From FullOfHealth.com:

In recent studies, the benefits of drinking green tea daily have been noted again and again. In many Asian lands, green tea is a staple, and surely has led to many health benefits for countless men and women.

This article provides links to 7 recent articles that discuss studies conducted for the purpose of examining the many benefits of drinking green tea.

Full story: Articles on the Benefits of Green Tea

The benefits of omega-3 and fish oils as part of a healthy diet are constantly in health news reports and studies. This is a collection of 7 articles and reports on the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids and what kind of effect they can have on long term health.

Sources include Reuters, Life Extension Foundation, the Ottawa Citizen, and Jonny Bowden’s Blog.

Full Article: Benefits of Omega-3 and Fish Oils

Breast cancer is a major concern for women of all ages, all over the world. Knowledge of recent discoveries and developments in this area is crucial to women’s health in this area.

This is a collection of 7 articles discussing recent breast cancer studies, medical reports, and benefits that come from particular therapies.

Full story: Articles on Breast Cancer Prevention and Research

In the past year or so, one of the most talked-about on-going health news story is the importance of a regular intake of vitamin D for people of all ages. There are a number of reasons why people are deficient in vitamin D, and why it is so beneficial to a person’s overall health.

In this article, you’ll find a sampling of recent reports in both alternative and mainstream sources that discuss the analysis, benefits, and use of Vitamin D as part of a healthy lifestyle.

Full Article: 9 Articles on the Benefits of Vitamin D

If you are a health writer or researcher, there are literally thousands of good, quality websites promoting news and information on natural health and related benefits. I personally follow a number of websites by subscribing to their email newsletters.

At FullOfHealth.com you’ll find a list of health newsletters and resources that you may find invaluable in your own quest to keep up with the latest developments in natural health.

Full Article: 15 Natural Health Newsletters & Resources

Each week there are numerous articles, reports and other sources, usually from mainstream media, that demonstrate the potential hazards and dangers involved in using prescription drugs.

At FullOfHealth.com you’ll find a list of 8 fairly recent articles and reports that discuss the negative effects of a wide range of prescriptions drugs.

Sources include ABC News, Reuters, and ScienceDaily.

Full Article: 8 Articles on Bad Pharmaceuticals

From AlterNet:

An environmentally friendly washing machine developed in Britain that uses only one cup of water to clean clothes could be on sale next year.

The appliance, which could save billions of litres of water a year, has been developed at the University of Leeds.

It uses less than 10 percent of the water of conventional machines and 30 percent less energy by replacing most of the water with thousands of tiny reusable plastic beads to attract and absorb dirt under humid conditions.

Xeros, the company behind the technology, will start selling the machine to commercial customers such as hotels and dry cleaners before taking the idea to ordinary household consumers

Full story: New Washing Machine Uses 1 Cup of Water

From the National Post:

Health Canada says it is cracking down on the growing number of TV ads that tout the benefits of vaccines for everything from hepatitis to travellers’ diarrhea, yet say little about the products’ risks and other shortcomings.

Responding to outside complaints, the department has persuaded some manufacturers to change “unbalanced” commercials, issued letters urging the industry to include both negative and positive information in ads and begun developing new vaccine marketing guidelines.

The action highlights, however, the fact that vaccine advertising falls into a legal grey area with little regulation – in contrast to the tight restrictions placed on consumer ads for prescription drugs.

Full story: Crack Down on Vaccine Ads on Television

From the Toronto Star:

From the creation of fake academic journals, to bogus stories submitted to real journals, to falsified results in some of academia’s most respected publications – the pharmaceutical industry has been rocked by allegations that the world’s biggest drug companies put public relations above public safety.

As consumer advocate Peter Lurie put it recently: “I’ve seen no shortage of creativity emanating from the marketing departments of drug companies.”

The allegations have come to light thanks to lawsuits in the United States and Australia seeking compensation for drug costs that the plaintiffs claim were too high. The suits allege the drug companies skewed academic investigations into their products, thereby driving up the price they could charge.

Full story: Drug Reports Found to be Faked

From Physorg.com:

A study involving 678 individuals who apply pesticides, culled from a U.S. Agricultural Health Study of over 50,000 farmers, recently found that exposure to certain pesticides doubles one’s risk of developing an abnormal blood condition called MGUS (monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance) compared with individuals in the general population. The disorder, characterized by an abnormal level of a plasma protein, requires lifelong monitoring as it is a pre-cancerous condition that can lead to multiple myeloma, a painful cancer of the plasma cells in the bone marrow.

“Previously, inconclusive evidence has linked agricultural work to an increased multiple myeloma risk. Our study is the first to show an association between pesticide exposure and an excess prevalence of MGUS,” said lead author Ola Landgren, MD, PhD, of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), which is part of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “This finding is particularly important given that we recently found in a large prospective cancer screening study that virtually all multiple myeloma patients experienced a MGUS state prior to developing myeloma.”

Full story: Pesticide Use Causes Blood Disorder

From Harvard Health:

Diet alone probably isn’t the driving force behind the multiple behavioral and cognitive symptoms that plague children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). But several studies have renewed interest in whether certain foods and additives might affect particular symptoms in a subset of children with ADHD.

All of the qualifiers in the previous sentence are intentional. Traditional research finds no support for radical diets like the Feingold diet — which eliminates nearly all processed foods as well as many fruits and vegetables — for the majority of children with ADHD. And there is no easy way to identify the few children who might benefit from diets that prohibit particular foods.

Yet parents — and some researchers — wonder if more modest dietary changes could supplement standard multimodal treatment that includes behavioral therapy and other evidence-based psychotherapies, school support, medication, and parent education. Here’s a brief review of the evidence on the dietary interventions that have received the most mainstream attention.

Full story: Diet and ADD

From AlterNet:

A study released this week by researchers at the University of Cincinnati says that exposure to bisphenol A may increase heart disease in women.

Bisphenol A (BPA) is the chemical building block of polycarbonate plastics and is used in countless consumer products including food and beverage containers, kitchen appliances, electronics, and packaging and is used to make resins that line food and drink cans.

Research by Scott Belcher and colleagues in the university’s department of pharmacology and cell biophysics has found that environmentally available levels of BPA — a synthetic chemical known to mimic the behavior of estrogen — can disrupt normal heart muscle function and prompt arrhythmia or irregular heartbeat.

Full story: Common Chemical Causes Heart Disease in Women

From the Ottawa Citizen/Reuters:

Active compounds in green tea may slow down the progression of prostate cancer, researchers reported on Friday.

Capsules made using green tea extracts called polyphenols lowered levels of proteins that tumors use to grow, the researchers found.

Made by Polyphenon Pharma, the capsules called Polyphenon E contain epigallocatechin gallate or EGCG, a green tea extract that has antioxidant properties.

Full story: Green Tea Delays Prostate Cancer

From MSN / HealthDay:

Children who get the annual flu vaccine, especially those who have asthma, may be more likely to be hospitalized than children who don’t get the shot, a new study shows.

But the researcher noted that the surprise finding probably has more to do with the severity of the underlying illness in children receiving the vaccine than with any deficiency in the vaccine.

“This may not be a reflection of the vaccine but that these patients are the sickest, and their doctors insist they get a vaccination,” said study author Dr. Avni Y. Joshi, a fellow at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. She is to present her findings Tuesday at the American Thoracic Society’s annual meeting, in San Diego.

Full story: Kids Who Get Flu Shots More Likely to be Hospitalized

From Time:

As most parents of small children will reluctantly admit, nothing can occupy a child quite like television. Unfortunately, the scientific evidence suggests that using the boob tube as a babysitter has its price: the more time babies spend sitting in front of the screen, the more their social, cognitive and language development may suffer. Recent studies show that TV-viewing tends to decrease babies’ likelihood of learning new words, talking, playing and otherwise interacting with others.

A new study published Monday in the Archive of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine adds to that evidence while introducing an intriguing new perspective. Many studies have suggested that television impedes learning by inhibiting youngsters’ ability to interact with others, and according to Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a University of Washington pediatrician, that effect may be compounded when parents get drawn into TV-watching too.

Full story: TV Affects Language Development in Children

From Health Day News:

The widely used cancer drug capecitabine can cause people to lose their fingerprints, which could lead to problems when they’re trying to enter the United States, an oncologist warns.

Dr. Eng-Huat Tan, a senior consultant in medical oncology at the National Cancer Centre in Singapore, said he now advises people taking capecitabine to carry a doctor’s letter when traveling.

In a letter published online Wednesday in the Annals of Oncology, Tan described the experience of a 62-year-old cancer patient taking capecitabine who was held for four hours by U.S. immigration officials because his fingerprints had vanished. The man was eventually allowed into the country.

Full story: Cancer Drug May Cause Fingerprints to Disappear

From ABC7:

A new cancer study from India suggests that fluoride is a contributing factor to osteosarcoma, or bone cancer – but just how much fluoride intake causes the uncommon disease is not clear.

Fluoride in Americans’ tap water has spurred controversy since its introduction in 1945. Anti-fluoride activists say the risks are too high to add “medication” to the water, while government officials cite scientific studies that prove fewer cavities and no serious risk.

In Europe, most countries refuse to treat their water with fluoride with the exception of the United Kingdom. According to the British Medical Journal, fluoridation was introduced in 1963, and the Department of Health reports that rates of dental decay have been reduced 70 percent.

Full story: Questions About Water Fluoridation

From the Ottawa Citizen:

Toss some wild blueberries onto your cereal, a salad, or into the blender for a smoothie — they’re a powerhouse for good health, says Marva Irene Sweeney-Nixon, Ph.D., an associate biology professor at the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI) in Charlottetown, P.E.I.

She recommends eating 1/2 cup fresh or frozen wild blueberries everyday for their disease-fighting flavonoids, high fibre and vitamin C. Her advice comes backed with years of scientific study on animals, and a more recent leap into the first human trials. She and a colleague at UPEI, Kathy Gottschall-Pass, Ph.D., recruited a graduate student in 2006 to run a pilot study evaluating the effect of blueberry juice on middle-aged, overweight men at moderate risk of cardiovascular disease.

Full story: Blue Berries Prevent Diabetes and Arthritis

From the Ottawa Citizen:

LONDON (Reuters) – The anti-cancer properties of carrots are enhanced 25 percent if they are cooked whole rather than chopped up beforehand, a study has found.

They taste better too, according to scientists at Newcastle University, because more of their sugar is retained.

“Chopping up your carrots increases the surface area so more of the nutrients leach out into the water while they are cooked,” said lead researcher Dr Kirsten Brandt.

“By cooking them whole and chopping them up afterwards, you are locking in both taste and nutrients.”

Full story: Whole-Cooked Carrots Fight Cancer

From The Washington Post:

A patient who comes to Marie Steinmetz with clogged sinuses might be in for a surprise.

Instead of walking out of the Alexandria family physician’s office with a prescription, he might find himself stretched out in a dim room on a massage table. With soft music playing in the background, Steinmetz might quickly — and gently — stick several needles into his head and hands to help clear his nasal passages. For a chronic sufferer, she might suggest the use of a neti pot, an ayurvedic treatment popular in India and parts of Southeast Asia that involves flushing out the nasal passages with a water-based solution.

After more than a decade of treating patients with conventional medicine, Steinmetz, a board-certified family physician, has embraced an approach that combines Western medicine with complementary and alternative treatments that have roots in Eastern, Native American and European cultures and that have been used for hundreds, even thousands of years.

Full story: Mainstream Doctors Using Alternative Therapies