Read what the Baltimore Sun had to say about the “I’m Tired of Animal Cruelty” t-shirts and bracelets.
May 2009
The Baltimore Sun Loves “I’m Tired of Animal Cruelty” T-Shirts
Friday, May 29th, 2009
Tags: press, t-shirts
Posted by admin | Posted in Animal Lovers, Feeling the Love, News | No Comments »
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Prince Charles says delay on rainforests will have catastrophic consequences
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
Catastrophic climate change cannot be avoided unless the world’s tropical forests are saved, Prince Charles told 20 Nobel prizewinners, including Energy Secretary Steven Chu today.
In a passionate speech to the physics, chemistry, peace and literature laureates, Charles appealed to decision-makers to put a monetary value on forests and to act fast.
“The longer we all argue about minutiae and statistics, the more rainforest disappears. Solving climate change is the precondition to ensuring security and without adequately addressing tropical deforestation we cannot have an answer to climate change. It is that simple; saving the rainforests is not an option, it is an absolute necessity,” he said. Read more…
Source: Guardian.co.uk
Tags: climate change, rainforest
Posted by admin | Posted in Celebrities, Environment | No Comments » Email
FDA has an issue with Cheerios claim of lowering cholesterol
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
Federal regulators have reprimanded the maker of Cheerios, saying the company made inappropriate claims about the popular cereal’s ability to lower cholesterol and treat heart disease.
The Food and Drug Administration said in a warning letter to General Mills that language on the Cheerios box suggests the cereal is designed to prevent or treat heart disease by lowering cholesterol. Regulators say that only FDA-approved drugs are allowed to make such claims.
Tags: cholesterol
Posted by admin | Posted in Heart Disease | No Comments » Email
SUNSHINE REDUCES RISK OF HEART DISEASE AND DIABETES
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
British researchers say sunshine helps reduced heart disease and diabetes risks in older people. Dr. Oscar Franco of Warwick Medical School in England and colleagues investigated the association between vitamin D levels in the blood and the prevalence of metabolic syndrome (a risk factor for diabetes and heart disease) in 3,262 people ages 50-70 in China.
The study, published in Diabetes Care, found a high correlation between low vitamin D levels and the prevalence of metabolic syndrome. They found 94 percent of people in the study had a vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency. The results showed 42.3 percent of these people also had metabolic syndrome.
“As we get older our skin is less efficient at forming vitamin D and our diet may also become less varied, with a lower natural vitamin D content,” Franco, the study leader, said in a statement.
“Most importantly, however, the dermal production of vitamin D following a standard exposure to UVB light decreases with age because of atrophic skin changes. When we are older we may need to spend more time outdoors to stimulate the same levels of vitamin D we had when we were younger.”
Posted by Carrie Pollare
Source: UPI
Posted by admin | Posted in Diabetes, Heart Disease | No Comments » Email
Where You Live May Affect Your Cancer Diagnosis
Friday, May 22nd, 2009
Living in the city could lead to certain common cancers being diagnosed at much later stages of their development, new research has found.
A study of residents of Illinois finds that city dwellers are more likely to have doctors spot breast, colorectal, lung or prostate cancer later in the disease’s progression than their peers residing in the suburbs or rural areas. The rates for these late-stage cancers were highest in Chicago, the most densely populated and urban of the areas in the analysis, and tapered off the more rural and sparse an area’s population became, according to the findings, which were based on a review of the 1998 to 2002 Illinois State Cancer Registry.
“The concentration of health disadvantage in highly urbanized places emphasizes the need for more extensive urban-based cancer screening and education programs, especially programs targeted to the most vulnerable urban populations and neighborhoods,” the study’s authors, Sara L. McLafferty of the University of Illinois and Fahui Wang of Louisiana State University, wrote in their article, to be published in the June 15 print issue of the journal Cancer.
Age and race may account for much of the geographical difference in when colorectal and prostate cancers were diagnosed while they played a smaller role in the timing of breast cancer detection, the researchers noted. Urban blacks, for example, were much more likely to receive a late-stage diagnosis while older people living in rural areas were more likely to have their cancer diagnosed early because, it is speculated, this group is likely to visit doctors more often and receive age-related screenings for various diseases.
For lung cancer, the authors found that age and race did not explain the geographic disparities for stage of diagnosis, leading them to guess that other factors might be responsible.
Source: Forbes.com
Posted by admin | Posted in Cancer | No Comments » Email
Deaths from global warming expected to rise as Earth changes
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009Researchers think global warming already is responsible for about 150,000 deaths each year and fear that the number may double by 2030, even if we get serious about emissions reductions now.
A team of health and climate scientists from the World Health Organization and the University of Wisconsin at Madison published these findings last year in the science journal Nature. Besides killing people, global warming contributes to about 5 million human illnesses every year, the researchers found.
Some of the ways global warming hurts human health include speeding the spread of infectious diseases such as malaria and dengue fever; creating conditions that lead to potentially fatal malnutrition and diarrhea; and increasing the frequency and severity of heat waves, floods and other disasters.
Backing up WHO’s findings is a study by Stanford University civil and environmental engineer Mark Jacobson. It shows a link between rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and increased human mortality.
But global warming skeptics such as atmospheric physicist Fred Singer say cold-weather snaps are responsible for more deaths than warm weather and heat waves. Singer, the founder of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, says that because global warming would raise maximum summer temperatures modestly while raising winter minimum temperatures significantly, it “should help reduce human death rates.”
A team of Harvard researchers found otherwise.
Their July 2007 study, published in the Occupational and Environment Medicine journal, found that global warming is likely to cause more deaths in summer because of higher temperatures, but not fewer deaths in milder winters.
In analyzing weather data related to the deaths of 6.5 million people in 50 U.S. cities between 1989 and 2000, the researchers found that during two-day cold snaps there was a 1.59 percent increase in deaths because of the extreme temperatures. In similar periods of extremely hot weather, mortality rates increased 5.74 percent.
Source: The Olympian
Tags: climate change
Posted by admin | Posted in Environment | No Comments » Email
Women may be more vulnerable than men to the cancer
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
Women may be more vulnerable than men to the cancer-causing effects of smoking tobacco, according to new results reported at the European Multidisciplinary Conference in Thoracic Oncology (EMCTO), Lugano, Switzerland.
Swiss researchers studied 683 lung cancer patients who were referred to a cancer centre in St Gallen between 2000 and 2005 and found women tended to be younger when they developed the cancer, despite having smoked on average significantly less than men.
“Our findings suggest that women may have an increased susceptibility to tobacco carcinogens,” report Dr Martin Frueh and colleagues.
Dr Enriqueta Felip from Val d’Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona, Spain, conference co-chair, notes that the results support a growing awareness that smoking presents greater risks to women than men.
“In the early 1900s lung cancer was reported to be rare in women, but since the 1960s it has progressively reached epidemic proportions, becoming the leading cause of cancer deaths among women in the United States,” Dr Felip said.
“Lung cancer is not only a man’s disease, but women tend to be much more aware of other cancers, such as breast cancer,” she said. “Several case-control studies seem to suggest that women are more vulnerable to tobacco carcinogens than men.”
On the positive side, other research presented at the conference suggests that women tend to do better than men after surgery to remove lung tumors.
Irish researchers led by Dr Bassel Al-Alao studied 640 patients whose non-small-cell lung cancer was surgically removed over a 10-year period, 239 of whom were women.
They found that median survival after surgery was 2.1 years for men, and 4.7 years for women.
Source: ScienceDaily
Tags: smoking, tobacco
Posted by admin | Posted in Cancer | No Comments » Email
World’s Hungry Will Reach Record 1 Billion This Year
Monday, May 18th, 2009The number of hungry people in the world will increase to a record 1 billion this year, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization said.The total will advance by 104 million people in 2009, Jacques Diouf, director general of the Rome-based FAO, told reporters in Paris. Prices of wheat, rice and corn rose to records last year, sparking riots from Haiti to Ivory Coast.
“We have never seen so many hungry people in the world,” Diouf said.
World food prices rose in April, led by gains in oils, fats and sugar, the FAO said today. Its index of 55 foods was at 143 points last month, compared with 140 in March and 214 in June, the group said today in a report on its Web site.
Source: Bloomberg
Tags: hunger
Posted by admin | Posted in World Hunger | No Comments » Email
Pet Airline Takes to the Sky
Friday, May 15th, 2009
The first pet-only airline, specifically designed for the “safe and comfortable transportation of pets. will take to the skies July 14th. Pet Airways will depart from Teterboro, a small airport outside New York, en route to Washington, Chicago, Denver and Los Angeles.
“Seats” on a modified Beechcraft 1900, supplied under contract with Suburban Air, will cost 149 dollars each way. Approximately 50 “pawsengers” can be booked on each flight and will travel in the comfort of their kennels, stacked on custom-made shelves. Seats are removed to make way for pet carriers.
It’s estimated that 76 million cats and dogs travel each year in the United States, including two million in airplanes. And air travel is no easy ride for domestic creatures. Each year, some 5,000 animals suffer injury while being transported, according to animal rights experts.
Once you’ve decided that you’ll be jet setting with your pet, you’ll want to research different airlines to find out how they handle pet travel, including any special restrictions and requirements. Read more…
Posted by Carrie Pollare
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Tags: Animal Lovers, animal rights, animals
Posted by admin | Posted in Animal Lovers | 1 Comment » Email
Productivity Impacted by Obesity and Diabetes
Thursday, May 14th, 2009Obese workers with diabetes are less productive than their normal-weight co-workers, says a U.S. study.
Researchers surveyed 7,338 working adults about missed work time, reduced work effectiveness and impairment of daily activities. The results showed that people who were obese and had type 2 diabetes lost 11 percent to 15 percent of work time (about 5.9 hours a week) because of health problems, compared with 9 percent of work time (about 3.6 hours a week) lost by normal-weight people.
The survey also found that obese people with type 2 diabetes reported impairment during 20 percent to 34 percent of their daily activities, such as taking care of children, shopping and exercising.
The findings are in the May/June issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion. Read more…
Posted by Carrie Pollare
Source: Forbes
Tags: Diabetes, Diabetes bracelets, Diabetes jewelry
Posted by admin | Posted in Diabetes | No Comments » Email
