Parents attempting to find alternatives to vaccinations for their children are being warned by a federal prosecutor that mailing lollipops licked by children with chickenpox is against the law.  Jerry Martin, U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, said that it is a federal crime to send diseases or viruses across state lines.

Mailing such lollipops would be illegal under the same law that makes it illegal to mail anthrax, and a conviction could lead to up to 20 years in prison.

According to ABC News:

“Martin said the items are sought by parents who don’t want to give their children vaccines. He said he could neither confirm nor deny that his office is investigating or seeking charges against anyone.”

Acupressure is the practice of pressing or massaging certain points on your body.  It stimulates self-curative abilities.  CNN Go has collected a list of 8 Acupoints which could be useful for travelers.  Here are a few:

Motion sickness and nausea: Press on the inside of your forearm, two thumbs’ width above your wrist crease, between the two tendons. The point is actually located below surface level so pushing deep is more effective.

Sore throat and lightheadedness: Loosely interlock your thumbs at the webbing, with both palms facing down. Keep your wrists straight, and extend your index finger to the skinny edge of your wrist.  Under the pad of your index finger you’ll find a small depression in the prominent bone; that’s the point.  Rubbing or pressing this point relieves symptoms associated with colds.

Insomnia or disturbed dreams: Find the styloid process muscle on the side of your neck, and follow it up to where it meets your skull. The point is at the A-like depression going toward the back of your head.

For the complete list, you can click on the link below.

Measles cases have greatly increased in parts of Canada and the United States this year.  Although the linked article below blames unvaccinated children and teens for driving the high numbers, it also notes that a recent investigation into an outbreak in a high school in a town found that about half of the cases were in teens who had received the recommended two doses of vaccine in childhood.

In other words, many of the cases were among those whom health authorities would have expected to have been protected from the measles virus.  Conventional medical wisdom states that the measles vaccine should protect against measles infection about 99 percent of the time.

CJAD Health News reports:

“So the discovery that 52 of the 98 teens who caught measles were fully vaccinated came as a shock to the researchers who conducted the investigation … If other groups confirm what the Quebec investigation found, it could mean there is a lot more susceptibility to measles in the vaccinated population than is currently being assumed”.

A new study shows that flu vaccines only prevent the flu in 1.5% of adults. Somehow, however, the media is interpreting this as meaning that flu vaccines are “60% effective”. This bizarre number comes from failing to note the difference between absolute risk and relative risk.

Without any vaccine at all, only about 2.7% of adults will get the flu in the first place.  The study showed that flu vaccines seem to drop this down to about 1.2%.  This is a roughly 60% drop, but that ignores the fact that the vaccine has no effect on 98.5% of adults.

The article’s own conclusions are also somewhat more lackluster in their tone than the media would have you believe:

“Influenza vaccines can provide moderate protection against virologically confirmed influenza, but such protection is greatly reduced or absent in some seasons. Evidence for protection in adults aged 65 years or older is lacking.”

Two years after the unnecessary panic over bird flu, Americans are still getting flu shots in greater numbers.  The shots, once regarded as an annoyance, grew to be considered a matter of urgency during the media frenzy, and statistics show they have stayed that way.

Nearly 131 million people — about 43 percent of the U.S. population — received flu vaccine last season.  There has been a steady increase over the past several years.

According to Fox News:

“More than 85 million doses of influenza vaccine are already available in doctors’ offices, public health clinics, pharmacies and retail stores. And all 50 U.S. states now allow pharmacists to administer the influenza vaccine.”

The sensations associated with nasal congestion may be related to the temperature and humidity of inhaled air — perhaps more than anything else.  Findings suggest that sensory feedback from nasal airflow contributes to the feeling of congestion, and that the ideal level of relative humidity is between 35 and 45%.

Nasal congestion is usually caused by infection or allergy, and it is one of the most common medical conditions in the United States.

According to Prevent Disease:

“The authors [of the study] speculate that temperature and humidity interact as air moves through the nasal cavity to influence nasal cooling. It is this cooling that is then detected by ‘cool sensors’ inside the nose to influence the feeling of air flow as being either easy or obstructed.”

The sensations associated with nasal congestion may be related to the temperature and humidity of inhaled air — perhaps more than anything else.  Findings suggest that sensory feedback from nasal airflow contributes to the feeling of congestion, and that the ideal level of relative humidity is between 35 and 45%.

Nasal congestion is usually caused by infection or allergy, and it is one of the most common medical conditions in the United States.

According to Prevent Disease:

“The authors [of the study] speculate that temperature and humidity interact as air moves through the nasal cavity to influence nasal cooling. It is this cooling that is then detected by ‘cool sensors’ inside the nose to influence the feeling of air flow as being either easy or obstructed.”

A study examining the effectiveness of vaccinating healthcare workers found that their influenza rates may be similar to that the general public, and they may transmit influenza to patients.

The research showed no effect from the vaccinations on laboratory-proven influenza.  Vaccinations were also shown to have no effect on either pneumonia or deaths from pneumonia.

According to the research, as reprinted on the website Green Med Info:

“We conclude there is no evidence that vaccinating [healthcare workers] prevents influenza in elderly residents in [long term care facilities].”

As flu season approaches, many plan on getting vaccines as a preventative measure.  Those who do not are often accused of being ignorant or irresponsible.  In fact, however, it is a little known secret with the medical establishment that the Cochrane Database Review, which is the gold standard for assessing the effectiveness of common medical interventions, fails to lend unequivocal scientific support to the belief that flu vaccines are safe and effective.  In fact, there is a distinct lack of conclusive evidence as to their effectiveness in toddlers, healthy adults, the elderly, and healthcare workers who care for the elderly.

In fact, some evidence shows that vaccines may actually decrease resistance to viral infection.  And even more worrisome, there has been only one safety study on inactivated flu vaccines performed in children under 2 — even though in the USA and Canada current guidelines recommend the vaccination of children starting at six months. 

According to Green Med Info:

“Sounds like naked economic incentives have trumped genuine, serious health concerns for the entire population, especially the very young, the elderly and the sick …  Amazingly, vaccine researchers and manufacturers do not have to prove the antibodies actually have affinity with the antigens they are marketed to protect us against, i.e. they do not have to prove ‘effectiveness,’ only ‘efficacy.’ This semantic trick is at the root of how the world has been deceived into accepting interventions so dangerous”.

Green tea contains antiviral components that can prevent flu infection. A recent study examined the association between green tea consumption and the incidence of influenza among schoolchildren.

More than 2000 elementary school pupils were given anonymous questionnaires about their tea consumption and illness during influenza season.  The results showed that drinking green tea, up to a certain amount, was associated with a lower rater of infection.

According to the article, as reprinted on the website Green Med Info:

“However, there was no significant association with the consumption of [more than] 5 cups [per day]. Our findings thus suggest that the consumption of 1-5 cups [per day] of green tea may prevent influenza infection in children.”

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a form of bacteria that is resistant to a number of antibiotics.  MRSA can be an especially large problem in hospitals and nursing homes, where patients with open wounds, invasive devices and weakened immune systems are at greater risk of infection.

The website Green Med Info has assembled a list of more than 30 natural substances which can be used to prevent, fight, or treat, MRSA, all backed up by scientific studies.  These include:

• Manuka Honey

• Garlic

• Thyme

• Eucaplytpus

• Cloves

To see the full list, and read about the science backing it up, you can click on the link below.

A study has revealed that the whooping cough vaccine which is currently given to babies and toddlers loses much of its effectiveness after just three years.  This is much faster than had been believed, and could help explain a recent series of outbreaks in the U.S.

Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, is a highly contagious disease that in rare cases can be fatal. It causes severe coughing accompanied by a distinctive whooping sound resulting from gasps for breath.

According to CBS News:

“Versions of the vaccine are made by two companies — Sanofi Pasteur and GlaxoSmithKline. The companies have acknowledged that the immunity conferred by the vaccine wanes over time, but they declined to comment on [the] study.”

The health benefits of ginger are astonishing.  It is more effective against bacterial staph infections than antibiotics, it can kill cancer cells, it can resolve brain inflammations, it can fight radiation damage, and it can ease or cure a variety of gut problems.

The compounds in ginger responsible for its health benefits may include shogaol, zingerone, and gingerols; however, trying to find the active ingredient in a herb and use it alone tends to diminish its effects and remove balancing components.

Gaia Health has assembled a list of ginger’s beneficial properties, which you can take a look at, at the link below.  According to that website:

“The range and severity of conditions that ginger can help is stunning, and the degree of effectiveness is even more amazing. It’s time for modern medicine to take a step back and ask itself how it got on such a wrong track. When drugs and treatments that are less effective and also full of adverse effects are used instead of first looking to a natural treatment like ginger, then surely a wrong turn has been taken.”

A new study shows that poultry farmers who adopt organic practices and stop giving their birds antibiotics significantly reduce bacterial antibiotic resistance in their flocks.  In recent years, public health experts have become increasingly concerned about germs that are becoming resistant to many commonly used antibiotics.

For the study, researchers examined 10 conventional farms and 10 farms that had recently become organic. All the farms tested positive for enterococci bacteria, but the farms that had recently become organic had significantly lower levels of resistance.

According to the Washington Post:

“For example, 67 percent of enterococcus faecalis from conventional farms were resistant to the drug erythromycin compared to 18 percent of the organisms from the organic farms. Forty-two percent of the bacteria from conventional farms were resistant to multiple drugs, compared to only 10 percent from the organic farms.”

Not only is the number of multiresistant strains of bacteria in hospitals is increasing, but new research shows that developing resistance may also increase their ability to reproduce.

Usually, the acquisition of new genes, such as those for antibiotic resistance, comes at a cost to the bacteria which is reflected in a reduction in their rate of cell division.  But new research shows that when a mutation occurs in the chromosome of a bacterium that has already incorporated a resistance-carrying plasmid, the bacteria divide faster in 10 percent of the combinations tested. Bacteria that first acquire resistance to antibiotics through mutation of their chromosome, and then gain further resistance by insertion of plasmids, show reproduction rate increases in 32 percent of combinations.

According to Science Daily:

“In 2009, the same research groups showed, for the first time, the importance of interactions between random genes in determining antibiotic resistance in bacteria. This latest study takes their initial findings a step further, by demonstrating that this is a general phenomenon, and thus may help to predict how a bacterial population will evolve after receiving a plasmid that confers resistance to a certain antibiotic.”

In related news, studies are showing that aggressive drug treatment may also be leading to the growth of drug-resistant pathogens. For example, as a result of aggressive use, chloroquine is now useless as a treatment for malaria across most of Africa.

Francis Collins, the chief of the National Institute of Health, has made the unlikely prediction that a universal flu vaccine that protects against all strains may be within reach in the next five years.  Flu viruses mutate yearly, causing small changes in surface coatings, which make old vaccines obsolete.

USA Today reports:

“Recently however, scientists have found ‘there are parts of the viral coat that don’t change … If you designed a vaccine to go after the constant part of the virus, you’d be protected against all strains,’ Collins said.”

Folks, I’d have to say that with over 200 forms of influenza A, B and C known to cause the symptoms of influenza, this projection seems absurd.

Francis Collins, the chief of the National Institute of Health, has made the unlikely prediction that a universal flu vaccine that protects against all strains may be within reach in the next five years.  Flu viruses mutate yearly, causing small changes in surface coatings, which make old vaccines obsolete.

USA Today reports:

“Recently however, scientists have found ‘there are parts of the viral coat that don’t change … If you designed a vaccine to go after the constant part of the virus, you’d be protected against all strains,’ Collins said.”

Folks, I’d have to say that with over 200 forms of influenza A, B and C known to cause the symptoms of influenza, this projection seems absurd.

Supermarket chicken meat and some hospital patients have both tested positive for the disease-causing bacteria Escherichia coli.  The bacteria in both the chickens and the patients carried the same genes conferring drug resistance, suggesting a passage from one to the other.

This is only one of several discoveries that have scientists worried that the world may soon become “a world without antibiotics.”  Only 15 antibiotics are currently in development that have a new mechanism of action.  And only two of those might work multi-drug resistant Gram-negative bacteria.

According to Dotmed News:

“… [T]he majority of antibiotic use in America goes toward treating animals … [N]early 80 percent of antibiotic use in the U.S. is with animals. In 2009 alone, nearly 29 million pounds, or 13,000 tons, of antibiotics went to livestock, according to the Food and Drug Administration.  And some scientists worry this antimicrobial glut for farm animals is creating reservoirs for resistant organisms.”

Because of these issues, some scientists at the 3rd annual World Healthcare-Associated Infection Forum in France have been recommending a radical reduction in antibiotic use.

A clinical trial has demonstrated that antimicrobial copper surfaces in intensive care units kill 97 percent of bacteria that can cause hospital-acquired infections.  The study also showed a 40 percent reduction in the risk of acquiring an infection.

The study reinforces data that research teams at three U.S. hospitals suggested four years ago — replacing heavily contaminated touch surfaces in ICUs with antimicrobial copper will control bacteria growth and cut down on infection rates.

According to Reuters:

“Hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States behind heart disease, strokes and cancer … [N]early one in every 20 hospitalized U.S. patients acquires an HAI, resulting in 100,000 lives lost each year.”

Research has shown that people who drink hot tea or coffee are less likely to carry the antibiotic-resistant bacteria known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in their noses.  Both drinks were associated with about a 50 percent relative reduction in the odds of nasal MRSA carriage, and drinking both was associated with a 67 percent reduction.

The clinical importance of this finding is not yet entirely clear — the relationship between nasal MRSA carriage and the chances of systemic infection are currently unknown.

ABC News reports:

“Previous studies have shown that tea and coffee have antimicrobial properties when applied topically … Consumption of iced tea, however, was not associated with nasal MRSA carriage. The reason is unclear, but it could be that iced tea has lower levels of polyphenolic compounds than hot tea, or that the volatile antimicrobial compounds in coffee and tea reach the nose in vapor form”.

U.S. government health officials have warned that the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea is becoming increasingly resistant to the last type of antibiotics left to treat it.

Strains of the disease that are resistant to the class of antibiotic drugs called cephalosporins have appeared in several countries.  While no cases of resistant gonorrhea have been reported in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that laboratory studies are detecting growing signs of resistance.

According to the New York Times:

“The trends … are concerning, because cephalosporin drugs are the fourth type of antibiotic used to treat gonorrhea since the 1940s. Resistance to penicillin and tetracycline occurred during the 1970s and became widespread during the early 1980s, the CDC reported. More recently, the disease became resistant to a class of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones, and in 2007 the government stopped recommending those drugs for gonorrhea treatment. That left cephalosporin drugs as the last line of defense against gonorrhea.”

During Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s short life, he suffered from many of his era’s common illnesses — such as smallpox, typhoid fever, tonsillitis and upper respiratory tract infections.  But what finally killed him at the age of 25 is still a matter of debate.

Two researchers are offering a new theory as to the cause — vitamin D deficiency. In high-latitude Austria, Mozart probably got little of the vitamin from sunlight during the winter months.  This may have put him at risk for many illnesses.

According to Discovery News:

“… [M]ost of Mozart’s infections occurred between mid-October and mid-May. That’s the time of year when people in places as far north as Austria simply can’t make enough vitamin D from sun exposure. Plenty of studies in recent years have linked adequate vitamin D levels with lower risks for influenza, pneumonia, cardiovascular disease, cancers, autoimmune diseases and more.”

The main compounds in antibiotic wipes, creams and soaps — triclosan and triclocarban — have been added to chopping boards, refrigerators, plastic lunchboxes, and mattresses in an attempt to halt the spread of microbes.

But studies show that these antibiotic chemicals are no more likely than regular soap to prevent gastrointestinal or respiratory illness. In fact, for chronically sick patients, antibiotic soaps were actually associated with increases in the frequencies of fevers, runny noses and coughs.

According to Scientific American:

“What we do know is that the influence of these wipes and salves does not end with our hands, but instead spreads from them down our drains and out into society. What happens when antibiotic soaps and suds go down drains? To find out, a group of scientists recently made artificial drains clogged with bacteria … and then subjected them to low and high doses of triclosan … Triclosan kills ‘weak’ bacteria but favors the tolerant, among them species of bacteria that eat triclosan … Triclosan may also favor lineages of bacteria that are also resistant to the oral antibiotics used in hospitals”.

When laboratory-grown gingival cells were treated with vitamin D, it boosted their production of an endogenous antibiotic.  As a result, they killed more bacteria than untreated cells.

This suggests that vitamin D can help protect your gums from the bacterial infections that lead to gingivitis and periodontitis. Periodontitis is a major cause of tooth loss and can also contribute to heart disease.

According to Science Daily:

“The new research also showed that vitamin D coordinates expression of a number of genes not previously considered to be part of the vitamin D pathway. Those genes may be involved in additional infection-fighting pathways. A more comprehensive understanding of how vitamin D carries out this regulation at the molecular level … will enable targeted therapies using vitamin D”.

The main compounds in antibiotic wipes, creams and soaps — triclosan and triclocarban — have been added to chopping boards, refrigerators, plastic lunchboxes, and mattresses in an attempt to halt the spread of microbes.

But studies show that these antibiotic chemicals are no more likely than regular soap to prevent gastrointestinal or respiratory illness. In fact, for chronically sick patients, antibiotic soaps were actually associated with increases in the frequencies of fevers, runny noses and coughs.

According to Scientific American:

“What we do know is that the influence of these wipes and salves does not end with our hands, but instead spreads from them down our drains and out into society. What happens when antibiotic soaps and suds go down drains? To find out, a group of scientists recently made artificial drains clogged with bacteria … and then subjected them to low and high doses of triclosan … Triclosan kills ‘weak’ bacteria but favors the tolerant, among them species of bacteria that eat triclosan … Triclosan may also favor lineages of bacteria that are also resistant to the oral antibiotics used in hospitals”.

A set of studies assembled on the website Green Med Info shows that acid blocking proton pump inhibitor drugs may play a role in a score of diseases, including stomach cancer. The conditions induced by these drugs may include:

• Hip fractures

• Clostridium difficile infection

• Acute gastroenteritis

• Diarrhea

• Pneumonia

According to one study collected by the site:

“The [drug] induced gastric neuroendocrine (carcinoid) ECL-cell tumor formation in 6/34 male and 8/37 female rats”.

Garlic has a truly astonishing number of health benefits.  The website Green Med Info has assembled studies that list more than 150 beneficial effects that garlic can have on your health.

The studies show that garlic:

• Inhibits cholesterol accumulation
• Reduces risk for heart attack and stroke
• May be effective against drug-resistant bacteria
• Lessens cadmium induced liver damage
• May have protective effects against cancer

According to one of the studies linked on the site:

“[A] uniquely large data set from southern European populations shows an inverse association between the frequency of use of allium vegetables and the risk of several common cancers. Allium vegetables are a favorable correlate of cancer risk in Europe.”

Garlic has a truly astonishing number of health benefits.  The website Green Med Info has assembled studies that list more than 150 beneficial effects that garlic can have on your health.

The studies show that garlic:

• Inhibits cholesterol accumulation
• Reduces risk for heart attack and stroke
• May be effective against drug-resistant bacteria
• Lessens cadmium induced liver damage
• May have protective effects against cancer

According to one of the studies linked on the site:

“[A] uniquely large data set from southern European populations shows an inverse association between the frequency of use of allium vegetables and the risk of several common cancers. Allium vegetables are a favorable correlate of cancer risk in Europe.”