below summary taken from Natural News. 

The immense dangers associated with exposure to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide are becoming incontrovertible, with the latest indictment of this deadly chemical cocktail coming from a new paper published in the open access, peer-reviewed journal Entropy. A scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and her colleague found that, contrary to industry claims, the active ingredient in Roundup, glyphosate, interferes with human digestion and the biosynthesis of nutrients, which can cause a host of fatal diseases.

Most of the chronic illnesses that plague Western society, in fact, are the same residual consequences that can arise due to exposure to Roundup. This stunning fact raises some serious questions about the safety of the general food supply, much of which is derived from or contains ingredients made from genetically-modified (GM) crops that are sprayed with Roundup. In other words, when the vast majority of today's most prevalent diseases can be traced to the same long-term side effects brought about by exposure to Roundup, we have a very real public health crisis on our hands.

To arrive at this conclusion, independent scientist and consultant Anthony Samsel and MIT researcher Stephanie Seneff evaluated a plethora of scientific research on glyphosate, including data showing that the toxin disrupts microbial balance in the gut; impairs the transport of sulphate; and suppresses the normal activity of various members of the cytochrome P450 (CYP) family of enzymes, which are used by the body to break down toxins and produce blood. And in the process of their quest, these two inquiring minds determined that the negative effects of glyphosate on mammals, which includes humans, have been greatly underestimated.

"Glyphosate's inhibition of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes is an overlooked component of its toxicity to mammals," write the authors in their abstract. "Residues are found in the main foods of the Western diet, comprised primarily of sugar, corn, soy and wheat ... Consequences are most of the diseases and conditions associated with a Western diet, which include gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer's disease."

Roundup exposure linked to brain disorders, reproductive problems, and cancer

The discovery that glyphosate directly inhibits CYP enzyme activity is noteworthy, as this class of enzymes is responsible for regulating proper metabolism. When CYP enzymes are blocked from functioning as intended, in other words, a condition known as gut dysbiosis can result, which in turn can lead to inflammatory bowel disease and other chronic gastrointestinal disorders. Such disorders, as you may already know, are often linked to autism spectrum disorders and various other brain conditions.

Beyond this, glyphosate has also been shown to directly interfere with reproductive function. A known chelator, the spraying of Roundup on crops has been shown to not only deplete nutrients from crops, but also block their absorption from soil. When ingested, glyphosate and glyphosate residues can cause similar damage in humans, as it both depletes and decreases the bioavailability of important reproductive nutrients like cholesterol sulfate and zinc. Glyphosate has also been shown to cross the placental barrier and damage developing human life in mothers' wombs.

"Contrary to the current widely-held misconception that glyphosate is relatively harmless to humans, the available evidence shows that glyphosate may rather be the most important factor in the development of multiple chronic diseases and conditions that have become prevalent in Westernized societies," explain the authors in their discussion.

"While glyphosate is obviously not the only environmental toxin to contribute to these diseases and conditions, glyphosate's ability to disrupt the gut bacteria, to impair serum transport of sulfate and phosphate, and to interfere with CYP enzymes, logically progresses to this multitude of diseased states, through well-established biological processes."

You can read the study's abstract here:
http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416

You can read the complete study here:
http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416/pdf

Sources for this article include:

http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416

http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416/pdf

http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/040226_Monsanto_Roundup_glyphosate.html#ixzz2TBiDeS36

There are many ways couples can boost their fertility naturally including acupuncture, Chinese medicine, supplements, fertility yoga and others. Most couples like to explore some of these options before venturing into more expensive — and invasive — treatments. Here, we look at a few of the top natural fertility boosters:

• Stop smoking
• Avoid environmental toxins
• Get plenty of sleep
• Avoid alcohol
• Skip recreational drugs
• Eat healthy

From: South China Post 

Hutchison Whampoa's pharmaceutical unit has joined forces with Swiss food giant Nestle to develop a new drug, which they said had the potential to be the first Chinese herbal-ingredient-based drug candidate to conduct a large-scale clinical trial for registration in a major disease area.

London's Alternative Investment Market-listed Hutchison China Meditech (Chi-Med), 70.4 per cent owned by Hutchison Whampoa, formed an equally owned joint venture in November last year with Nestle's wholly owned Nestle Health Science to develop nutritional and medicinal products derived from botanical plants.

Last week, the venture said the first patient had been enrolled to begin treatment in a phase-three clinical trial for a botanical-ingredient-based oral drug aimed at treating patients with moderate ulcerative colitis, a disease of the large intestine. The trial is expected to take 24 months.

Chi-Med chief executive Christian Hogg said the firm had spent 13 years identifying 15,000 "molecular level" substances by breaking down some 1,300 herbs, and come up with a "library" of data. The substances are being screened for medical efficacy.

"Back in the early 2000s, there was a lot of talk in Asia about bringing traditional Chinese medicine to the world, but it has taken this long to do it in a scientific and methodical manner," Hogg said. "It is only now that all this effort is reaching the final stages of registration trial."

Chi-Med started discovery work in 2003 and won approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration in 2005 to go into clinical trial for the oral drug, Hogg said last week.

He would not disclose the amount of money spent so far but said the drug's efficacy and safety had been demonstrated in more than 400 patients. He also declined to divulge the budget for the stage-three trial, which will enrol more than 2,500 patients, mainly in the US and Europe.

 

http://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/1225520/hutchison-develop-herbal-drug-nestle

Most of our microbes inhabit the colon, the final loop of intestine, where they help us break down fibers, harvest calories, and protect us from micro-marauders. But they also do much, much more. Animals raised without microbes essentially lack a functioning immune system. Entire repertoires of white blood cells remain dormant; their intestines don't develop the proper creases and crypts; their hearts are shrunken; genes in the brain that should be in the "off" position remain stuck "on." Without their microbes, animals aren't really "normal."

What do we do for our microbes in return? Some scientists argue that mammals are really just mobile digestion chambers for bacteria. After all, your stool is roughly half living bacteria by weight. Every day, food goes in one end and microbes come out the other. The human gut is roughly 26 feet in length. Hammered flat, it would have a surface area of a tennis court. Seventy percent of our immune activity occurs there. The gut has its own nervous system; it contains as many neurons as the spinal cord. About 95 percent of the body's serotonin, a neurotransmitter usually discussed in the context of depression, is produced in the gut.

Additionally, the article goes on, to show a corrolation between children exposed to natural positive bacteria having a lower rate of allergies and other ailments. 

So the gut isn't just where we absorb nutrients. It's also an immune hub and a second brain. And it's crawling with microbes. They don't often cross the walls of the intestines into the blood stream, but they nevertheless change how the immune, endocrine, and nervous systems all work on the other side of the intestine wall.

Science isn't always consistent about what, exactly, goes wrong with our microbes in disease situations. But a recurrent theme is that loss of diversity correlates with the emergence of illness. Children in the developing world have many more types of microbes than kids in Europe or North America, and yet generally develop allergies and asthma at lower rates than those in industrialized nations. In the developed world, children raised in microbially rich environments—with pets, on farms, or attending day care—have a lower risk of allergic disease than kids raised in more sterile environments.

Additional concerns that modern medicine is depriving the body of microbes that it needs to properly function:

Those who study human microbial communities fret that they are undergoing an extinction crisis similar to the one afflicting the biosphere at large—and that modern medicine may be partly to blame. Some studies find that babies born by C-section, deprived of their mother's vaginal microbes at birth, have a higher risk of celiac disease, Type 1 diabetes, and obesity. Early-life use of antibiotics—which tear through our microbial ecosystems like a forest fire—has also been linked to allergic disease, inflammatory bowel disease, and obesity.

Which brings us to the question more and more scientists are asking: If our microbiota plays a role in keeping us healthy, then how about attacking disease by treating the microbiota? After all, our community of microbes is quite plastic. New members can arrive and take up residence. Old members can get flushed out. Member ratios can shift. The human genome, meanwhile, is comparatively stiff and unresponsive. So the microbiota represents a huge potential leverage point in our quest to treat, and prevent, chronic disease. In particular, the "forgotten organ," as some call the microbiota, may hold the key to addressing our single greatest health threat: obesity.

Read more of the original article here: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/04/gut-microbiome-bacteria-weight-loss?page=2

From Time Magazine: 

Reporting in the Journal of Endocrinology, researchers led by Ladan Eshkevari, assistant program director of the nurse anesthesia program at Georgetown University School of Nursing and Health Studies, mimicked chronic stress in a rat model and documented how stimulating certain body points with acupuncture can alter stress hormones.

The body’s stress response is triggered by two main pathways, one of which involves the HPA axis, or hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis, in which these areas of the brain are activated to release peptides and proteins such as corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH). They, in turn, launch the production of other hormones such as cortisol and norepinephrine that rev up the anxiety meter. Once activated, the system causes the heart to beat faster and the senses to go on alert. It also diverts the body’s energy away from background operations such as digestion to prime and fuel the muscles into a state of readiness.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/15/needle-this-study-hints-at-how-acupuncture-works-to-relieve-stress/#ixzz2Rrq2KsZj

Previous studies have suggested an inverse relationship between tree nut consumption and diabetes. Though the findings are correlational, walnuts are uniquely high in omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, which may be of particular value in Type 2 diabetes prevention.

The scientists, writing in the April issue of The Journal of Nutrition, used dietary and health data on 138,000 women participating in a large continuing study of women’s health. Beginning in 1999 they collected data on walnut consumption, and followed the women for the next 10 years. They found 5,930 cases of Type 2 diabetes.

Women who ate walnuts tended to weigh less, consume more fish and exercise more than those who did not. But researchers controlled for these and many other factors, and found that compared with women who ate no walnuts, those who consumed 8 ounces of walnuts or more a month reduced their risk for Type 2 diabetes by 24 percent.

Read more here: 

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/walnuts-for-diabetes/?ref=health

Which has the medical and pest fighting communities working on it. 

Now a group of American scientists is studying this bedbug-leaf interaction, with an eye to replicating nature’s Roach Motel.

A study published Wednesday in The Journal of the Royal Society Interface details the scientists’ quest, including their discovery of  how the bugs get hooked on the leaves, how the scientists have tried to recreate these hooks synthetically and how their artificial hooks have proved to be less successful than the biological ones.

At first glance, the whole notion seems far-fetched, said Catherine Loudon, a biologist at the University of California, Irvine, who specializes in bedbug locomotion.

“If someone had suggested to me that impaling insects with little tiny hooks would be a valid form of pest control, I wouldn’t have given it credence,” she said in an interview. “You can think of lots of reasons why it wouldn’t work. That’s why it’s so amazing.”

But even though there is no indication that the bean leaves and the bedbugs evolved to work together, the leaves are fiendishly clever in exploiting the insects’ anatomy. Like the armor covering knights in medieval times, the bedbug’s exoskeleton has thinner areas where its legs flex and its tiny claws protrude — like the spot where a greave, or piece of leg armor, ends.

“The areas where they appear to be pierceable,” Dr. Loudon said, “are not the legs themselves. It’s where they bend, where it’s thin. That’s where they get pierced.”

This folk remedy from the Balkans was never entirely forgotten. A German entomologist wrote about it in 1927, a scientist at the United States Department of Agriculture mentioned it in a paper in 1943, and it can be found in Web searches about bedbugs and bean plants.

But the commercial availability of pesticides like DDT in the 1940s temporarily halted the legions of biting bugs. As their pesticide-resistant descendants began to multiply from Manhattan to Moscow, though, changing everything from leases to liability laws, the hunt for a solution was on.

The first task was to determine exactly how the hooks — the technical name is trichomes — worked. The process was viewed through an electron microscope, Dr. Loudon said. “The foot comes down onto the surface, but as it’s lifting up, it’s catching on these hooks,” she said. “The point is pointing down. So all of their legs get impaled.”

“And as soon as one leg gets caught,” she added, “they are rapidly moving legs around and try to get away on the surface. That’s when they get multiply impaled.”

Dr. Loudon and her co-authors — Megan W. Szyndler and Robert M. Corn from Irvine and Kenneth F. Haynes and Michael F. Potter of the University of Kentucky — then set out to mimic the mechanism.

Using a casting process similar to one a sculptor might choose, the scientists replicated, with polymers from different epoxies, the geometry of the trichomes, the sharp point on their tips and their flexibility and strength. Sometimes the tips of the hooks broke off during the molding process, resulting in a hybrid of biological and fabricated materials.

On the natural leaves, bugs were snagged, on average, after six steps, or locomotory cycles. (In one cycle, each of the insect’s six legs moves once.) Once stuck, they tried to free themselves, but they usually ended up just flailing in place around the impaled limb.

Read more: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/science/earth/how-a-leafy-folk-remedy-stopped-bedbugs-in-their-tracks.html?ref=science&_r=1&

Local doctors say it's not an old wives' tale. When barometric pressure changes, those with arthritis, sports injuries or hip, shoulder or knee replacements commonly feel an ache.

Dr. Paul Meli, an orthopedic surgeon based in Fort Lauderdale, injured his shoulder water-skiing about 30 years ago. When it stiffens up, he knows rain is coming. "It definitely gets sore and stiff on a lousy day," he said.

Why can bones feel rain? According to doctors, most bones are covered by a thin layer of tissue containing nerve endings. When barometric pressure falls, sometimes an indication that rain is approaching, the bones ever so slightly expand, stretching that layer and causing pain.

Because teeth don't have this layer of nerves, they usually don't ache when weather changes. However, softer tissues of the body also expand and contract with changes in pressure, which is why scars and sports injuries unrelated to bones also can hurt, said Dr. Nabil El Sanadi, chief of emergency medicine for Broward Health System.

Other conditions, such as migraines, sinus headaches and some nerve disorders, also can be predictors of rain. Some people can smell the increase in humidity in the air before rain. And some can sense the temperature is going to plunge because their hands and feet get cold -- the result of slowed-down circulation, El Sanadi said.

"Sudden changes in temperature or pressure actually magnifies discomfort," he added.

Meli, who specializes in hip, knee and shoulder replacements, said many of his patients can predict rain after having a half-pound of metal surgically implanted in their bodies. "The metal conducts cold more than the tissues of the human body," he said. "People come here all the time and tell me it's going to rain."

El Sanadi, who had surgery on his right knee, said changes in pressure, temperature and humidity -- all precursors of a good downpour -- cause him discomfort.

"I can't always predict what the weather will be, but I can tell you when it's cold or humid outside before I get out of bed," he said.

Robin Terrill, a weather spotter who is trained to anticipate severe storms and tornadoes, said he had both his shoulder rotator cuffs repaired, a couple of lower-back surgeries and a broken tibia in his right leg.

"The weather plays an important role on how I feel," said Terrill, 61, of Fort Lauderdale. "When my shoulders click, I know that it is going to rain."

Maurice Dake, of Lantana, another spotter, said he can't predict atmospheric changes by way of his bones. But he said animals can sometimes anticipate earthquakes.

"You'll see barnyard animals running around in circles and doing strange things just before an earthquake," he said. "It probably has to do with change in barometric pressure."

The Farmer's Almanac concurs that people can feel rain in their bones. It says since the 1960s, medical researchers have found a "genuine connection" between increased pain and cold, wet weather.

"While the effect is most commonly linked to arthritis sufferers, many have also reported feeling increased pain from nerve disorders, recently healed fractures, migraines, toothaches, corns, and even scars, when the weather was about to change," according to this year's edition.

Timothy E. O'Connor, spokesman for the Palm Beach County Health Department, said he's skeptical that people can predict rain based on their medical conditions. And he has an arthritic knee.

"It doesn't predict for me. It tells me what I shouldn't have done, like over-dancing at a wedding on St. Patrick's Day," he said. "I can't do the jig like I used to."

On the other hand, he said, "barometric pressure changes during a high tide and full moon definitely affect pregnant women. A lot of hospitals see early deliveries during that time."

Forecasters at the National Weather Service in Miami have an arsenal of high-tech tools, such as radar, satellites and computer models to develop official forecasts. Do some of them rely on their innards to augment their predictions?

"Not that I know of," said meteorologist Robert Molleda. "But it's possible it plays an intangible role."

http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=18274&Section=DISEASE

Contrary to midwives, doulas have no medical role in the birthing suite and only offer advice when explicitly asked. But she said her real focus is delivering effective child birth education before the big event.

"I used to be a doula that just turned up for the birth, but I realised after the first 10 years - which I call my 'apprentice years' - that really the focus and effort is about the work I do prior to the birth."

The concept of an experienced woman attending birth is not new, she said, and can be found in various indigenous cultures around the world. She said doulas used to be called god sibs or montrice.

"Aboriginal women had them forever, known as Charrlies and in Japan they are called Josanp," she said.

"It's not a new thing but has become en vogue because there is such a high intervention rate and the medical model is so powerful in the hospitals that women's births have been seen as a medical procedure and not something that's a natural process".

Gaby, who describes herself as "a guardian of natural birth" is very passionate about helping women have the most natural birthing experience they can have and take away their fears and apprehensions.

Gaby said she believes what she calls "the cascade of intervention" was a factor explaining the rising rate of caesarean deliveries in Australia.

"Women need to know that the smallest amount of intervention can snowball. A lot of women end up with caesareans because they were induced.

A major focus for Gaby is tackling the trend of women electing for caesarean births, which is also on the rise.

"It's really sad that in our society women are so terrified of birth that they are willing to go through major surgery.

"They miss out on a beautiful experience. It's the most divine experience a woman can go through.

She said while most partners are welcoming her into the delivery suite to take the pressure off and provide a calm and relaxed environment through her experience, she sometimes faced hostility from medical staff.

"In a lot of the private hospitals here in Perth the midwives really are hostile to me," she said.

"They see me as a threat. They even got to a point where you have to sign a consent form that you won't speak to your client, or encourage them or give them advice at any time."

Gaby found that her skills are gaining acceptance by the medical profession, and her new book A Labour Of Love II proudly features a foreword written by Perth's Professor Fiona Stanley.

With the new book, the sequel to her first birthing guide A Labour Of Love, Gaby aims to "empower through knowledge to give women the birth they want".

"If you don't know what your choices are, you don't have any," she said.

"Should you need medical interventions, you can't feel disappointed if you have put everything into your mental and physical preparations. People spend more money on their cot, their prams and their baby car seats etc than what they do on education. Birth education is invaluable."

Read more: http://www.watoday.com.au/national/health/the-rise-of-the-doula-20130408-2hhg8.html#ixzz2QeUOD52L