exposure in laboratory animals.

But British researchers, who published their findings on Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, analyzed urine and blood samples from 1,455 U.S. adults aged 18 to 74 who were representative of the general population.

Using government health data, they found that the 25 percent of people with the highest levels of bisphenol A in their bodies were more than twice as likely to have heart disease and, or diabetes compared to the 25 percent of with the lowest levels.

"Most of these findings are in keeping with what has been found in animal models," Iain Lang, a researcher at the University of Exeter in Britain who worked on the study, told a news conference.

"This is the first ever study (of this kind) that has been in the general population," Lang
said.

Steven Hentges of the American Chemistry Council, a chemical industry group, said the design of the study did not allow for anyone to conclude BPA causes heart disease and diabetes.

"At least from this study, we cannot draw any conclusion that bisphenol A causes any health effect. As noted by the authors, further research will be needed to understand whether these statistical associations have any relevance at all for human health," Hentges said in a telephone interview.

A U.S. Food and Drug Administration panel of outside experts on Tuesday will hear testimony on health effects from BPA as it reviews a draft report it issued last month calling BPA safe.

"The study, while preliminary with regard to these diseases in humans, should spur U.S. regulatory agencies to follow recent action taken by Canadian regulatory agencies, which have declared BPA a 'toxic chemical' requiring aggressive action to limit human and environmental exposures," Frederick vom Saal of the University of Missouri and John Peterson Myers of the nonprofit U.S.-based Environmental Health Sciences, wrote in a commentary accompanying the study.

BOTTLES TO UTENSILS

BPA is used to make polycarbonate plastic, a clear shatter-resistant material in products ranging from baby and water bottles to plastic eating utensils to sports safety equipment and medical devices.
It also is used to make durable epoxy resins used as the coating in most food and beverage cans and in dental fillings.

People can consume BPA when it leaches out of plastic into liquid such as baby formula, water or food inside a container.

In the study, the team said the chemical is present in more than 90 percent of people, suggesting there is not much that can be done to avoid the chemical of which over 2.2 million tons is produced each year.
The researchers, who will also present their findings at the U.S. FDA session on Tuesday, added it was too early to identify a mechanism through which the chemical may be doing harm.

Animal studies have suggested the chemical may disrupt hormones, especially estrogen.

The researchers also cautioned that these findings are just the first step and more work is needed to determine if the chemical actually is a direct cause of disease.

"Bisphenol A is one of the world's most widely produced and used chemicals, and one of the problems until now is we don't know what has been happening in the general population," said Tamara Galloway, a University of Exeter researcher who worked on the study.

Canada's government in April decided BPA was harmful to infants and toddlers and announced plans to ban some products.

The European Union's top food safety body said in July the amount of BPA found in baby bottles cannot harm human health.

(Reporting by Michael Kahn, Editing by Will Dunham)
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http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSLF18683220080916

Training-Induced Brain Structure Changes In The Elderly

This is amazing information! In this age of dementia, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's we have here evidence that the brain is always plastic. By inputting information into the brain the output will be the reward of better cognition and function. I don't mean to say that learning to juggle will stave off these diseases but anything that improves brain function gives you a better chance. And this goes to show that "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" simply doesn't hold water. The brain is always ready to receive new information and reward it's owner with improved function.

Chiropractic care is a great way to improve brain function and don't forget that your brain controls the rest of your body! How does it do this? In every muscle and joint there are tiny receptors (structures that receive information). When we move they are activated and fire their information into the Central Nervous System (the spine and brain). When this happens the brain is happy and lights up. The brain celebrates this input by sharing it with the rest of the body and you benefit with better function of your organs and total physiology.

Sometimes joints become locked or fixated and muscles become weak or tight. This can be due to many reasons. Chemical, physical, structural, emotional, etc. Locked up motion receptors no longer feed information into the brain and so you have both a local (at the joint) and global (throughout the body) decrease of function. Some of these changes are slow and even imperceptible for decades and sometimes the effects are more immediate. Either way its just a matter of time before a problem is perceived. Remember that by the time you perceive pain the problem has been there building up for some time! This is outside of the occurrence of a traumatic accident.

Locked up motion receptors have effectively gone off line and the brain no longer recognizes the level of the the locked up joint.

The chiropractic adjustment does three main things to reverse this:

1. It restores the normal range of motion to the joint
2. It puts a quick stretch in the muscle
3. It provides a barrage information into those receptors

When this happens those receptors which were locked up and still now scream to the brain "We're still here. We just couldn't talk to you for awhile." The brain is only too happen to hear this since it just received a huge message from those joint levels and brings them back online. Function is now improved. And those tight muscles just received a quick stretch which helps them relax and perform better. Best of all you feel better, looser, lighter, with less stress due to the release of endorphins and enkephalins from the brain's natural pharmacy.

Chiropractic promotes plasticity of the brain and nervous system. It promotes joint structure and function. It promotes health.

From Faculty of 1000 Medicine

Training-Induced Brain Structure Changes In The Elderly: Commentary from F1000

Posted 08/15/2008

Lutz JänckeAuthor Information

Boyke J, Driemeyer J, Gaser C, Büchel C, May AJ Neurosci 2008 Jul 9 28(28):7031-5
Commentary from Faculty Member Lutz Jäncke

This is the first study published so far demonstrating cortical plasticity in the elderly and, thus, supports the view that cortical integrity and possibly cognitive functions can be shaped by training, even in the elderly. One of the most interesting and possibly important findings in cognitive neuroscience has been the discovery that the human brain can be shaped by experience. In this context, it has been shown that even specific characteristics of brain anatomy (e.g. gray and white matter density) can be changed by experience. This study demonstrates that gray matter changes can even be induced in the elderly. The authors of this study focused on healthy elderly citizens (on average 60 years of age) and conducted a training study during which these subjects learned three-ball cascade juggling. It turned out that senior citizens learned to juggle but with less proficiency compared with adolescents. However, similar to the young group, gray matter changes in the older brain related to skill acquisition were observed in area hMT/V5 (middle temporal area of the visual cortex). A further finding relates to the hippocampus and reveals that elderly volunteers who learned to juggle showed transient increases in gray matter in the hippocampus on the left side and in the nucleus accumbens bilaterally.

Faculty of 1000 Medicine Evaluations, Dissents and Author responses for: [Boyke J et al. Training-induced brain structure changes in the elderly. J Neurosci 2008 Jul 9 28 (28):7031-5]. 2008 Jul 17. www.f1000medicine.com/article/id/1115644/evaluation

Can You Become a Creature of New Habits?

The brain is able to remodel according to the input it receives. By taking small steps and achieving small sucesses you can stimulate the brain to lay down new pathways and become more robust. Do something you enjoy! This can be in the form of mental excercises such as crossword or wordsearch puzzles, physical activity such as walking, jumping rope, or a new sport, or a combination of physical and mental like playing the piano. Remember, do something that interests you and take small steps to avoid frustration and quitting too soon! You can do it!


From the NY Times:
May 4, 2008
By JANET RAE-DUPREE
HABITS are a funny thing. We reach for them mindlessly, setting our brains on auto-pilot and relaxing into the unconscious comfort of familiar routine. “Not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting herd,” William Wordsworth said in the 19th century. In the ever-changing 21st century, even the word “habit” carries a negative connotation.
So it seems antithetical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.
Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try — the more we step outside our comfort zone — the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.
But don’t bother trying to kill off old habits; once those ruts of procedure are worn into the hippocampus, they’re there to stay. Instead, the new habits we deliberately ingrain into ourselves create parallel pathways that can bypass those old roads.
“The first thing needed for innovation is a fascination with wonder,” says Dawna Markova, author of “The Open Mind” and an executive change consultant for Professional Thinking Partners. “But we are taught instead to ‘decide,’ just as our president calls himself ‘the Decider.’ ” She adds, however, that “to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. A good innovational thinker is always exploring the many other possibilities.”
All of us work through problems in ways of which we’re unaware, she says. Researchers in the late 1960s discovered that humans are born with the capacity to approach challenges in four primary ways: analytically, procedurally, relationally (or collaboratively) and innovatively. At puberty, however, the brain shuts down half of that capacity, preserving only those modes of thought that have seemed most valuable during the first decade or so of life.
The current emphasis on standardized testing highlights analysis and procedure, meaning that few of us inherently use our innovative and collaborative modes of thought. “This breaks the major rule in the American belief system — that anyone can do anything,” explains M. J. Ryan, author of the 2006 book “This Year I Will...” and Ms. Markova’s business partner. “That’s a lie that we have perpetuated, and it fosters mediocrity. Knowing what you’re good at and doing even more of it creates excellence.”
This is where developing new habits comes in. If you’re an analytical or procedural thinker, you learn in different ways than someone who is inherently innovative or collaborative. Figure out what has worked for you when you’ve learned in the past, and you can draw your own map for developing additional skills and behaviors for the future.
“I apprentice myself to someone when I want to learn something new or develop a new habit,” Ms. Ryan says. “Other people read a book about it or take a course. If you have a pathway to learning, use it because that’s going to be easier than creating an entirely new pathway in your brain.”
Ms. Ryan and Ms. Markova have found what they call three zones of existence: comfort, stretch and stress. Comfort is the realm of existing habit. Stress occurs when a challenge is so far beyond current experience as to be overwhelming. It’s that stretch zone in the middle — activities that feel a bit awkward and unfamiliar — where true change occurs.
“Getting into the stretch zone is good for you,” Ms. Ryan says in “This Year I Will... .” “It helps keep your brain healthy. It turns out that unless we continue to learn new things, which challenges our brains to create new pathways, they literally begin to atrophy, which may result in dementia, Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases. Continuously stretching ourselves will even help us lose weight, according to one study. Researchers who asked folks to do something different every day — listen to a new radio station, for instance — found that they lost and kept off weight. No one is sure why, but scientists speculate that getting out of routines makes us more aware in general.”
She recommends practicing a Japanese technique called kaizen, which calls for tiny, continuous improvements.
“Whenever we initiate change, even a positive one, we activate fear in our emotional brain,” Ms. Ryan notes in her book. “If the fear is big enough, the fight-or-flight response will go off and we’ll run from what we’re trying to do. The small steps in kaizen don’t set off fight or flight, but rather keep us in the thinking brain, where we have access to our creativity and playfulness.”
Simultaneously, take a look at how colleagues approach challenges, Ms. Markova suggests. We tend to believe that those who think the way we do are smarter than those who don’t. That can be fatal in business, particularly for executives who surround themselves with like-thinkers. If seniority and promotion are based on similarity to those at the top, chances are strong that the company lacks intellectual diversity.
“Try lacing your hands together,” Ms. Markova says. “You habitually do it one way. Now try doing it with the other thumb on top. Feels awkward, doesn’t it? That’s the valuable moment we call confusion, when we fuse the old with the new.”
AFTER the churn of confusion, she says, the brain begins organizing the new input, ultimately creating new synaptic connections if the process is repeated enough.
But if, during creation of that new habit, the “Great Decider” steps in to protest against taking the unfamiliar path, “you get convergence and we keep doing the same thing over and over again,” she says.
“You cannot have innovation,” she adds, “unless you are willing and able to move through the unknown and go from curiosity to wonder.”
Janet Rae-Dupree writes about science and emerging technology in Silicon Valley.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/business/04unbox.html?_r=1&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss&oref=slogin