If you look at the ingredients of Vitamin Water 10 (owned by Coca Cola), you might be pleased to see that it contains the natural sweetener stevia. However, you will also notice that it is loaded with crystalline fructose, sucrose, and a mysterious product called Erythritol.

Erythritol is a sugar alcohols, a sweetener that does not provide as many calories as sugar. But the reason that sugar alcohols provide fewer calories than sugar is because they are not completed absorbed into your body. For this reason, high intakes of foods containing sugar alcohols can lead to abdominal gas and diarrhea.

Also, bear in mind that while sugar alcohols are lower in calories, gram for gram, than sugar, they are not calorie-free, and if eaten in large enough quantities, the calories can be comparable to sugar-containing foods.

Some sugar alcohols are reasonable to consume in moderate quantities -- for example, xylitol doesn't spike blood sugar levels in the way that high-fructose corn syrup might, and it is anti-bacterial and actually helps prevent dental cavities.

Research suggests that the run-of-the-mill bad dreams (which may be most of them) are actually good for your brain. Bad dreams allow you to process and regulate the day's emotions during REM sleep, when dreams occur.

Such dreams are commonly filled with bizarre and possibly scary images, which allow you to dispel fears.

However, these dreams differ from nightmares, which are bad dreams that wake you up. Nightmares reveal a problem in emotional processing. While waking up from a nightmare is a relief, it may serve to reinforce the feeling that the threat was real. About 85 percent of people have one nightmare a year.

Several years ago, the NBC newsmagazine Dateline investigated infomercials and found out that doctor endorsements were considered a standard part of the package delivered by infomercial producers. More recently, Jon Marshall, D.O., was the face of Hydroxycut products, which were recently pulled from the market. Since then, he has been difficult to find by reporters seeking interviews.

Dr. Dave David has been doing product endorsements since 1992. He currently has a cosmetic surgery practice in the Boston area, and he is a member of the AMA and the Massachusetts Medical Society. When asked if he knew about AMA policy on physician endorsements and he said no.

The AMA says doctors should only endorse products that they use, and allows payment only if the infomercial or advertisement clearly and prominently states that the doctor was paid to endorse the product.

The World Health Organization is investigating a claim by Australian researcher Adrian Gibbs, who says that the swine flu virus circling the globe may have been created as a result of human error.

Gibbs, who collaborated on research that led to the development of Tamiflu, said in an interview that he intends to publish a report suggesting the new strain may have accidentally evolved in eggs scientists use to grow viruses and drugmakers use to make vaccines. Gibbs said he came to his conclusion as part of an effort to trace the virus’s origins by analyzing its genetic blueprint.

“One of the simplest explanations is that it’s a laboratory escape,” Gibbs said in an interview with Bloomberg Television today. “But there are lots of others.”

Gibbs, who has studied germ evolution for four decades, is one of the first scientists to analyze the genetic makeup of the virus.

New research suggests that taking vitamins after exercise may undo some of the beneficial effects of your workout.

Some advocate taking antioxidants like vitamin C and E to help protect the body from harmful chemical by-products it creates in breaking into a sweat. But some scientists now believe these "free radicals" may actually be good for us and even buffer against diabetes -- which means that mopping them up with antioxidants may do more harm than good.

It is thought that antioxidant vitamins prevent oxidative stress damage to your body's tissues by eliminating the free radicals that cause it. Oxidative stress has been implicated in several major diseases, including cancer and heart disease.

But a research team has claimed that free radicals may have a positive effect on the body by increasing its sensitivity to insulin, something that is lost in type 2 diabetes; this effect is blocked by antioxidant vitamins.

Reacting to the study, antioxidant expert Dr. Alexander Schauss, said that the title of the study (Antioxidants prevent health-promoting effects of physical exercise in humans) was misleading. “The primary objective of this study was to study the effect of a 4-week intensive 5-days a week exercise program on insulin sensitivity. Yet the title of the paper leads one to believe otherwise,” he said.

“This is a small gender-biased study of 40 male subjects, 25 to 35 years of age. When I read through the study for the first time I had to wonder, how could the authors have come up with such a title for their paper?”

In addition to questioning the study design, particularly with respect to assigned both trained and untrained people to an intensive exercise program, Dr. Schauss also questioned the conclusions drawn from the data. “Skeletal muscle biopsies were obtained from the right vastus lateralis muscle of study subjects. But some of the data is missing for a number of subjects, and reported as such by the authors,” said Dr. Schauss.

Dr. Schauss also noted that the authors presented no evidence of adverse effects by any of the individuals from vitamin C and E supplementation.

Changing lighting to improve health is a strategy some researchers have begun to test in a long-term care facility where daylight, which has proven health benefits, is not readily available.

The researchers removed some standard fluorescent lighting and installed new blue-white lamp prototypes. The research team hypothesized that periods of blue light, like daylight, can help regulate the sleep-wake rhythm, which is linked to the production of the hormone melatonin. Depending on the level of the hormone, people are awake or sleepy.

By increasing exposure to blue-white light during the day and yellow-white light in the evening, researchers hope to help patients regulate their sleep-wake cycles so that they are more awake during the day and more asleep at night. The project may prove to be especially beneficial for people suffering from dementia; in a recently conducted pilot study with five male patients suffering from dementia, the results showed promise in raising activity levels during daytime hours and increasing sleep at nighttime.

If changing the lighting works to improve health, the researchers plan on trying to influence public policy to include new lighting standards for healthcare facilities.

Biotechnology companies love to talk about how safe and effective their technologies are. If you’ve been paying attention to the news about genetically modified plants, you’ve probably heard corporate shills repeat at least some of the myths below. But bear in mind that myths are exactly what they are.

Myth: Genetic engineering is a continuation of traditional breeding methods

In fact, most GM crops are modified with the introduction of DNA from other species entirely. This never occurs in nature, or with traditional breeding methods.

Myth: Opponents of GM food are anti-science

Leading opponents of GM foods include the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Independent Science Panel, the U.S. Center for Food Safety, and numerous agronomic, environmental, and health scientists.

Myth: GM crops have higher yields

GM crops currently on the market do not increase yields, and in fact are not designed to. In fact, GM crops generally have lower yields.

Myth: Americans have been eating GM foods for 15 years without any health problems

How would anyone know? GM foods are not labeled in the U.S., which makes traceability impossible. There may or may not be health problems -- it is carefully designed so that no one can find out.

Myth: GM food sold in the EU, at least, is clearly labeled as such

In fact, a loophole allows meat, poultry, and dairy products from livestock fed GM ingredients to be sold without a label, and some restaurants use GM cooking oil without informing customers.

In general, GM foods are worse for the environment, worse for your health, and worse for world hunger. And those who claim otherwise are probably trying to sell you something.

Very few people can claim that they have achieved all that they are capable of. Do you have a nagging feeling that you could do much, much more with your life and career?

What is that is stopping you right now from making a much greater contribution to society? What is that is preventing you from fulfilling your potential?

1. You do not have enough belief in yourself. All successful people have enormous self-belief. This does not mean that they are arrogant, narcissistic or complacent -- on the contrary, they are self critical and push themselves hard because they know that they can achieve more. What is it that is special about you?

2. You do not measure yourself against written goals. It is hard to make progress if you have no clear goals for your life. Set yourself targets in the areas that are important to you. You can be flexible and adjust how you move forward but you must keep moving. Do you have written objectives that you track regularly?

3. You are too comfortable where you are. It is easy and natural to settle into a rut. High achievers take risks. They move out of their comfort zones. Where are you right now -- inside your comfort zone or taking risks?

4. You are lazy. Either that or you waste a lot of time every day on low value activities.  If you have clear goals but are not making progress towards them, look at your activity level. Persistence pays dividends. How high is your work rate?

5. You are not mixing with high achievers. Let’s face it -- your friends and family are really nice people but they are not challenging you to achieve more. Spend more time with high flyers and positive thinkers who understand ambition and achievement. They will encourage you and give you the direct advice you need. How much time are you spending with really successful people?

Exercises involving the tongue and soft palate may reduce the severity and symptoms in patients with moderate obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). OSA is a condition in which the throat muscles collapse during sleep, preventing oxygen from getting to the lungs. These episodes are followed by loud snoring and labored breathing, resulting in overall poor sleep quality followed by daytime drowsiness.

A recent study showed that playing the didgeridoo to train the upper airway muscles significantly ameliorated OSA syndrome severity and associated symptoms. A didgeridoo is a wind instrument used by Australian Aborigines consisting of a long thick hollowed-out wooden pipe that makes a deep reverberating sound.

With this in mind, researchers tested a set of isometric and isotonic exercises for the tongue and soft palate area derived from speech therapy training that involved suction, swallowing, chewing, breathing and speech. At the end of 3 months, they found that the exercises caused the average number of apnea events to decrease significantly, from 22.4 to 13.7 events per hour.

A new study suggests that older adults who eat diets rich in citrus fruits, leafy greens and fish oil may have a lower risk of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of vision loss among older U.S. adults.

AMD refers to gradual damage to the macula, a structure in the retina that allows for seeing fine detail. The condition affects more than 1 million Americans.

Researchers looked at the overall diet patterns of 4,000 older adults, and found that participants with diets high in omega-3 fats, vitamin C, vitamin E, zinc, lutein and zeaxanthin had a relatively lower risk of AMD. Lutein and zeaxanthin are plant pigments that act as antioxidants; the nutrients are found in broccoli, spinach and other leafy green vegetables, as well as egg yolks.

Although many believe that daydreaming is a sign of laziness, letting your mind wander can actually let the parts of the brain associated with problem-solving become active.

Researchers placed study participants inside an fMRI scanner while they performed the simple routine task of pushing a button when numbers appear on a screen. The researchers tracked subjects' attentiveness moment-to-moment through brain scans, subjective reports from subjects and by tracking their performance on the task.

Until now, scientists had thought that the brain's "default network," which is linked to easy, routine mental activity, was the only part of the brain that remains active when the mind wanders. But in the study subjects, the brain's "executive network", which is associated with high-level, complex problem-solving, also lit up. The less subjects were aware that their mind was wandering, the more both networks were activated.

Not only is your brain are very active when you daydream, bit it is in fact much more active than when you focus on routine tasks.

A leading scientists has warned that chemicals found in many food, cosmetic and cleaning products pose a real threat to male fertility. Professor Richard Sharpe, of the Medical Research Council, says that these hormone-disrupting chemicals are "feminizing" boys in the womb, leading to rising rates of birth defects, testicular cancer, and low sperm counts.

It is thought that all these conditions, collectively called Testicular Dysgenesis Syndrome (TDS), are linked to disruption of the male sex hormone testosterone. Professor Sharpe concluded that exposure to a cocktail of hormone-disrupting chemicals in the environment is likely to be at least partly to blame by blocking the action of testosterone in the womb.

His latest report highlights animal studies showing that testosterone-disrupting chemicals can cause TDS-like disorders.

Factory workers exposed to high levels of formaldehyde were more likely to die of cancers of the blood and lymphatic system than workers with low-level exposures, according to new research.

The study looked at some 14,000 deaths among more than 25,000 workers who began working before 1966 at 10 plants that produced formaldehyde and formaldehyde resin.

In the four ensuing decades, workers with the highest peak exposures to formaldehyde had a 37 percent greater risk of death from blood and lymphatic cancers.

Formaldehyde is widely used in manufacturing and as a preservative and disinfectant. The chemical has long been suspected of playing a role in the unusual number of leukemia deaths among pathologists and embalmers, who are periodically exposed to high levels.

Increased intakes of fruit and vegetables may reduce the risk of some cancers by 25 percent.

Data from more than 450,000 participants revealed that the highest average intakes of fruit and vegetables was associated with a 14 percent reduction in colorectal cancer risk, and a 24 percent reduction in the risk of colon cancer.

Over 8.8 years of follow-up, the researchers documented nearly 3,000 incident cases of colorectal cancer.