WHO: Coronavirus Patients Who Don’t Show Symptoms Aren’t Driving Spread of Virus

WHO: Coronavirus Patients Who Don’t Show Symptoms Aren’t Driving Spread of Virus

Preliminary evidence from the earliest outbreaks indicated that the virus could spread from person-to-person contact, even if the carrier didn’t have symptoms. But WHO officials now say that while asymptomatic spread can occur, it is not the main way it’s being transmitted.

Some people, particularly young and otherwise healthy individuals, who are infected by the coronavirus never develop symptoms or only develop mild symptoms. Others might not develop symptoms until days after they were actually infected.

“From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual,” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, said at a news briefing from the United Nations agency’s Geneva headquarters. “It’s very rare.”

Source: Asymptomatic spread of coronavirus is ‘very rare,’ WHO says

This Inexpensive Action Lowers Infections And Protects Against Flu

Harvard Researcher Says This Inexpensive Action Will Lower Hospital Infection Rates And Protect Us For The Flu Season

Picornavirus (picornavirid)
Picornavirus (picornavirid), responsible for: Colds, gastroenteritis, poliomyelitis and meningitis. Image made from a transmission electron microscopy view. (Photo by: Cavallini James/BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES

‘One factor stood out above them all, and it shocked the research team. The one factor most associated with infection was (drum roll): dry air. At low relative humidity, indoor air was strongly associated with higher infection rates. “When we dry the air out, droplets and skin flakes carrying viruses and bacteria are launched into the air, traveling far and over long periods of time. The microbes that survive this launching tend to be the ones that cause healthcare-associated infections,” said Taylor. “Even worse, in addition to this increased exposure to infectious particles, the dry air also harms our natural immune barriers which protect us from infections”…’

Full article: This Inexpensive Action Lowers Hospital Infections And Protects Against Flu Season (Forbes)

How Monsanto’s “intelligence center” Targeted Journalists and Activists

Internal documents show how the company worked to discredit critics and investigated singer Neil Young

 Monsanto adopted a multi-pronged strategy to target Carey Gillam, a Reuters journalist who investigated the company’s weedkiller. Photograph: Carey Gillam
Monsanto adopted a multi-pronged strategy to target Carey Gillam, a Reuters journalist who investigated the company’s weedkiller. Photograph: Carey Gillam

Monsanto operated a “fusion center” to monitor and discredit journalists and activists, and targeted a reporter who wrote a critical book on the company, documents reveal. The agrochemical corporation also investigated the singer Neil Young and wrote an internal memo on his social media activity and music.

The records reviewed by the Guardian show Monsanto adopted a multi-pronged strategy to target Carey Gillam, a Reuters journalist who investigated the company’s weedkiller and its links to cancer. Monsanto, now owned by the German pharmaceutical corporation Bayer, also monitored a not-for-profit food research organization through its “intelligence fusion center”, a term that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies use for operations focused on surveillance and terrorism.

The documents, mostly from 2015 to 2017, were disclosed as part of an ongoing court battle on the health hazards of the company’s Roundup weedkiller…

Continued: Revealed: how Monsanto’s ‘intelligence center’ targeted journalists and activists

Anxiety might be alleviated by regulating gut bacteria

“People who experience anxiety symptoms might be helped by taking steps to regulate the microorganisms in their gut using probiotic and non-probiotic food and supplements, suggests a review of studies published today in the journal General Psychiatry.”

Credit: CC0 Public Domain
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

‘Studies have shown that as many as a third of people will be affected by anxiety symptoms during their lifetime.

Increasingly, research has indicated that gut microbiota—the trillions of microorganisms in the gut which perform important functions in the immune system and metabolism by providing essential inflammatory mediators, nutrients and vitamins—can help regulate brain function through something called the “gut-brain axis”.

Recent research also suggests that mental disorders could be treated by regulating the intestinal microbiota, but there is no specific evidence to support this…’

Continued: Anxiety might be alleviated by regulating gut bacteria

Healing Foods for Five Common Ailments

Try healing foods for five common conditions with advice from the experts at Consumer Reports.
Try healing foods for five common conditions with advice from the experts at Consumer Reports.

For some health concerns, your kitchen may provide good medicine. Here’s what to eat and when

Certain foods can have a more immediate benefit and may help tame common health problems such as headaches and insomnia. So the next time you experience one of the conditions below, consider heading to your kitchen before you open your medicine cabinet…

Continue reading: Healing Foods for Common Ailments

Roundup ingredient found in Cheerios, Quaker Oats, and other cereals

“Days after a California jury awarded a school groundskeeper more than $289 million in damages after he claimed Monsanto’s best-selling weedkiller Roundup gave him cancer, the controversial ingredient – glyphosate — has been detected in popular kids’ breakfast cereals, including Cheerios, Lucky Charms and Quaker Old Fashioned Oats, according to an activist group.

Lab tests conducted by the left-leaning Environmental Working Group (EWG), a nonprofit advocacy group that specializes in toxic chemicals and corporate accountability, indicated almost three-fourths of the 45 food products tested detected high levels of glyphosate, which has been identified as a “probable carcinogen” by the World Health Organization in 2015…

Yet, Olga Naidenko, Ph.D., and senior science adviser for the EWG, says the bottom line is that glyphosate does not belong in children’s food and that recent biomonitoring studies show detectable levels of the ingredient in people’s urine, which likely comes from dietary exposure.”

Article: Roundup ingredient found in Cheerios, Quaker Oats, and other cereals

How US Sugar Subsidies Bring a Red Tide of Algae to Florida’s Shores

“Though other factors play a role in the algae bloom crises, one of the most significant involves the sugar industry. A combination of federal sugar subsidies, federal regulations on pollution, and federal control of Lake Okeechobee (a giant lake in southern Florida) runoff guidelines has created a recipe for disaster.

The federal sugar subsidy prevents Americans from buying sugar from Cuba and other sources. This means that we have to produce our own sugar and that we pay the world’s highest price for sugar. It also means that we grow sugar and sugar substitutes in a high-cost fashion using a lot of fertilizer!

…the solutions are simple and straightforward. End the sugar subsidies and the EPA and its protection limits. Restore the right of the people to sue polluters that cause demonstrable harm.”

Story: How US Sugar Subsidies Bring a Red Tide of Algae to Florida’s Shores

Military Bases Open Their Doors to Home-Schoolers

“A growing number of military parents want to end the age-old tradition of switching schools for their kids.

They’ve embraced homeschooling, and are finding support on bases, which are providing resources for families and opening their doors for home schooling cooperatives and other events.
 
Like home schooling parents in the general population, military families at home often use online curriculum and materials to enhance instruction…”

Source: Military Bases Open Their Doors to Home-Schoolers

New Trump administration rule will require hospitals post prices online

Hospitals will be required to post online a list of their standard charges under a rule finalized Thursday by the Trump administration.

Increasing price transparency has been a priority for the administration as a way to drive down health-care costs.

“This is a small step towards providing our beneficiaries with price transparency, but our work in this area is only just beginning”, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma said in a speech last month. “Price transparency is core to patient empowerment and making sure American patients have the tools they need so they can make the best decisions for them and their families.”

Continued: New Trump administration rule will require hospitals post prices online | TheHill

MRI costs: why this surgeon is challenging NC’s certificate of need law

Dr. Gajendra Singh, a surgeon in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who opened his own medical imaging center. He is suing to overturn the state’s “certificate of need” law.  Courtesy of the Institute of Justice
Dr. Gajendra Singh, a surgeon in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who opened his own medical imaging center. He is suing to overturn the state’s “certificate of need” law.  Courtesy of the Institute of Justice

Dr. Gajendra Singh walked out of his local hospital’s outpatient department last year, having been told an ultrasound for some vague abdominal pain he was feeling would cost $1,200 or so, and decided enough was enough. If he was balking at the price of a routine medical scan, what must people who weren’t well-paid medical professionals be thinking?

The India-born surgeon decided he would open his own imaging center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and charge a lot less. Singh launched his business in August and decided to post his prices, as low as $500 for an MRI, on a banner outside the office building and on his website.

There was just one barrier to fully realizing his vision: a North Carolina law that he and his lawyers argue essentially gives hospitals a monopoly over MRI scans and other services.

Singh ran into the state’s “certificate of need” law, which prohibited him from buying a permanent MRI machine, which meant his office couldn’t always offer patients one of the most important imaging services in medicine. He has resorted to renting a mobile MRI machine a couple of days a week. But it will cost him a lot more over time than a permanent machine would, and five days a week, his office can’t perform MRIs.

Now Singh has had enough. He filed a lawsuit Monday in North Carolina Superior Court to overturn the state law, news that he and his attorneys from the Institute for Justice shared exclusively with Vox…

Woman battles cancer with diet; Harvard researchers to study her

A woman said her emphasis on diet helped her in her battle against cancer, and now her approach will be studied by researchers at Harvard University to see if it can help others.

For Kathy Bero, time in the kitchen is an investment in good health.

“It isn’t really about eating healthy,” Bero said. “It’s about eating specific foods that fight disease.”

She ought to know. In 2005, doctors diagnosed Bero with inflammatory breast cancer. Her prognosis for survival was 21 months.

At the time, Bero was 41 years old and the mother of two young girls. She fought the disease with surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. But the cancer fought back.

“Eleven months after my first diagnosis, I was diagnosed with a high-grade tumor in my head and neck,” Bero said.

The medication took its toll.

“My kidneys were failing; my liver was failing,” Bero said. “My lungs were damaged. My heart was damaged. I told my oncologist that I’m done with that protocol because one way or another, I’m going to die. And I don’t want to go that way.”

It was then she decided to go off chemotherapy and use a strategy suggested by a friend.

“My friend kept saying you have to learn about anti-angiogenic foods,” Bero said.

Anti-angiogenic foods essentially block the creation of blood vessels so cancer can’t easily spread. Examples include organic vegetables such as purple potatoes, carrots and leeks.

“Leeks are at the top of the cancer-fighting list,” Bero said.

Also on her list: berries, walnuts, green tea and herbs, especially garlic.

“When a recipe calls for two cloves, I’m probably going to put in six because garlic is a really strong cancer fighter,” Bero said.

Bero said her diet – combined with a type of alternative medicine called Reiki, along with meditation and visualization – worked.

“My doctors just kept saying, ‘Huh. That is interesting,'” she said.

Today, more than 12 years after her first diagnosis, Bero, who is 54, said she’s cancer-free and now works as a cancer coach.

“She’s teaching me food is the best form of medicine,” said Phil Baugh, one of Bero’s clients. Baugh, a 43-year-old father of three, is fighting brain cancer.

“It’s stopped growing now, so it’s wonderful,” Baugh said. “And a huge part of that is food.”

Researchers at Harvard University learned of Bero’s success and will study her method.

“It’s exciting,” Bero said. “I’m now validated. I’m no longer the ‘crazy cancer patient.’ There’s a real science that is going to be there.”

Bero said Harvard researchers will study people who’ve had exceptional outcomes.

“They’re looking at our genetics and the genetics of the tumor,” Bero said. “What the outliers did; their attitude, environment, faith, social support. What they’re trying to do is create a database of all these different things and look for the commonalities between these people.”

The lead Harvard researcher, Dr. Isaac Kohane, said that because these outcomes are so rare, this particular study will take some time to complete.

Copyright 2018 WISN via CNN. All rights reserved.

Source: Woman battles cancer with diet; Harvard researchers to study her