[Leslie Carol Botha: Gluten is a yeast product...too much yeast causes an acidic environment - and acidic environment in the body creates inflammation.  Inflammation creates pathological and mental disorders. Wonder if eliminating gluten and balancing the body's PH will bring the mind back into balance.  There are studies proving that the addition of micronutrients to the body can alter a fractured mind bringing back into balance.]

Mother’s Gluten Sensitivity Linked With Child’s Schizophrenia Risk: Study

Posted: 05/11/2012 11:12 pm

Huff Post
Healthy Living

There may be a link between a woman’s gluten sensitivity and the risk of her baby developing psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia later on, according to a new study.

Researchers from the Karolinska Institute and Johns Hopkins Children’s Center conducted research that suggests children of women with high levels of antibodies to gluten — meaning they had sensitivity to it — have almost a doubled risk of later developing a psychiatric disorder.

“Our research not only underscores the importance of maternal nutrition during pregnancy and its lifelong effects on the offspring, but also suggests one potential cheap and easy way to reduce risk if we were to find further proof that gluten sensitivity exacerbates or drives up schizophrenia risk,” study researcher Dr. Hakan Karlsson, M.D., Ph.D., a neuroscientist at Karolinska Institute, said in a statement.

The study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, included analysis of 764 neonatal blood samples and birth records of people born between 1975 and 1985 in Sweden. Of those people, 211 went on to develop schizophrenia or a similar psychiatric disorder.

The researchers were able to use the blood samples to see whether the study participants had higher levels of IgG antibodies triggered by the immune system as a response to milk or wheat proteins in the body.

Read Full Article…

Read the complete article and related information at Study Links Mother’s Gluten Sensitivity with Child’s Risk of Schizophrenia

[Leslie Carol Botha: The FDA and women's health in the same sentence makes me nervous.  I think it is pretty clear that the FDA does not hold the health of women - nor anyone else for that matter- as a priority.  It has become pretty clear that they are the government puppet for the pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Elizabeth Kissling wrote an excellent highlighting some of the FDA's obvious disregard for the health of women.]

It’s National Women’s Health Week- Celebrate and Reminisce with the FDA

Society for Menstrual Cycle Research
re: cycling

by Elizabeth Kissling
May 15, 2012

I admit, I didn’t know that this is National Women’s Health Week until I received a reminder in my inbox from a U.S. FDA mailing list, letting me know about the Food & Drug Administration’s role in promoting Women’s Health. They’ve published a brochure (available in both HTML and PDF versions) commemorating 100 Years of Protecting and Promoting Women’s Health.

Society for Menstrual Cycle Research members and other women’s health advocates and activists will want to look through the list of the accomplishments the FDA claims responsibility for and lists as unequivocal improvements in women’s health.

For instance, we’ve had many discussions at re:Cycling about the FDA approval of the pill in 1960 as one holding mixed benefits for women, and not always the best choice for women’s health. The brochure also asserts that in 1970, “FDA initiated the first package insert written for consumers to explain to women the benefits and potential risks of oral contraceptives.” That *happened* in 1970, but Barbara Seaman, Alice Wolfson, and the other founding mothers of the National Women’s Health Network had more to do with its initiation than the FDA.

And here’s another inspiring quote from the FDA brochure:

1980: Making Tampon Use Safer

Problem: In 1980, there were 814 confirmed cases of menstrual related Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS) and 38 deaths from the disease.
Response: FDA began requiring all tampon packages to include package inserts educating women about the risk of TSS and how to prevent it. In 1997, there were only five confirmed menstrually-related TSS cases and no deaths. The tampon package inserts with TSS information continue to be used today.

Sure, the FDA is proud of those safety rules now, but in 1982 the agency asked the industry to come up with their own voluntary standards because they did NOT want to regulate tampon safety. After years of pressure and organizing from Boston Women’s Health Collective members Esther Rome and Judy Norsigian, activist Jill Wolhander, researcher Nancy Reame, and others to standardize tampon absorbency ratings, the FDA finally enacted regulations in 1989, by court order. Nine years after 38 women died from a tampon-related illness.

Read Full Article….

Read the complete article and related information at Celebrate and Reminisce National Women’s Health Week with the FDA

[Holy Hormones Honey! It appears that the objectification of women's bodies takes place even during childbearing - a sacred time in a family's life - especially for the mother and child.  Can you imagine how traumatized the mother and the newborn must be during a birth rape? Wonder if this has any bearing on the increasing anger violence in the world.  I think many women can relate to some sort of uncomfortable treatment during labor or when their legs were in stirrups.]

Is “Birth Rape” for Real?

Time
Healthland
By Bonnie Rochman
October 5, 2010

Giving birth is not a modest affair. After a lifetime spent covering up your privates, there they are, front and center, splayed out for any ole doc or nurse to see. As part of this no-holds-barred experience, aforesaid doc or nurse occasionally plunges an instrument (not of the musical variety) or his/her hand into an expectant mom’s vagina, feeling for the moment when new life is about to burst forth. That’s what they get paid to do.

At least in my own labors, I was always forewarned of the impending probing. But sometimes, according to writer Amity Reed, a woman isn’t asked permission. Sometimes, a woman isn’t treated respectfully on the L&D ward. When that happens, she feels violated, a sensation Reed controversially calls “birth rape.” In a post on Salon.com by Tracy Clark-Flory, Reed explains the phenomenon: “Fingers, hands, suction cups, forceps, needles and scissors … these are the tools of birth rape and they are wielded with as much force and as little consent as if a stranger grabbed a passer-by off the street and tied her up before having his way with her.”

Read Full Article…

Read the complete article and related information at Birth Rape? Is this for Real?

[Holy Hormones Honey! First an article about IVF treatments and an increase in birth defects (posted May 7) and now an article on how the toxic drugs in the more expensive IVF injections affect the health of the mother and the baby.  Moral of the story? Perhaps we should not be injecting any toxic drugs - including vaccines -  into the body?]

Toxic drugs used in IVF ‘risk health of mothers and babies’

By Mario Ledwith

PUBLISHED: 19:50 EST, 13 May 2012

IVF procedures widely used in the UK are posing a ‘serious health risk’, healthcare experts have warned.

Clinics are using ‘aggressive’ practices that improve success rates but have led to treatments becoming one of the biggest causes of maternal deaths in England and Wales, they said.

There is increasing evidence that the most common treatment, which involves high doses of  toxic drugs to stimulate increased egg production in the ovaries, causes abnormalities in embryos and can damage a mother’s health.

Experts were told at a conference in Copenhagen that an alternative ‘mild’ treatment should be used instead of the more risky options common in the commercially driven UK market.

Read the complete article and related information at IVF Toxic Injections Risk Health of Mother and Baby

[Leslie Carol Botha: The very vaccine designed to protect women from cervical cancer is actually giving cause to concerns about increasing rates of cervical dysplasia and cervical cancer post-vaccination. The rub is that adolescent girls - especially asexually girls in their preteens are not required to have a pap test until they reach the age of 21.  If indeed, she is developing cervical cancer how will anyone know?  And it may be a decade before a vaccinated 9 year old has her first annual exam. BTW, ACOG just raised the age for the first pap smear...after Gardasil hit the market.  Yet we all know girls are having unprotected sex at a very early age and their chances of contracting an STD that may not be diagnosed or treated for years is reprehensible.]

Gardasil May Cause Cancer

Vaccine Truth
By Sandy Lunoe | May 13th, 2012

Healthy teenage girls are a huge market for HPV vaccine makers.

When we see the term “cancer vaccine” in connection with the HPV (human  papilloma virus) vaccine Gardasil we may naturally assume that  it prevents cervical cancer, yet there is no evidence whatsoever that this is the case. (1)  On the contrary, the term is incorrect because unbelievable though it may sound Gardasil may actually cause cancer. This fact is being ignored by Merck the manufacturer and other promoters including doctors and health authorities.

NOT TESTED FOR CARCINOGENICITY

Information in the package insert states that the vaccine has not been tested for carcinogenicity. (2) Why has this not been done?  Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence!  There appears to be no official requirement for vaccines to be tested for carcinogenicity and no incentive for manufacturers to do so.  Many experts consider that vaccines are conducive towards the dramatic worldwide increase in cancer cases.

The chief editor of the Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association, immunologist Charlotte Haug writes about several unanswered questions including that of replacement in her article “We Need to Talk about HPV Vaccination – Seriously”:

Abhorred vacuum.There is another serious question that may be answered sooner:  what effect will the vaccine have on the other cancer-causing strains of HPV? Nature never leaves a void, so if HPV-16 and HPV-18  are suppressed by an effective vaccine, other strains of the virus will take their place. The question is, will these strains cause cervical cancer?

Results from clinical trials are not encouraging. Vaccinated women show an increased number of precancerous lesions caused by strains of HPV other than HPV-16 and HPV-18. The results are not statistically significant, but if the trend is real – and further clinical trials should tell us in a few years – there is reason for serious concern. (3)

In an article in the New England Journal of Medicine  “ Human Papilloma Virus Vaccination – Reasons for Caution”,  Dr. Haug again poses the question of replacement:

“How will the vaccine affect other oncogenic strains of HPV? If HPV-16 and HPV-18 are effectively suppressed, will there be selective pressure on the remaining strains of HPV? Other strains may emerge as significant oncogenic serotypes”. (4)

Replacement was obviously one of several  unanswered questions when FDA, Merck and the Norwegian government signed a contract which involved research studies on  thousands of young Norwegian schoolgirls. The agreement was that Gardasil would be approved in US under the condition that extensive research projects were carried out in Norway. There was implication of corruption in connection with introduction of Gardasil in the childrens’ vaccination program. (5)

Read Full Article…

Read the complete article and related information at Does Gardasil Cause Cancer Instead of Protect Women from Cancer?

[Leslie Carol Botha: It is hard to imagine being sent off to asylums for hormone imbalances, unhappiness from living in a male reality - and anxiety over one's future. That really has not changed for women over the years.  Although our husbands no longer have the right to lock us away - we are still living with hormone imbalance, stress and anxiety. Only today we are locked in the hell hole of minds riddled with drugs....our new asylum.]

Sent to the asylum: The Victorian women locked up because they were suffering from stress, post natal depression and anxiety

MailOnline
By Wendy Wallace
PUBLISHED: 16:00 EST, 12 May 2012 | UPDATED: 16:00 EST, 12 May 2012

Emma Riches. Diagnosis: Insanity caused by childbirth

These days, work stress, postnatal depression and anxiety are addressed with compassion. But just a few generations ago, the women who suffered from these conditions, were confined to an asylum.

The compelling portraits shown here, taken by Victorian photographer Henry Hering in the mid-19th century, have a haunting quality.

But apart from the women’s pensive expressions and drab clothing, there is little to indicate that the photographs had been taken in an asylum. If you took away the period gowns and hairstyles, their mournful faces might be looking out of the window of a bus or café today.

Then, however, women could find themselves labelled insane and locked up in madhouses for a range of conditions – from postnatal depression to alcoholism or senile dementia, and even for social transgressions such as infidelity (‘moral insanity’).

These photographic records exist because some influential doctors, including keen photographer
Dr Hugh Diamond, believed that the then new science of photography could help to diagnose mental illness by capturing what he called the ‘exact point that had been reached in the scale of unhappiness’.

The idea that your face could be used to read your mind – and that how you looked in a photo could determine your fate – fascinated and horrified me. I was already interested in mental health. As in most families, there have been mental health issues in mine.

In the late 1960s, my gentle grandmother was plunged into a serious depression after the sudden death of her husband from a heart attack. A daring and sporty young woman, who grew up in a lively family, she found the loneliness and grief of widowhood in her 50s unbearable.

Eliza Josolyne. Diagnosis: Insanity caused by overwork

I was 11 or 12 when she became ill; the stigma around mental distress was stronger than it is now and my parents tried to protect me from it. But I noticed how Gran’s round shape changed to a drastically reduced outline and was aware of my parents’ worried conversations about her, of emergency phone calls and sudden dashes to see her in hospital, where, I later found out, she was admitted more than once after attempts on her own life.

My grandmother’s grief might today be recognised as such, and treated with bereavement counselling rather than being labelled ‘depression’, as it was in the 60s, and treated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). She never mentioned the treatment to me and I can only imagine that it increased her sense of isolation. She was helped by moving to a new village to be near her sister, where she acquired new friends and a beloved dalmatian.

However horrific the idea of ECT seems to my generation, which associates it with the shocking scenes in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, how much worse, I wondered, would her situation have been 100 years earlier. I started further research into the subject of women in Victorian asylums and learnt that much of the mental health provision then was still in private houses, often run by nonmedical men who did little more than keep patients locked away. With their living coming from the profit, there was little incentive to discharge patients who could be detained.

Anyone who could persuade two doctors to sign certificates of insanity could put away inconvenient or embarrassing relatives in a madhouse. Women – with lower social status, and usually less power and money – were more vulnerable.

Read Full Article…

Read the complete article and related information at Victorian Women Sent to Asylums For Stress, Post Natal Depression and Anxiety – All Related to Hormone Imbalance

[Holy Hormones Honey! Women's and men's brains are indeed wired differently.]

Jobs affect depression risk differently in men and women

A job can increase the risk of depression in both men and women, but for different reasons, a new study from Canada suggests.

Women in the study who felt they were not appreciated at their job, or were not appropriately rewarded for their efforts, had an increased risk of depression, compared with women who felt they were rewarded appropriately, the study showed. No such link was found in men.

On the other hand, a high amount of job strain increased the risk of depression in men working full time, but not in women.

Conflicts between family and work influenced depression risk for both sexes, but in different ways. Men were at increased risk of depression if their family life got in the way of their work life, while women were at increased risk of depression if their work life interfered with their family life.

The findings agree with previous studies suggesting that achievements at work play a bigger role in men’s identity than in women’s, the researchers say.

Even though more women are in the work force, and more men take family responsibilities, “men and women, they may view their family role or their work differently,” said study researcher JianLi Wang, an associate professor in the departments of Psychiatry and Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada.

Wang and colleagues surveyed about 2,700 men and women living in Alberta between 2008 and 2011 who were not currently depressed. Participants were followed to see if they developed depression. They also answered questions about their jobs, such as their level of job strain and whether they felt adequately rewarded for their efforts.

After a year, 3.6 percent of participants were diagnosed with depression. The incidence of depression was higher in women with 4.5 percent developing the condition, compared with 2.9 percent of men.

Read Full Article…

Read the complete article and related information at Depression over Jobs Affects Women and Men Differently

[Leslie Carol Botha: It is about time that the fraud and deception on medical consumers who believe in their government and the medical industry comes to a halt. The cost and damage to people's lives is astronomical.  If you want to know what pharma reps are saying about their own industry go to Cafe Pharma

Here's just one example:

Idiot. Its the same reason all other drugs are sold. Profit. "Cure" breast cancer and you can charge what its WORTH..think total (not just drug) costs for a terminal breast cancer patient. I have no idea what that number is but SWAG it at $500k.

"Cure" it and you can charge $400k, save the "system" $100k and more importantly save the individual's life. Whats that WORTH?

More drug companies to pay billions for fraud, join the "dishonor roll" after Abbott settlement

Kelton writes about whistleblower matters involving fraud and other issues.

Forbes Magazine
Erika Kelton, Contributor
May 12, 2012

With Abbott’s $1.5 billion settlement of a whistleblower-initiated  case this week, Abbott joins an infamous list of pharma companies that have paid more than one billion dollars to the federal government for illegal marketing practices, including promoting prescription drugs for uses not approved by the FDA, paying financial inducements to increase sales and engaging in practices that pose grave danger to patients’ health and lives.

This dishonor roll includes pharma giants Pfizer, which paid $2.3 billion to the government in 2009, and Eli Lilly, which settled civil and criminal charges earlier in 2009 for $1.4 billion.

Soon there will be more additions to pharma’s billion-dollar-plus club: GlaxoSmithKline announced last November that it had reached an agreement in principle to pay $3 billion this year to resolve multiple government investigations into its sales and marketing practices. And Johnson & Johnson (J&J ) reportedly is in negotiations with the government to pay more than $1 billion to settle civil charges for the off-label marketing of Risperdal and Invega.

Meanwhile, Amgen said last Octoberthat it had reached an agreement in principle to pay $780 million to settle litigation involving state Medicaid investigations and 10 “qui tam” (whistleblower) lawsuits involving illegal marketing practices.

Despite the prosecutions, huge fines and bad publicity, too many pharma companies have failed to change their ways. Billion-dollar settlements are to some just the cost of doing business. At my firm, we continue to see a steady stream of whistleblowers with powerful evidence of pharma wrongdoing – be it illegal promotion of prescription drugs; financial inducements to doctors and pharmacists to prescribe or sell certain prescription drugs; manufacturing practices that contaminate drugs;  and the use of phony science to support FDA approval or shady  marketing, to name just a few.

Read Full Article…

Read the complete article and related information at Pharma Paying Billions for Fraud and Illegal Marketing Practices

[Leslie Carol Botha: Medical consumers need to start questioning the motives of Pharma marketing for vaccines and other drugs. They are making profits while iatrogenic disease remains the #1 killer amongst Americans.]

EVERY U.S. Pediatric Vaccine Manufacturer has recently pled guilty to fraud in the last 3 years

Vermont Coalition for Vaccine Choice

These are the drug makers who manufacture our vaccines.

● 3 Vermonters died last year after vaccination – none from infectious disease.

● The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System is currently underfunded and there is very little oversight or follow-up.  The Vaccine Court, which was designed in 1986 to be no-fault, has become a highly adversarial forum where only 20% of claimants are successful. It is the only recourse an American has in cases of damaging adverse reactions to vaccines.
● Vaccines are now one of the fastest growing segments of the pharmaceutical company portfolio. If these suppliers area lready committing fraud, what makes us think that – with no liability – they will not commit the very same fraudulent acts when it comes to vaccines?

Read Full Article…

Read the complete article and related information at Alarming Post by Vermont Coalition for Vaccines Choices Shows Pharma Fraud

[Leslie Carol Botha: Even with chart stamping the HPV vaccination rate still remained below 50%. This - due in part to 54% of girls who refuse the vaccine because the they saw You Tube videos of girls who have suffered adverse reactions.  Medical consumers are speaking out...using social media and have become an effective force in alerting others to the dangers of  Gardasil and Cervarix. Thin line between stamping charts and coercion.]

Reminder Stamp Boosts HPV Vaccination

Medical News

By Ed Susman, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today
Published: May 11, 2012
Reviewed by Dori F. Zaleznik, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston.

SAN DIEGO — Rubber stamping a patient’s chart with a reminder about the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine was associated with a greater than four-fold increase in vaccination rates at one institution.

At the start of the study, the charts of eligible patients in the outpatient gynecological setting indicated that 11% were following through with the HPV vaccination, but after the reminder stamp was added to the charts, the vaccination rate increased to 49% (P<0.0001), said Kerry Rut, DO, of Winthrop University Hospital, Mineola, N.Y., and colleagues.

“We were aiming to at least get our institution at the national level or 25%, but were really able to greatly exceed that,” Rut told MedPage Today at her poster presentation during the annual clinical meeting of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “We think that the reminder was the main factor in getting more compliance with the vaccine.”

The authors began by determining the baseline vaccination rate at their outpatient office from March to May of 2010. They created a “Gardasil Vaccination Reminder” stamp and progress notes were stamped from June 2010 to December 2010. Charts were assessed to establish a vaccination rate with the stamp.

They found that vaccination rates after introduction of the reminder stamp (49%) were significantly better than baseline (11%) for an odds ratio of 4.64 (P<0.0001).

They also reported that documentation of a discussion about the vaccine between patient and healthcare provider was evident in 90% of the stamped charts compared with only 22% of the charts without the stamp (P<0.0001).

Logistic regression demonstrated that age, type of insurance, reason for visit, and history of abnormal PAP smears were not independently associated with vaccination.

The only independent variable was use of the stamp, the authors stated.

But the stamp could not overcome all barriers to HPV vaccination. Rut reported that 54% of the women or girls refused the vaccine, even after counseling. “We were told numerous times that the girls who refused had seen a YouTube video purportedly showing a girl disabled by the vaccine. We have no way of knowing if the film clip is genuine, but we know it is keeping many of our patients from getting the vaccination,” she said.

However, Rut also noted that the stamp improved the performance of the healthcare professionals in terms of vaccine delivery. At baseline, one provider had successfully vaccinated 33% of her patients, but boosted that number to 79% with the presence of the red reminder stamp on the charts (P=0.04).

Read Full Article…

Read the complete article and related information at Docs Stamping Charts in Effort to Increase Falling HPV Vaccine Uptake