Scientists have shown scratching helps relieve an itch by blocking activity in spinal cord nerve cells that transmit the sensation to the brain. However, the effect only seems to occur when an itch is actually present -- scratching at other times makes no difference.

A new study on primates shows that scratching the skin blocks activity of nerve cells in the spinothalamic tract during itchiness, preventing the spinal cord from transmitting signals from the scratched area of skin to the brain.

This information could eventually lead to ways to relieve chronic itch effectively for the first time. However, more information is likely still needed about the chemistry underpinning the effect.

Supplements of the Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota may ease symptoms of anxiety in people with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), according to new research.

Two months of supplementation with the bacterial strain was associated with a decrease in anxiety symptoms. The research is still preliminary, and raises many questions regarding the mechanism of action.

Researchers recruited 39 CFS patients and randomly assigned them to receive daily supplements of either Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota (24 billion colony forming units) or a placebo for two months. At the end of the study, a significant reduction in the symptoms of anxiety was recorded in the Lactobacillus group.

Steps have been taken to start legal action against the Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) and the Lorain County Health Department for violating the constitutional rights of John and Jacqueline Stowers of LaGrange, Ohio.

The Stowers operate an organic food cooperative called Manna Storehouse. ODA and Lorain County Health Department agents forcefully raided their home and seized the family's personal food supply, cell phones and personal computers.

On the morning of December 1, 2008, law enforcement officers forcefully entered the Stowers' residence without first announcing they were police or stating the purpose of the visit. With guns drawn, they swiftly and immediately moved to the upstairs of the home, where ten children were in the middle of a home-schooling lesson. Officers then moved Jacqueline Stowers and her children to their living room, where they were held for more than six hours.

There has never been a complaint filed against Manna Storehouse or the Stowers related to the quality or healthfulness of the food distributed through the co-op.

A piece in the New England Journal of Medicine by Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, and Thomas Frieden, the health commissioner for the city of New York, support the concept of a penny-per-ounce excise tax on sugar-sweetened soft drinks.

They argue that such a tax could cut of these beverages consumption by 10 percent. The proceeds, the article says, could be used to promote or even subsidize more healthful foods whose boosters lack the marketing resources of Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

According to the authors, "a sales tax on sugared drinks would generate considerable revenue, and as with the tax on tobacco, it could become a key tool in efforts to improve health."

The average American consumes 400 calories a day from beverages, and evidence suggests that your body doesn't compensate for liquid calories by consuming fewer calories later, as it does with calories in solid form.

From the award-winning documentary, "Playing For Change: Peace Through Music," comes the first of many "songs around the world" being released independently. This amazing version of “Stand by Me” brought a smile to our faces, and we hope it will do the same for you.

Use our Email to a Friend feature (in the upper right corner of this page) to email this "smile-a-gram" to all of your friends and loved ones who appreciate creative arts and especially music!

An inflammatory factor already linked to several diseases, including pulmonary disease, lung cancer, and arthritis, may also be responsible for the insulin resistance that comes with obesity, according to a new study.

Researchers have found that the inflammatory chemokine known as CXCL5 rises and falls along with obesity and weight loss in humans. They also found evidence tying the inflammatory factor, which is secreted at high levels by fat tissue, to insulin resistance in mice.

Treatments designed to block CXCL5 were found to improve the animals' sensitivity to insulin.

CXCR5 affect a variety of cells including muscle cells, cells that line blood vessel walls and cells in the lung and intestine. This means that increased CXCL5 circulating levels, as observed in obesity, could also lead to other problems such as atherosclerosis and other inflammatory diseases.

Three new studies show that most adults have unexpectedly large deposits of a calorie-burning type of fat. Biologists once thought brown fat disappeared after infancy, but its persistence suggests a potential new strategy to fight obesity.

In addition to eating less and exercising more, people may one day be able to stimulate their bodies to get rid of stored energy purely as heat.

At the moment, the only safe way to activate brown fat is to stay chilly, right at the verge of shivering, for prolonged periods. This causes your body to burn the fat for warmth. However, researchers hope to eventually find a less uncomfortable way exploit this ancient adaptation.

Vitamins B6, B12, and folic acid may reduce the frequency, severity and disability of migraines, according to new research. Daily vitamin supplements were found to produce a two-fold reduction in migraine disability.

About 12 to 15 percent of people suffer from migraines, with twice as many women as men affected. The headaches are sometimes preceded by flashes of light, blind spots, tingling in the arms or legs, or anxiety. Suffers generally experience a pounding sensation in one side of the head and many undergo nausea, vomiting, and extreme sensitivity to light and noise. The symptoms are often severe and debilitating.

Scientists recruited 52 people diagnosed with migraine. The participants were randomly assigned to receive either vitamin supplements or a placebo for six months. The supplements were associated with a reduction in the prevalence of migraine disability from 60 percent at the start of the study to 30 percent after 6 months. No reduction was observed in the placebo group.

Reductions in the frequency of the headache and the severity of the pain were also observed in people in the B vitamin group, while no such changes were observed in the placebo group.

According to a poll, most patients never talk about price when getting a drug prescription from their doctor. This means that very few confront the actual price of their drugs before it's time to pay at the pharmacy.

Consumers Union is urging doctors and patients to factor in the price of drugs when deciding on treatments. The group notes that generics are in many cases just as effective and safe, for the fraction of the price.

The poll of roughly 2,000 adults showed that just 4 percent discussed price when getting a drug prescription from their doctor.

Folks, that’s a whopping 96 percent of prescription recipients who have not discussed the cost of the prescribed drug with their doctor. It’s rare to find a health market statistic so overwhelmingly one-sided.

When Dr. Bruce Psaty published an article the use of beta-blockers to treat high blood pressure, he and his family were invited to a first-class resort, where he presented the results at a sponsored conference. He agreed to help develop a set of slides on beta-blockers, and soon found himself suggesting that the drug company's studies be featured, in part because he felt "a kind of social duty to reciprocate both the kindness and the investment made by the sponsor in the slide set."

Psaty’s story illustrates the problem of conflicts of interest in the medical world. Subtle conflicts of interest often color decision making, even though most people -- especially doctors -- think they are immune.

Several states including Massachusetts, Minnesota and Vermont are tightening restrictions on gifts to doctors in the hopes of preventing such conflicts. But while such laws may curb some financial conflicts, a bigger challenge will be addressing the influence drugmakers have over company-funded research geared towards supporting the safety and effectiveness of the drugs they make.

British babies could be routinely vaccinated against Hepatitis B, a move that could anger parents concerned about the side-effects of the injections.

Government health experts are considering whether to add the vaccine to the immunizations already given to children at eight weeks. This would create a six-in-one vaccine designed to immunize against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio and Hib disease.

But the move will likely cause corned among parents already worried that children are given too many vaccines, many of which have been linked to potentially harmful side-effects. Children in the UK are already given 32 vaccines before they even reach school age. The addition of the Hepatitis B immunization would bring the total of vaccines to 33.

A study has found those vaccinated against Hepatitis B are at increased risk of multiple sclerosis.

If you want to know what a goal is, it can be defined in just 5 words:  “A dream with a deadline.” Goal setting is the single most important life skill that over 97 percent of people never learn how to do properly.

In Brian Tracy’s book Goals -- How to Get Everything You Want Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible, he claims that “Less than 3 percent of adults have clear written goals with plans on how to achieve them.” The key word is written. Those who earn most of the money, who are the best athletes and who are the top producers in any type of business have written goals.

Go to Google and you’ll find hundreds of resources on the goal-setting and goal-achievement.  Here are 3 that come highly recommended:

1) Book: Double Your Income Doing What You Love by Raymond Aaron

2) Pictures: Goals achievement images on Google

3)  Website: Setting Goals 101 has lots of free resources

If you’ve read this far and you still are resisting writing down your goals or “dreams with deadlines,” then think about making your 101 Goals List. Jack Canfield writes about this on page 56 of The Success Principles. 

What To Do Now: Click here to get the 101 Goals Generator which helps your mind start thinking of twelve different categories goal-setting and goal-achievement to focus on.

Categories include:  Places to Visit, Skills to Learn, Things to Own, Financial Milestones and Risks to Take, just to name a few.  What’s most important is not to list your 101 as fast as possible, but to get started as fast as possible.

From 2001 to 2004, Washington, D.C. experienced what may have been the worst lead contamination of city water on record. Tens of thousands of homes had leaded water coming out of their taps -- in the worst cases, the tap water contained enough lead to be classified as hazardous waste.

But a 2004 CDC report claimed to find that the water contamination "might have contributed a small increase in blood lead levels." The study has been influential. Officials in New York and Seattle have used the CDC report as justification for not aggressively responding to high levels of lead in their water, and other cities have cited the report to dispel concerns about lead in tap water.

But the results of thousands of blood tests that measured lead contamination in children were missing from the report. What’s more, the CDC discovered in 2007 that many young children living in D.C. homes with lead pipes were poisoned by drinking water and suffered ill effects, such as speech and balance problems, difficulty with learning, and hyperactivity. Yet the health agency did not publicize the new findings or alert public health authorities.

CDC scientists and press representatives did not respond to requests for an explanation about why the results were not widely publicized.

The number of food-borne illnesses in the United States has for the most part remained stagnant over the past three years, but in some cases it has been on the upswing. This gives new urgency to efforts to reform the nation's food safety system, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

"We need greater effort at all stages of movement of food in the food chain from farm to table," said Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the CDC's Division of Food-borne, Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases.

Preliminary 2008 data show that infection rates for five food-borne illnesses exceeded national goals set by the CDC. In the case of salmonella, the national goal in 2008 was seven illnesses for every 100,000 people, but the actual number was 16 -- more than twice as much. The data did not even include the ongoing national outbreak of salmonella illness linked to peanut products that began in late 2008.

Many skin cancer screenings are held during May, which is Melanoma/Skin Cancer Detection and Prevention month. To find a free skin cancer screening in your area, you can click on the link below. You should note that skin cancer screenings tend to be rapid and are not a substitute for a full skin examination by your own dermatologist or physician.

This makes May a good time to spread the word that, despite the persistent myth, healthy UVB exposure is not the cause of melanoma. This is why an epidemic of melanoma has broken out among indoor workers. In fact, indoor workers get three to nine times LESS solar UV exposure than outdoor workers get, yet only indoor workers have increasing rates of melanoma -- and the rates have been increasing since before 1940.

In fact, UVB light, which causes your skin to produce vitamin D, is protective against cancer.

An inflammatory factor already linked to several diseases, including pulmonary disease, lung cancer, and arthritis, may also be responsible for the insulin resistance that comes with obesity, according to a new study.

Researchers have found that the inflammatory chemokine known as CXCL5 rises and falls along with obesity and weight loss in humans. They also found evidence tying the inflammatory factor, which is secreted at high levels by fat tissue, to insulin resistance in mice.

Treatments designed to block CXCL5 were found to improve the animals' sensitivity to insulin.

CXCR5 affect a variety of cells including muscle cells, cells that line blood vessel walls and cells in the lung and intestine. This means that increased CXCL5 circulating levels, as observed in obesity, could also lead to other problems such as atherosclerosis and other inflammatory diseases.

Scientists have shown scratching helps relieve an itch by blocking activity in spinal cord nerve cells that transmit the sensation to the brain. However, the effect only seems to occur when an itch is actually present -- scratching at other times makes no difference.

A new study on primates shows that scratching the skin blocks activity of nerve cells in the spinothalamic tract during itchiness, preventing the spinal cord from transmitting signals from the scratched area of skin to the brain.

This information could eventually lead to ways to relieve chronic itch effectively for the first time. However, more information is likely still needed about the chemistry underpinning the effect.

Brazilian food scientists have invented probiotic ice cream.  The product apparently looks and tastes like ice cream, but supposedly replaces unhealthy bacteria in your intestines with friendlier types.

But be careful -- freezing will likely kill off most of those friendly bacteria.  Frozen yogurt, for example, has fewer probiotic bacteria than regular yogurt.

When this reaches the market, it’s likely that the manufacturers will advertise the number of bacteria they put into the ice cream, but won’t say a word about how few survived freezing and storage.

Here’s the latest craziness -- drugs used to treat hyperactive children, such as Ritalin, are being recommended as a means to help solve the obesity crisis.

Dr. Lance Levy of Toronto studied severely obese patients who had failed to lose weight in 10 years. Some were prescribed anti-hyperactivity drugs including Adderall, a type of amphetamine, and a Ritalin-style pill called Concerta. After a year of treatment, those given the drugs had lost an average of 12 percent of their total body weight.

Dr. Levy claimed it was because many obese people have undiagnosed ADHD.  I suspect the fact that one of the drugs given was an amphetamine may have more to do with it.  This is pure insanity that in no way, shape, or form deals with the root causes of obesity.  It’s true that if you take amphetamines, you might end up slimmer -- but you certainly won’t end up healthier.

1. Exercise. You can't exercise to spot reduce, but it will help you shed excess pounds -- and often, the fat your body sheds first comes from your belly. Abdominal crunches can help tone muscles to make your stomach look flatter, but to truly get rid of fat, you have to burn it off through aerobic activity.

2. Be a mindful eater. Researchers are currently investigating whether really paying attention to what you eat can help redistribute body fat from your waist to your hips. Plenty of studies, though, have shown that mindful eating can help with weight loss efforts.

3. Get adequate amounts of sleep. Too little sleep (less than six hours) or too much (more than eight hours) results in an excess production of the stress hormone cortisol. This hormone promotes the storage of fat in the belly.

4. Reduce stress. Penciling in 15 minutes a day for relaxation can also lower your cortisol levels, helping you shed belly fat. Deep breathing, a stroll outdoors under the blossoming trees, or a bubble bath can help you leave the world behind.

The number of food-borne illnesses in the United States has for the most part remained stagnant over the past three years, but in some cases it has been on the upswing. This gives new urgency to efforts to reform the nation's food safety system, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

"We need greater effort at all stages of movement of food in the food chain from farm to table," said Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the CDC's Division of Food-borne, Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases.

Preliminary 2008 data show that infection rates for five food-borne illnesses exceeded national goals set by the CDC. In the case of salmonella, the national goal in 2008 was seven illnesses for every 100,000 people, but the actual number was 16 -- more than twice as much. The data did not even include the ongoing national outbreak of salmonella illness linked to peanut products that began in late 2008.

Many skin cancer screenings are held during May, which is Melanoma/Skin Cancer Detection and Prevention month. To find a free skin cancer screening in your area, you can click on the link below. You should note that skin cancer screenings tend to be rapid and are not a substitute for a full skin examination by your own dermatologist or physician.

This makes May a good time to spread the word that, despite the persistent myth, healthy UVB exposure is not the cause of melanoma. This is why an epidemic of melanoma has broken out among indoor workers. In fact, indoor workers get three to nine times LESS solar UV exposure than outdoor workers get, yet only indoor workers have increasing rates of melanoma -- and the rates have been increasing since before 1940.

In fact, UVB light, which causes your skin to produce vitamin D, is protective against cancer.

Supplements of the Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota may ease symptoms of anxiety in people with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), according to new research.

Two months of supplementation with the bacterial strain was associated with a decrease in anxiety symptoms. The research is still preliminary, and raises many questions regarding the mechanism of action.

Researchers recruited 39 CFS patients and randomly assigned them to receive daily supplements of either Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota (24 billion colony forming units) or a placebo for two months. At the end of the study, a significant reduction in the symptoms of anxiety was recorded in the Lactobacillus group.

Steps have been taken to start legal action against the Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) and the Lorain County Health Department for violating the constitutional rights of John and Jacqueline Stowers of LaGrange, Ohio.

The Stowers operate an organic food cooperative called Manna Storehouse. ODA and Lorain County Health Department agents forcefully raided their home and seized the family's personal food supply, cell phones and personal computers.

On the morning of December 1, 2008, law enforcement officers forcefully entered the Stowers' residence without first announcing they were police or stating the purpose of the visit. With guns drawn, they swiftly and immediately moved to the upstairs of the home, where ten children were in the middle of a home-schooling lesson. Officers then moved Jacqueline Stowers and her children to their living room, where they were held for more than six hours.

There has never been a complaint filed against Manna Storehouse or the Stowers related to the quality or healthfulness of the food distributed through the co-op.

A piece in the New England Journal of Medicine by Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, and Thomas Frieden, the health commissioner for the city of New York, support the concept of a penny-per-ounce excise tax on sugar-sweetened soft drinks.

They argue that such a tax could cut of these beverages consumption by 10 percent. The proceeds, the article says, could be used to promote or even subsidize more healthful foods whose boosters lack the marketing resources of Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

According to the authors, "a sales tax on sugared drinks would generate considerable revenue, and as with the tax on tobacco, it could become a key tool in efforts to improve health."

The average American consumes 400 calories a day from beverages, and evidence suggests that your body doesn't compensate for liquid calories by consuming fewer calories later, as it does with calories in solid form.

From the award-winning documentary, "Playing For Change: Peace Through Music," comes the first of many "songs around the world" being released independently. This amazing version of “Stand by Me” brought a smile to our faces, and we hope it will do the same for you.

Use our Email to a Friend feature (in the upper right corner of this page) to email this "smile-a-gram" to all of your friends and loved ones who appreciate creative arts and especially music!