Addictive tranx drugs recklessly over-prescribed long ago are linked to lasting brain damage

Yesterday's Independent on Sunday article informs us that the link between benzodiazepines and similar psychotropic drugs and brain shrinkage was made years 30 years ago and the Medical Research Council agreed in 1982 there should be large-scale studies done, but they were not done. I urge you to read the article.

The IoS tells us that Catherine Hopkins, the legal director of Action against Medical Accidents, has stated, "The failure to carry out research into the effect of benzodiazepines has exposed huge numbers of people to the risk of brain damage. This research urgently needs to be carried out, and if the results confirm the suspicions of the 1981 expert group, it could lead to one of the biggest group actions for damages against the Government and the MRC ever seen in the courts.""

I remember these extremely harmful, extremely addictive tranquilliser and hypnotic drugs - Valium, Librium, Mogadon, et al being prescribed with reckless abandon for all kinds of purported conditions. I remember people taking them in the 60s and 70s - taking them in good faith - and some of them becoming Zombie-like in consequence. Years later I took them myself (they were mainly prescribed to women, in a ghastly example of rampant medical sexism), along with amitriptyline, a dangerous anti-depressant, as the caring professions played a cruel game of pretending that my agonising toothache was 'really' Depression - still a favourite 'diagnosis'/insult used to cover up dental/medical negligence. Read my Mensa article on Cruelty, Clinical Negligence and the Abuse of Power in the NHS

It took me 8 months of monumentally difficult struggle to wean myself off the Mogadon, which is reportedly far more addictive than heroin. Some poor souls took these drugs while pregnant and have had to live with the corrosive guilt of irreparably damaging their babies while they were still in the womb. Many unfortunate victims are still addicted to tranquillisers today, decades after starting to take the drugs, and incredibly, doctors are still prescribing these drugs. I would strongly advise anyone to decline to take any of this pharmaceutical junk. It is far more likely to harm you than to help you.

The country should be grateful to Esther Rantzen, who on her programme, That's Life, fought to curb the terrible consequences of the medical profession's love affair with tranquillisers. Until she took up the matter, doctors, guided by profit-motivated, not-to-be-trusted drug company reps, were assuring patients who reported their dreadful symptoms of addiction that the drugs had not caused their symptoms and that they should continue to take them.

Are Brits really eating themselves to death or is it misinformation that is the problem?

Eating ourselves to death: Britain's fat epidemic
article in the Independent on Sunday

The comments beneath the article are interesting. There are the usual sort whose writers blame fat people themselves for their obesity and there are more thoughtful contributions by people who have given the matter much more thought and realise the problem is multi-faceted. - Here are my own thoughts:

Dieting is a snare and a delusion, and the frequent exhortation thrown at fat people to 'just eat less and exercise more' has not a jot of evidence to support its efficacy. - It absolutely does not make obese people less obese. Dieting fosters malnutrition and dietary deficiencies.

Cutting down on salt and salty food reduces weight easily and safely by reducing the fluid retention which is part of all obesity. Increasing calcium intake reduces weight by increasing fat excretion in the faeces (details on the BBC's website in the BBC2 "Truth About Food" pages from a series a few years ago) and there is growing evidence that excess weight is associated with Vitamin D deficiency as well as with calcium deficiency.

Many prescription drugs cause massive fluid retention and therefore morbid obesity, including steroids like prednisone and prednisolone, HRT, tricyclic anti-depressants like amitriptyline, anti-psychotics, etc.

Obesity is a complex illness, ill-served by the simplistic 'solutions' of the uninformed.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.

Europe's secret plan to boost GM crop production: - absolutely disgraceful in my opinion!

Gordon Brown and other EU leaders in campaign to promote modified foods
Gordon Brown and other European leaders are secretly preparing an unprecedented campaign to spread GM crops and foods in Britain and throughout the continent, confidential documents obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveal. The documents – minutes of a series of private meetings of representatives of 27 governments – disclose plans to "speed up" the introduction of the modified crops and foods and to "deal with" public resistance to them. And they show that the leaders want "agricultural representatives" and "industry" – presumably including giant biotech firms such as Monsanto – to be more vocal to counteract the "vested interests" of environmentalists.
Read article in The Independent (UK)

We love it. Food companies are refusing to cut it out for fear of losing customers. So just how dangerous can those white crystals of salt really be?

I'm 2½ years late with this article, which I've only just come across, but it contains important points about salt so I am posting it. - Also I continue to feel that Mr and Mrs Gay have not been well served by the evidence of the expert witnesses in court. Since I have long personal experience of the great harm that salt intake can cause, and long interest in the subject and have studied it for many years, I feel that my understanding of it must be greater than most people's, including most health professionals and including the nutritionists of the Food Standards Agency. I believe that Mr and Mrs Gay are/were not guilty of the crime for which they were initially sentenced to prison but later, thankfully, cleared and freed by a retrial jury.

Food Safety: Salt
Article by Core Moreton, writing in the Independent on Sunday, on Sunday, 26 March 2006

Extracts:

"Salt killed Christian Blewitt. The three-year-old boy was found unconscious in his bedroom and spent four days in a coma before doctors switched his life-support machine off. They had never seen anyone with so much sodium in their body. The question is how it got there.

The answer, according to a jury, was spoonful by sickening spoonful, forced into Christian's mouth by his foster parents. Ian and Angela Gay were found guilty of manslaughter, for making him eat up to four teaspoonfuls of salt as a punishment for being naughty at the dinner table.

The Gays deny it. They brought what they say is new evidence to the Court of Appeal last week, even as the Government and health campaigners were arguing about how much salt should be allowed in food. The Food Standards Agency announced new limits for a range of products, but they were far less strict than expected. The FSA had caved in to pressure from the food companies, it was claimed, and thousands of people would go on being ill and dying as a result of having too much salt in their diet."

I do not believe the Gays fed the salt to little Christian. - Nor do I believe the convoluted explanation offered by the Defence Counsel:

"Michael Mansfield QC told the Court of Appeal there was no evidence Christian had been forced to eat the salt. The case was at the "frontiers of science", he said. And he called Dr Glyn Walters, a retired chemical pathologist, who believes there is a way the salt inside Christian could have built up naturally.

Normally, excess salt is excreted through the kidneys and the urine. But there is a very rare condition in which the brain malfunctions and the osmostats - which are like thermostats but regulate sodium concentration - reset themselves too high. Cases are extremely rare, said Dr Walters, but they do happen. The crown prosecutor argued against a retrial because he said there was nothing new in the evidence at all, as the science behind it had been known for years. The appeal judges have not said when a decision might be expected."

I believe the most likely source of the excess salt in Christian's body was the saline solution that was administered to him in the hospital. - See here:

What puzzles me is that it is reported here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/4039993.stm that: "He died in December 2002 of brain injuries and salt poisoning.

Susan Caynak was working as a sister at Russells Hall Hospital in Dudley, West Midlands, when the toddler arrived.

She told the jury: "His eyes were half closed, half open. He was unresponsive and initially, at that point, I thought he was dead."

Sister Caynak said an abnormal urine test was recorded and that Christian was administered saline through a syringe. ""

If Christian was ill because of salt excess, WHY ON EARTH WAS SALINE ADMINISTERED TO HIM BY SYRINGE? - THIS COULD ONLY COMPOUND THE PROBLEM, SURELY? - And was this saline measured and taken into account as having contributed to the excess of salt in his body?

I believe that saline solution is too readily - and often, as in this case, most ill-advisedly - administered to people in hospital. - I do not, of course, believe or imply that it was administered with any intention of harming the little boy. - It surprises me that this administration of saline solution (i.e. salt water) into the child's veins does not appear to have been investigated. - From my own extensive and painful past and continuing personal experience I know that excess salt/sodium is stored in the blood vessels - the veins.

Apart from the tragedy of the little boy's death and the miscarriage of justice which sent the Gays to prison for 15 months, if you click on the link near the top of this post and read the article in the Independent on Sunday you will note that the Food Standards Agency put the interests of the food companies ahead of the health of the nation which is, one would have thought, the reason for having a Food Standards Agency!

Your shower curtains may be toxic...

Toxic shower curtain warning
Article in the Independent on Sunday

Extract:

"American scientists are warning that the humble plastic shower curtain is responsible for releasing more than 100 toxic chemicals into homes, including some suspected of causing cancer or having gender-bending effects.

A report from the Center for Health, Environment and Justice calls for PVC curtains to be banned, a call echoed by Greenpeace. Several stores have already phased them out."

The number of powerful psychiatric/anti-psychotic drugs prescribed to England's children has risen by more than half in four years

Britain's child victims of the chemical cosh
article in the Independent on Sunday

Extract:

"The number of powerful psychiatric drugs prescribed to England's children has risen by more than half in four years, government figures have revealed.

GPs in England are handing out prescriptions for anti-psychotic drugs for children as young as seven at the rate of 250 a day, according to figures obtained by The Independent on Sunday.

Latest data compiled for the NHS show that tranquillisers designed to treat serious conditions including schizophrenia in adults were prescribed to young people 57,000 times in 2003. But the total had risen to more than 90,000 by 2006 – a 59 per cent rise in three years. The figures do not include drugs dispensed in hospitals. Experts believe the increase is partly down to early detection and treatment of serious mental health problems in children, but there is also concern they are being used inappropriately to treat psychological and learning difficulties."

In my opinion, this is evil and does great harm and should be prohibited by law. - See also http://aboutsalt.blogspot.com/2008/06/for-years-harvard-child-psychiatrist.html

I've been warning for years about the catastrophic effects of drugs recklessly prescribed by ignorant doctors who do not notice or monitor outcomes.

http://news.independent.co.uk/health/article3081840.ece

Special report:

Prescription medicines -

from the Independent on Sunday

Extract:

"Each year, Britons are dying in their thousands because of the side effects of prescription and over-the-counter medicines. Reported deaths are up 155 per cent in a decade – and experts are seeking new safeguards. Nina Lakhani reports

Published: 21 October 2007

Thousands of patients are dying each year as a result of side effects from pills prescribed by GPs and hospital doctors.

And while the number of deaths from suspected adverse reactions to prescription drugs has more than doubled in the past 10 years to 973 last year, medical experts warn that as few as one in 10 deaths and other serious complications are being reported.

Doctors' poor prescribing skills and repeated failures to recognise accurately adverse drug reactions in patients have seen deaths multiply by about two and half times since 1996.

Experts are calling for a revamp of the current warning systems designed to alert doctors to potentially lethal prescription drug treatments.

They believe tens of thousands of patients suffer life-threatening, disabling or other serious reactions that need hospital treatment because of a failure to spot and report many dangerous side effects and drug interactions quickly enough.

One study estimated that the equivalent of all the beds from seven general hospitals – 5,600 places – are occupied with patients suffering from drug reactions at any one time, costing the NHS more than £450m each year. Researchers believe around 70 per cent of adverse reactions could be avoided through better training, computerised prescribing systems and staff spending more time talking and listening to patients."

If you read the whole article, you will notice the efforts being made to absolve our overpaid doctors of their appalling guilt in the matter of negligent prescribing. - But the best way to remedy matters is to label this harmful prescribing for what it is - criminal negligence - and have some of these dangerous doctors in court to face criminal charges. That would stop the terrible harm being done to their innocent patients/victims. - Power without responsibility and without sanction is always a recipe for disaster.

See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html and http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ami.html on my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

vulnerable groups

How to Lose weight!

Children and Obesity

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.

Should schools think twice about installing Wi-Fi systems?

Schools 'should wait for official report' before installing Wi-Fi - Independent on Sunday

Extract:

"Schools should think twice about installing Wi-Fi systems while an official investigation into their safety is carried out, teachers' leaders said yesterday.

Philip Parkin, general secretary of the Professional Association of Teachers, said that the investigation – announced late last week by the Health Protection Agency – suggested that there was "no smoke without fire". He added that schools should consider more carefully whether they should introduce them into the classroom.

The £300,000 investigation marks something of a victory for The Independent on Sunday, which for five months has been calling for one, and will be the first of its kind. The agency says it can find only one peer-reviewed study in the scientific literature on radiation received from Wi-Fi, even though it is now to be found in half of all primary schools and four-fifths of secondary schools in Britain, and is being extended to cover vast areas of cities such as Norwich, Brighton, Manchester and London.

The agency says: "Wi-Fi is becoming increasingly widely used... However, there has not been extensive research into what people's exposures actually are to this new technology and that is why we are initiating this new programme of research and analyses."

It plans to spend at least a year "on a systematic programme of research" measuring radiation emissions from a wide range of Wi-Fi equipment and laptop computers, and calculating the doses received by adults and children using them."


Lose weight and improve your health in many ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

How to Lose weight!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Children and Obesity

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.

NHS beds crisis is resulting in great suffering.

See Whistleblower: Surgeon breaks cover over NHS beds crisis - Independent on Sunday

Is fat a middle-class issue? - No: it's a consequence of misinformation by the 'experts'...

Fat: a middle-class issue - Sunday Telegraph

Extract:

"Middle-class mothers who work long hours increase the risk of their offspring being overweight or obese, according to an astonishing new study.

Research revealed by The Independent on Sunday for the first time will turn perceived wisdom on its head with the revelation that the nation's higher-paid working mothers bear much of the responsibility for the country's ticking obesity time bomb, and not the poorer working-class families who are usually blamed.

More shockingly, the risk of childhood obesity soars in direct correlation with family income. Children in families where household income is greater than £33,000 are significantly more likely to be overweight or obese than youngsters from families with the lowest incomes, the new study shows. And in higher income households, the longer a mother worked each week, the greater the risk of the child being overweight.

"Long hours of maternal employment, rather than lack of money, may impede young children's access to healthy foods and physical activity," say the researchers from the Institute of Child Health at University College London (UCL) and Great Ormond Street Hospital (Gosh), writing in the International Journal of Obesity this week.

Children from families with incomes of £22,000 to £33,000 were 10 per cent more likely to be overweight or obese than children from families in the lowest income group, the study found. "For every 10 hours a mother worked, children from households with an annual income of £22,000 or higher were more likely to be overweight than children from the lowest income group," researchers wrote.

Where the annual income was £33,000 or more, children from those households were 15 per cent more likely to be overweight than children from the lowest income group.

Compounding the misery for working mothers, the study found that children's weight problems got worse if mothers relied on a nanny to hold the fort while they pursued their careers.

Children in childcare are 24 per cent more likely to be overweight or obese than children cared for by their mother or her partner."

Fancy! - As well as obesity 'experts', there is even an International Journal of Obesity! - Not doing much good, are they? - The more they give their standard advice, the higher the incidence of obesity rises! - That's because their advice is WRONG...)o:

Read here http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/children.html for what causes childhood obesity and for suggestions about preventing or reducing it.

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
How to Lose weight!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and Associated health conditions

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free...

Survey by EU found people believe radiation from mobile phones and their masts has damaged their health.

Two in three believe radiation from phones damaged their health - Independent on Sunday

Extract:

"Two-thirds of Britons believe radiation from mobile phones and their masts has affected their health, a startling official survey shows. And huge majorities are dissatisfied with government assurances about the potential threat.

The survey is the result of a giant European Union exercise that polled more than 27,000 people across the continent, 1,375 of them in Britain. It shows that concern about the radiation is far greater than even the most ardent campaigners had dared to believe, and that official attempts to downplay the issue have backfired.

It also goes some way to explain the overwhelming public response received by The Independent on Sunday since we started raising questions about the effect of the radiation on people and wildlife in April.

This month, two councils - Haringey in London and Carmarthenshire in Wales - will be considering whether to allow Wi-Fi in their schools, after concern expressed by Sir William Stewart, the chairman of the Health Protection Agency. Sir William told the BBC's Panorama, "I believe that there is a need for a review of the Wi-Fi and other areas ... I think it's timely for it to be done now.""


Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
How to Lose weight!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free...(o:

Huge weight gains reported by patients on prescription drugs

So! - Researchers are beginning to catch up with what I have been explaining for years!


Huge weight gains reported by patients on prescription drugs - Independent on Sunday

I have been writing and talking to medics, scientists, journalists, broadcasters, MPs, etc etc for many years about this. I wrote at great length and with great effort to Professor Graham MacGregor, of St George's Hospital, London, described in his book about Salt, Diet and Health as 'an international authority on high blood pressure and actively involved in research on salt and high blood pressure', in 1999, having tried in vain to speak to him about it when I travelled to St George's in the hope of seeing him. He failed to act on the information I had sent him.

I shall write further about the newspaper report and about the failure of any of the many important and influential people whom I have contacted over these many years to do a damned thing about the needless destruction of people's lives and health by the reckless prescribing of ill-informed and negligent doctors. - See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html
http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ami.html
http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html
groups vulnerable to salt
http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/lose_weight.html

Lose weight by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Replacing senior staff will put babies and infants at risk, doctors and patient groups warn.

Babies 'will be put at risk' as experienced doctors are replaced by trainees - Independent on Sunday

Extract:

"A government plan to cut senior staff in paediatric wards and neonatal units and replace them with trainee doctors will put infants at risk, doctors and patient groups have warned.

Under the Government's controversial Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) programme, senior staff on some paediatric wards will be replaced by trainee doctors from August.

The move is part of a government plan to reform training for NHS doctors. Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary of State for Health, said recently that this was needed "not just for junior doctors themselves, the workhorses of the NHS working quite outrageously long hours, but also for the sake of patients".

Busy paediatric wards have up to seven specialist paediatric senior house officers (SHOs) - doctors with up to four years' experience. Most could be replaced under MMC.

In future, trainee doctors with one or two years' experience will spend four months in paediatrics before moving on to another specialism, and would not necessarily have any interest in that area of medicine.

The move has alarming implications for the 45,000 babies born prematurely each year. Babies born at 23 weeks have a 17 per cent chance of survival and require expert medical support, while half of all babies born before 30 weeks suffer from apnea, which causes them to stop breathing."

Beware of cowboy cosmetic surgery!

Doctors warn of 'McSurgery' in quick fix operations boom - Independent on Sunday

Extract:

"A huge increase in the number of cosmetic surgery treatments carried out by unqualified or insufficiently qualified people is leading to the "McDonaldisation" of the industry, doctors warned yesterday.

Surgeons spoke out in response to news that a New Zealand cosmetic surgery company is offering doctors a franchise after just two days' training at a hotel in Manchester.

The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) said that high-pressure sales techniques and cowboy operators were fuelling a booming market in Botox, face peels and laser treatment, some of which can result in poor treatments, injuries or, in extreme cases, death.

Paul Stapleton, of the Mapperley Park Clinic in Nottingham, said: "It's a McDonald's franchise approach to cosmetic surgery. It's a continuation of alarming developments in the field, which hasn't been helped by the Government's U-turn on plans to regulate cosmetic surgery."

The franchise deal was offered to ordinary GPs who had paid £2,000 a head to a New Zealand company called Appearance Medicine for the training weekend at the Marriott Hotel in Manchester. After practising Botox injections on volunteer hotel staff the GPs were offered equipment to start a practice in exchange for £35,000 and 10 per cent of future profits."


Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Doctors intend to suggest that fat children be put into care. They would do better to correct the misinformation they have been giving for decades!

Doctors: 'Put obese children into care' - Independent on Sunday

Extract:

"A motion to be put forward at the British Medical Association's (BMA) annual conference later this month will also say that social workers should treat childhood obesity as neglect in cases where parents refuse to listen to the advice of healthcare experts.

The recommendation comes amid growing concern about Britain's obesity epidemic and the long-term health risks. British children are among the most overweight in the world. In the UK, there are around one million obese children under 16. It is thought that as many as one fifth of boys and one third of girls will be obese by 2020. The rise in obesity has led to an increase in childhood diabetes and warnings that children are putting themselves at risk of future heart disease, osteoarthritis and some cancers."

Child obesity is directly caused by the long failure of health professionals and other 'experts' to give the right information and advice about obesity. Their insistence that obesity is caused by overeating has led to overweight and obese people trying to lose weight by dieting/'slimming' and calorie counting/restriction, and to parents trying to get their children to lose weight in this way too.

But obesity is NOT caused by overeating. It is caused by fluid retention, which in children results from eating too much salt and salty food. In adults obesity is frequently the result of taking prescribed medications, especially steroids such as prednisolone, prednisone and HRT, and anti-depressants such as amitriptyline. (When doctors prescribe drugs that cause sodium retention and water retention they should warn the patient not to eat salt, or food containing salt, while taking the medication. When they do not give this warning, the inevitable consequence is considerable weight gain.)

Read here about the groups of people who are vulnerable to salt: vulnerable groups

Obesity can be easily reduced by seriously reducing your salt/sodium intake and eating plenty of fruit and fresh vegetables. - It is important not to restrict calories. - 'Slimming' or 'dieting' is unnecessary, ineffective and often harmful.

Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Many Wi-Fi systems are being removed because of people's health concerns.

Worried families ditch their Wi-Fi after watchdog voices health concerns - Independent on Sunday

Extract:

"Schools and families are rushing to remove Wi-Fi systems after the Government's chief health protection watchdog voiced concerns over their safety.

Sir William Stewart's call for a "timely" review of the possible effects of the technology - originally reported by The Independent on Sunday in April and featured by the BBC's Panorama programme last month - has led to an unprecedented reaction from the public, according to one large dealer.

The London-based Scooter Computer call-out service said last week that it had received hundreds of calls recently.

Will Foot, for the company, said: "I have never seen such a reaction. It's completely out of the blue. More than 50 per cent of inquiries were from people worried about Wi-Fi access." He said that the company had already removed 25 systems."


Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Would you rather live to be old or die before you become old?

Editor-At-Large: I wish The Zimmers long life. But I hope I die before I get old - Janet Street-Porter writing in The Independent on Sunday

Extract:

"And talking of care homes, I once wrote that if I start to go senile, hand me a plastic bag, because I'd rather end it all quickly than spend my last decade watching daytime telly in a room reeking of boiled cabbage and stale urine. Loads of you wrote to agree. And finally our wonderful government has woken up to the fact that voters are the crumblies, the pensioners and the middle-aged, all of whom probably view the prospect of spending any time in a care home as a thoroughly grim prospect to be avoided at all costs. Only this week, 15 elderly residents in a care home in Lancashire owned by Brightcrest Ltd were told to get their stuff together by 2pm THAT SAME DAY and vacate the premises by 8pm because the company had gone bust.

Time and time again, there are stories of homes closing without warning, of appalling standards, of fires and of lifts breaking down, leaving residents marooned on an upper floor for weeks on end. Sensing a vote-grabbing initiative, the Department of Health last week announced it was going to spend £67m refurbishing 7,000 UK care homes. Shall I do the maths for you? That's a paltry £9,571 per home, not even a well-equipped new kitchen, not a new roof, not a new garden, enough for a new telly, a couple of cheap three-piece suites, a few beds and a lick of paint. BIG DEAL.

And four out of 10 old people in hospital are malnourished because the Department of Health can't be arsed to spend enough on nursing auxiliaries to make sure everyone gets help to eat. At present, two nurses and a couple of helpers per 25 people are all that's allocated. So The Zimmers can sing about "Their Generation" but the tragedy is that 3.5 million older people live alone, and it's not a lot of fun singing along to the telly by yourself, hoping that Meals on Wheels doesn't forget you, is it?"

Further fears over E211 and other E-numbers as evidence accumulates about food additives.

E211 Revealed: Evidence highlights new fear over drinks additive - Independent on Sunday

It's best to read the whole, detailed article, but here is an extract:

"The Independent on Sunday's revelations focus on another potential side-effect of soft drinks and one that may have much longer-term implications.

The substance is known as E211, or sodium benzoate, and the findings of Professor Peter Piper, from Sheffield University, represent another challenge to the already blemished reputation of food additives.

New studies have emerged over the past few years that call into question whether E-numbers approved for use in Europe are as harmless as regulators and the food industry suggest.

The most famous of them all is probably E621 - monosodium glutamate, the "flavour enhancer" found in many takeaways and pasties.

In all, the EU sanctions 395 additives: 71 thickeners and emulsifiers, 64 colours, 54 preservatives, 54 antioxidants, 54 anti-caking agents and acidity regulators, 52 miscellaneous, 27 additional chemicals, and 19 flavour enhancers.

Some additives are just innocuous everyday things such as E601 (vitamin B2) and E901 (beeswax), but others have properties that alarm university professors.

Perhaps the most controversial are the "azo dyes", a series of vivid yellow and orange colourings that give a lurid colour to fruit squash, fizzy drinks, sweets, jelly, cakes and other foods often eaten by children. The best-known azo dyes are sunset yellow (E110), quinoline (E104), and tartrazine (E102).

Professor Piper's research touches on a common preservative, sodium benzoate, which is found in everything from Fanta to barbecue sauce.

For some time, there have been fears about the ability of sodium benzoate to form benzene (a carcinogenic chemical) when it reacts with another preservative in soft drinks, ascorbic acid (vitamin C)."

Do your health a big favour! - Stop eating salt - or at any rate, cut down on it seriously.

Avoid high blood pressure and many other health problems, and lose weight by eating less salt and salty food! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Fanta, Pepsi Max and some other soft drinks may be damaging your health because they contain E211 (sodium benzoate).

Caution: Some soft drinks may seriously harm your health - Independent on Sunday

Extract:

"A new health scare erupted over soft drinks last night amid evidence they may cause serious cell damage. Research from a British university suggests a common preservative found in drinks such as Fanta and Pepsi Max has the ability to switch off vital parts of DNA.

The problem - more usually associated with ageing and alcohol abuse - can eventually lead to cirrhosis of the liver and degenerative diseases such as Parkinson's.

The findings could have serious consequences for the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who consume fizzy drinks. They will also intensify the controversy about food additives, which have been linked to hyperactivity in children.

Concerns centre on the safety of E211, known as sodium benzoate, a preservative used for decades by the £74bn global carbonated drinks industry. Sodium benzoate derives from benzoic acid. It occurs naturally in berries, but is used in large quantities to prevent mould in soft drinks such as Sprite, Oasis and Dr Pepper. It is also added to pickles and sauces.

Sodium benzoate has already been the subject of concern about cancer because when mixed with the additive vitamin C in soft drinks, it causes benzene, a carcinogenic substance. A Food Standards Agency survey of benzene in drinks last year found high levels in four brands which were removed from sale.

Now, an expert in ageing at Sheffield University, who has been working on sodium benzoate since publishing a research paper in 1999, has decided to speak out about another danger. Professor Peter Piper, a professor of molecular biology and biotechnology, tested the impact of sodium benzoate on living yeast cells in his laboratory. What he found alarmed him: the benzoate was damaging an important area of DNA in the "power station" of cells known as the mitochondria.

He told The Independent on Sunday: "These chemicals have the ability to cause severe damage to DNA in the mitochondria to the point that they totally inactivate it: they knock it out altogether."

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Are baby monitoring devices harming babies with radiation?

Radiation from baby monitors 'poses risk' - Independent on Sunday

Extract:

"Baby monitors, bought by parents to keep their children safe, may instead be harming them, some scientists fear. They warn that the devices are bathing the infants in radiation at an age when they are most vulnerable to it.

The radiation, similar to that given off by modern cordless phones, is part of the increasing electronic smog to which mobile phones, their masts and Wi-Fi systems also contribute. The monitors use the same digitally enhanced cordless telecommunication (Dect) technology as cordless phones.

Over recent weeks The Independent on Sunday has exclusively reported growing concern that the smog may be damaging human health. The paper reported that Sir William Stewart, chairman of the Health Protection Agency, has been privately pressing an investigation into the effects on children of installing Wi-Fi networks in schools.

Baby monitors are typically placed close to infants, who are particularly at risk from radiation. An inquiry by Sir William into mobile phones seven years ago reported that a one-year-old child could absorb about twice as much per kilogram of body weight as an adult.

Babies are especially vulnerable because their bodies and nervous systems are still developing and because they will have more time to accumulate exposure to the radiation and for any delayed effects to develop.

Professor Denis Henshaw of the University of Bristol said the monitors are "being marketed without any checks and balances or even studies into their effects"."