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PHOTOS: Beautiful Rotten Food

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A fair warning, Austrian artist Klaus Pichler's photographic still life series of rotting food isn't for the faint of heart.

The project, titled "One Third," takes its name from the 1.3 billion tons of food -- roughly a third of the total world supply -- that regularly goes to waste according to a 2011 study by the United Nations. At the same time, 925 million people worldwide live with the threat of starvation.

The images, beautifully composed but often stomach turning, are accompanied by statistics regarding the food's origin, time of harvest, means of transportation, distance traveled and its carbon footprint.

In a statement accompanying the work, Pichler writes about the disparity in food waste between industrialized and non-industrialized nations.

Unsurprisingly, the worldwide percentage of food waste per person varies greatly: In Europe and North America, each consumer wastes between 95 and 115 kilograms of food, whilst only between six and 11 kilograms of edible goods are discarded per person in Sub Saharan Africa and South/South East Asia.

Check out more of Pichler's "One Third" series on his website, and his other work through the Anzenberger Gallery in Vienna, Austria.

Click through the below gallery to check out Pichler's work -- and what foods look like long after their expiration dates.


Could These Veggies Boost Breast Cancer Survival?

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In another boon for broccoli, researchers have found that eating the green vegetable may improve outcomes after a breast cancer diagnosis. A new study points to the positive role that all cruciferous veggies -- like cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kale and cabbage -- can play in improving survival and recurrence rates associated with breast cancer.

In the study, presented Tuesday at the American Association for Cancer Research's annual meeting, researchers looked at data from more than 4,800 breast cancer survivors in China who had been diagnosed with breast cancer between 2002 and 2006. The women's cancers ranged from stage 1 to stage 4.

Overall, researchers with the Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center and Shanghai Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that higher consumption of cruciferous vegetables in the years following diagnosis was tied to better outcomes. Women who ate the most reduced by 62 percent their risk of both overall mortality and breast cancer-specific mortality, as compared to women who consumed the least. Those who consumed the most vegetables also reduced by 35 percent the risk of their breast cancer coming back. Researchers compared relative quantities of the vegetables in women's diets and have not determined at what quantities the beneficial effects are derived.

"Cruciferous vegetables, such as cauliflower, cabbage, bok choy, turnips and broccoli, contain high amounts of glucosinolates, which are hydrolyzed to bioactive compounds including isothiocyanates (ITCs) and indoles," said Sarah Nechuta, a research fellow in Vanderbilt University's epidemiology center and a researcher on the new study, who explained that she and her fellow researchers attempted to control for other factors that might influence women's outcomes, including demographics, exercise and additional dietary behaviors.

"These bioactive compounds have many anti-cancer properties that may influence cancer development, progression and survival," Nechuta added.

This is not the first time that the cabbage family has been tied to decreased breast cancer risk.

A 2008 study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which also focused on Chinese women, linked consumption of cabbage and white turnips to lower breast cancer risk.

"An association has also been established with colon cancer and prostate cancer," explained Emily Ho, an associate professor in nutrition and exercise sciences at Oregon State University. "There is pretty strong evidence from studies that compounds found in cruciferous vegetables may have cancer-fighting properties."

The new study is, however, among the first to look at the role that cruciferous vegetables can play after a cancer diagnosis.

But Ho cautioned that many questions about the connection between vegetables and cancer risk remain.

"There are still a lot of unanswered questions about what, exactly, is in [cruciferous vegetables] that is protective," she said. Researchers do not understand exactly what the underlying mechanisms are and what impact these vegetables may have at the tissue level, she said. Furthermore, research has not yet made it clear whether supplements could have the same potential effect as vegetables themselves seem to have.

Nechuta also cautioned that it should not necessarily be assumed that similar results would be achieved in the United States, where the types of cruciferous vegetables women eat may be different than those in China.

"Commonly consumed cruciferous vegetables in China include turnips, Chinese cabbage [or] bok coy and greens, while broccoli and brussels sprouts are the more commonly consumed cruciferous vegetables in the United States and other Western countries," Nechuta said in a statement. In an email to The Huffington Post, she said that future studies with direct measurements of various bioactive compounds are needed in order to understand the possible link between cruciferous vegetables and breast cancer intake.

In the meantime, Ho said people would do well to follow fruit and vegetable consumption guidelines. The American Cancer Society, for example, recommends that individuals consume at least two and a half cups of fruits and vegetables per day to lower cancer risk, pointing out that those foods with the most color -- which are dark green, red, yellow and orange -- provide the most nutrients.

"If you try and include cruciferous vegetables as some of those servings," Ho said. "It probably won't hurt and it certainly might help."

Infidelity Isn't Just For Men: 7 Reasons Why Women Cheat

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By Diana Rodriguez; Medically reviewed by Lindsey Marcellin, MD, MPH

When it comes to infidelity, there are a number of myths and misconceptions. First of all, infidelity isn't limited to sex or physical contact. And second, men aren't the only ones who cheat.

Women also seek comfort and satisfaction (in and out of the bedroom) outside of their marriages, and almost as frequently as men do, says Sarah Cook Ruggera, MFT, a marriage and family therapist in San Diego. It's estimated that the number of men who cheat on their wives is up to 60 per cent. But as many as 55 per cent of women also cheat, says Ruggera, a number that's climbing and today is likely on a par with men's statistics.

It's also important to clarify that you don't have to have sex to commit infidelity. Infidelity can be "some kind of inappropriate intimacy outside their relationship, be it emotional or physical," explains Ruggera. "Most affairs are not always about sex."

Related Story: Why Men Cheat -- And How To Stay Faithful

SEE: Why do women cheat? For these reasons -- story continues below:

Cyber-Cheating

For instance, cyber affairs are allowing computers to invade the bedroom in more ways than one. “Cheating” can occur online, without ever having sex or even seeing the other person, but it's certainly an act of unfaithfulness. A recent study found that while a man didn't consider an online affair to be cheating because there was no physical contact, his wife disagreed. During the course of therapy to help repair the marriage, other problems gnawing away at the couple before the online affair surfaced, such as a lack of communication, being unhappy with their sex life, and simply feeling bored. But the study also indicated that people may cheat (at least online) without those marital problems.

Related Story: Celebrities and Sex Addiction

Something Is Missing

Why are so many men and women willing to break their marriage vows? Some women who cheat have some type of mental illness or personality disorder. But primarily why women cheat is because there is an emotional disconnect or feeling of neglect, says Ruggera. "In many cases of infidelity, it is about feeling emotionally connected to someone."

Women and men cheat because they're simply missing something in their relationship. When women start to feel disconnected and distant, loneliness and depression can set in. Eventually, they may look outside their relationship for someone who can meet their emotional and physical needs and ease their loneliness.

What Issues Look Like

Relationship problems may trigger infidelity and explain why women cheat. The reasons may include:

  • To get out of a bad relationship. Women who cheat may want to escape their relationship, and not know how to do it. Sometimes it's too hard to say you want out, so women cheat instead. Infidelity "is a way of sabotaging the relationship because for whatever reason the woman is already unhappy, dissatisfied, disgruntled, and wants out," says Ruggera.
  • To find that spark. With money worries, exhaustion, bills, and kids, the spark that kept a relationship hot at first can often fizzle out. "Romance can get lost in the day-to-day routine of life," says Ruggera. Even if they're not on the hunt for an affair, some women may become seduced by the temptation of the “high” that comes with any new relationship.
  • An unsatisfying sex life. If the sex isn't satisfying and a woman isn't feeling emotionally fulfilled in her relationship, "her interest may wander toward other men," says Ruggera. A woman can also start to feel like she's unattractive or her partner doesn't desire her if their sex life is slow.
  • Revenge and retaliation. If a husband has cheated, sometimes a woman may cheat to get back at him. It's an effort to get the husband to feel "the hurt, anger, and jealousy that she felt," says Ruggera.

Related Story: Can A Marriage Survive Infidelity?

Problems Within

Low self-esteem can be another reason why women cheat. "Gaining attention from men can boost their self-confidence and self-esteem," says Ruggera. "Compliments, phone calls, flowers, and notes from another man are flattering and make a woman feel more attractive and wanted."

Another reason why women — and men — cheat is that they do what they know. If they saw infidelity in their parents' relationship, both men and women may follow those patterns in their own lives.

Women vs. Men

Women who cheat do so for many of the same reasons that men do -- attraction issues, unsatisfying sex life, unhappy relationship, feelings of neglect, looking for an ego boost, and a disconnect in the marriage.

"Women are not that different from men when it comes to cheating, except that they are more apt to fall in love with their new partner," says Ruggera. The reason is hormonal -- oxytocin, a hormone, stimulates the brain to give a woman that rush from being in love.

Related Story: Infidelity Might Be In The Genes

Perhaps because of that, women are also more likely to care about the emotional aspects of infidelity when their partners cheat. In a recent study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, female victims of cheating asked about sex in just 29 per cent of cases but about love in 71 per cent of cases, compared with 57 per cent and 43 per cent of cases, respectively, for men.

Working on Intimacy

If you want to protect your relationship from the temptation (and destruction) of infidelity, know that it needs to be nurtured and cared for — water it, feed it, give it love and sunlight to watch it grow and blossom.

Related Story: Are You Having a Midlife Crisis?

"The most effective way to keep a relationship or marriage healthy is to work on it every day and evaluate it on a regular basis," suggests Ruggera, adding that if a couple makes a concentrated effort to make a relationship a priority, enjoy time together, and work on clear communication, they can avoid feeling like they need someone else to make them happy.

UK Officials Boost Health Measures Before Olympics

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LONDON -- U.K. health officials are increasing their surveillance for any potential disease outbreaks that could disrupt the London Olympics this summer.

An estimated 3 million visitors are expected to descend on the city during July and August, bringing with them viruses and bacteria from around the world.

At a meeting Tuesday of international disease experts, some said even though an outbreak was unlikely, officials couldn't take the risk of not being prepared for the Olympics, which are taking place from July 27 to Aug. 12.

"No news will be good news," said John McConnell, editor of the Lancet Infectious Diseases, which co-sponsored the meeting on health in mass gatherings.

He said large sports events like the Olympics typically have not had major outbreaks in the past.

But to get ready, British health authorities are boosting checks for infectious diseases and increasing labs' capacity to test samples. During the games, officials will get daily health reports on potential trouble spots and first-aid clinics will operate at event sites.

Britain's Health Protection Agency said it will mostly be looking for ailments like flu, diarrhea and respiratory illnesses but its surveillance system should be able to pick up rarer infections.

Scientists from Saudi Arabia shared their experiences from monitoring the Hajj, the world's largest annual mass gathering, which draws more than 2.5 million religious pilgrims to Mecca every year. Nearly 200,000 people come from developing countries, and the event helped spread polio outbreaks several years ago from Nigeria to Indonesia.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises Americans planning to travel to Britain to ensure they're up to date on their routine vaccinations, including measles. Europe has yearly outbreaks of the highly infectious disease.

Last month, the top doctor for Britain's Olympic team advised athletes not to shake hands to avoid catching any diseases.

McConnell dismissed that advice as "utterly unrealistic," noting infections were passed on just as easily by touching contaminated surfaces.

"You are just as likely to catch something by touching a dirty handrail ... so there's no reason not to shake hands," he said.

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How Paying Attention Internally Could Lead To Greater Well-Being

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By Emma Seppala
(Click here for the original article)

What's the difference between noticing the rapid beat of a popular song on the radio and noticing the rapid rate of your heart when you see your crush? Between noticing the smell of fresh baked bread and noticing that you're out of breath? Both require attention. However, the direction of that attention differs: it is either turned outward, as in the case of noticing a stop sign or a tap on your shoulder, or turned inward, as in the case of feeling full or feeling love. 

Scientists have long held that attention – regardless to what – involves mostly the prefrontal cortex, that frontal region of the brain responsible for complex thought and unique to humans and advanced mammals. A recent study by Norman Farb from the University of Toronto published in Cerebral Cortex, however, suggests a radically new view: there are different ways of paying attention. While the prefrontal cortex may indeed be specialized for attending to external information, older and more buried parts of the brain including the “insula” and “posterior cingulate cortex” appear to be specialized in observing our internal landscape.

Most of us prioritize externally oriented attention. When we think of attention, we often think of focusing on something outside of ourselves. We "pay attention" to work, the TV, our partner, traffic, or anything that engages our senses. However, a whole other world exists that most of us are far less aware of: an internal world, with its varied landscape of emotions, feelings, and sensations. Yet it is often the internal world that determines whether we are having a good day or not, whether we are happy or unhappy. That’s why we can feel angry despite beautiful surroundings or feel perfectly happy despite being stuck in traffics. For this reason perhaps, this newly discovered pathway of attention may hold the key to greater well-being.

 Although this internal world of feelings and sensations dominates perception in babies, it becomes increasingly foreign and distant as we learn to prioritize the outside world.  Because we don’t pay as much attention to our internal world, it often takes us by surprise. We often only tune into our body when it rings an alarm bell –– that we’re extremely thirsty, hungry, exhausted or in pain. A flush of anger, a choked up feeling of sadness, or the warmth of love in our chest often appear to come out of the blue.

In a collaboration with professors Zindel Segal and Adam Anderson at the University of Toronto, the study compared exteroceptive (externally focused) attention to interoceptive (internally focused) attention in the brain. Participants were instructed to either focus on the sensation of their breath (interoceptive attention) or to focus their attention on words on a screen (exteroceptive attention).  Contrary to the conventional assumption that all attention relies upon the frontal lobe of the brain, the researchers found that this was true of only exteroceptive attention; interoceptive attention used evolutionarily older parts of the brain more associated with sensation and integration of physical experience.

Exteroceptive attention relies on the frontal lobes of the neocortex (literally, “new” cortex), the evolutionarily newest outer layer of our brains that most distinguishes humans from other species. Interoceptive attention, however, relies upon brain regions that link the cortex to the limbic system, an evolutionarily older brain system that we share in common with many other animals. These limbic connections may support more direct access to emotions and physical sensations while the neocortex is more responsible for a conceptual sense of self. By recruiting “limbic-bridge” areas like the insula and posterior cingulate, a person using interoceptive attention may bypass the pre-frontal neocortex, directly tapping into bodily awareness that is free from social judgment or conceptual self-evaluation.

These findings have important implications for emotional well-being. States of mind such as anxiety, depression, and anger often engage the prefrontal cortex. “I can’t shut my mind off” -- a statement most of us can relate to in times of stress. Have you ever tried to talk yourself out of such a state of high stress and failed? Trying to talk ourselves out of being less anxious or angry is often a futile exercise. The mind quite simply has a hard time telling itself what to do.

Dan Wagner of Harvard University describes this as an "ironic process" When we attempt to resist a certain thought or action (e.g. trying not to eat junk food when you're on a diet, or trying not to think of someone you just broke up with) the effort can easily backfire under stress. In the realm of the mind, what we resist persists. Sadly, some people end up turning to alcohol and drugs as a last resort to quiet their mind. 

Farb’s findings, however, suggest that the neural networks of interoceptive attention may provide an inbuilt system separate from the thinking mind to help ourselves find calm. We can’t control our mind with our mind (or our pre-frontal cortex with the pre-frontal cortex), but with interoceptive awareness, we may be able to escape our racing thoughts. The expression “take a deep breath” in a moment of anger or fear is a common saying that directly taps into our ability to use our interoceptive awareness. Many clinicians include some kind of breathing instructions into a therapy setting for anxiety. 

How can we train our interoceptive awareness? Yoga, breathing and meditation practices are designed to increase our interoceptive awareness. A study by Jocelyn Sze at the University of California Berkeley showed that people who meditate have greater interoceptive awareness than dancers who, though they also have trained awareness of their bodies' movements, are perhaps less in tune with their emotional states. 

For some, turning attention inward can be distressing, because it may tune us into emotions that are not comfortable. However, constantly distracting ourselves through attention turned outwards will not remove those underlying emotions. By learning to engage with them through our dedicated interoceptive awareness, we may experience the first signs of healing. Research conducted in our laboratory with veterans suffering from trauma is also showing this to be true. Though the veterans are at first wary of being present with the emotions, feelings and memories that can arise during their first yoga, yogic breathing, and meditation practice, they report that over time those distressing inner experiences start to actually wane and heal. Best of all, they feel empowered. No longer reliant on drugs or a therapist, they have learned to use their own breath to regain control of their lives.

Learning to tune into our bodies could have other beneficial consequences as well.   We are so used to directing our attention outward that we often don’t even really taste food because we are too busy watching TV or distracting ourselves in other ways. However, research suggests that our greatest moments of happiness are times we spend fully involved and engaged in a situation: be it a physical activity, a sensory experience, or intimacy with another person. If we are distracted, we are depriving ourselves of some of the greatest sources of happiness.

Next time you find your thoughts racing and emotions blaring out of control, instead of trying to talk yourself out of the situation or turning to a glass of wine, have a seat, take some deep breaths and tune into your body, or go to a gentle and awareness-based yoga or meditation class. Farb’s research suggests that we have an inbuilt ability to calm ourselves down. We just need to take a deep breath.

Emma Seppala, received her Ph.D. from Stanford University and is an Assistant Scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research expertise is well-being, social connectedness, and meditation-based interventions. She is currently assessing the impact of a yoga-based treatments on veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder.


How Stress Affects Our Health

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We all know that stress isn't good for us, but a new study shows exactly why -- and it turns out that inflammation may be the culprit.

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University found that feeling stressed is linked with a decreased inflammatory response regulation. Their research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The immune system's ability to regulate inflammation predicts who will develop a cold, but more importantly it provides an explanation of how stress can promote disease," study researcher Sheldon Cohen, of Carnegie Mellon, said in a statement. "When under stress, cells of the immune system are unable to respond to hormonal control, and consequently, produce levels of inflammation that promote disease. Because inflammation plays a role in many diseases such as cardiovascular, asthma and autoimmune disorders, this model suggests why stress impacts them as well."

HealthDay reported some potential causes for this relationship. One is that stressed-out people may engage in more unhealthy activities, which can then put them at an increased risk of getting sick. Another possibility is that hormones in the body may react a certain way to stress.

The study was comprised of two parts, one of which included 276 healthy adults who were exposed to the common cold virus and then were quarantined for the next five days. The researchers kept note of their symptoms. (They noted that when someone is infected with the common cold, their symptoms aren't actually caused by the cold, but rather are a byproduct of the body fighting off the cold.)

The researchers found that if a person was undergoing long-term stress, he or she was more likely to not be able to properly regulate inflammation. In turn, the inability to regulate inflammation was linked with having an increased risk of actually getting a cold after being exposed to the virus.

Recently, a study in the journal Neuron showed that stress may have other effects, too -- on memory.

That research, which was done in mice, showed that repeat exposure to stress could lead to impairments in a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex (which is known as the "CEO of the brain" and is in charge of abstract thoughts and cognitive analysis).

Common Osteoporosis Drug Linked To Eye Disease

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Drugs commonly used to help prevent osteoporosis may increase the risk of a serious inflammatory eye disease, Canadian researchers have discovered.

The drug, oral bisphosphonates, which is prescribed to those suffering from osteoporosis, has previously been linked to irregular heartbeat and esophageal and colon cancer.

This time around, to investigate the role of bisphosphonates and the eye disease uveitis (or scleritis), researchers from the Child and Family Research Institute and the University of British Columbia studied data of 934,147 people who had a ophthalmologist between 2000 and 2007.

Of the total, 10,827 were first-time users of bisphosphonates and 923,320 were non-users.

"We found that first-time users of bisphosphonates are at an increased risk of scleritis and uveitis," explains Dr Mahyar Etminan from the study.

"The risk of inflammatory ocular adverse events, including scleritis and uveitis, is not highlighted in most package inserts included with oral bisphosphonates.

"Our study highlights the need for clinicians to inform their patients about the signs and symptoms of scleritis and uveitis, so that prompt treatment may be sought and further complications averted."

Bisphosphonates are drugs that in certain situations can help to protect your bones against some of the effects of cancer, such as pain and weakness. They may also be used to reduce a raised calcium level in the blood.

The findings were published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Not Sure If You Can Pull Off Red Lipstick? We're Here To Help

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Bold, red lips are in this season, but it can be hard to find the perfect colour of rouge to complement your skin tone -- and your hair. Toronto makeup artist Jessica Jean Myers says everyone can find the perfect red shade of lipstick -- it just takes some patience.

Another thing you'll have to get used to -- if you adopt the spring trend of red lips -- is how attention-getting rouge can be.

"Red lipstick is bold, but that doesn't mean it can't be worn day to day," Myers says. "It just takes confidence and practice to get used to, seeing yourself with it on -- we often put the focus on our eye makeup when we 'get done up.'"

She adds: "Red lipstick is the easiest way to quickly make [yourself] look 'polished and done' in 30 seconds. I can have almost no makeup on and just a swipe of red lipstick and some mascara and suddenly I look 'made up."

And how can you tell if the rouge you own works on you? Check to see if you look pale or sallow after you put it on. If you do, then it's not the right shade.

Here are Myers's tips to finding the perfect red for you.


How To Survive Moving Back Home With The Parents

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As exciting as the prospect of time off lectures coupled with home comforts and being cooked for sounds, you may be dreading two unavoidable obstacles on your return: the 'rents.

Chores, rules, nagging, curfews - you may not all have parents who rule over the house's inhabitants with an iron fist but most of you will probably reach boiling point with one of your elders during your home stay.

So, how to ensure a peaceful, stress-free break?

We've put together a gallery of top tips to make sure when the time comes for you to head back to university, you may even wish you weren't.

Bob Harper On Crossfit: "It Makes Me Face My Demons"

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Bob Harper seems to be the epitome of fitness perfection ... His perfectionism even translates to his own fitness routine. Even on the days when he thinks he is doing a CrossFit workout particularly well, he'll notice someone else who he feels is working out better than he is.

Can Hypnosis Cure IBS?

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Swedish researchers claim they’ve found an alternative treatment to ease the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) that doesn’t involve popping pills or making diet changes - hypnosis.

Scientists from the The Sahlgrenska Academy of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden found that hypnotherapy alleviates the discomfort of IBS by 40% and discovered the changes proved to be long-term.

This isn’t the first time the effects that hypnotherapy has on easing IBS symptoms. A previous study published in the Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology found that hypnotherapy helped 208 patients alleviate IBS discomforts for up to seven years.

So how does it work?

The study demonstrated that hypnotherapy provides lasting relief by testing 138 participants at highly specialised ‘hypnotherapy centres’ to see if the therapy made any difference to their severe IBS symptoms.

“The treatment involves the patient learning to control their symptoms through deep relaxation and individually adapted hypnotic suggestions,” study author Magnus Simrén explained in a statement: “The idea is for the patient to then use this technique in their everyday life.”

After a series of one-hour treatments over a 12-week period, 40% of patients noted a significant reduction in symptoms. They also revealed that their IBS symptoms had remained under control for a whole year following the hypnotherapy.

"Overall, our studies show that hypnotherapy is an effective method of treating IBS, even when provided outside of specialist 'hypnotherapy centres',” explained Simrén.

“The conclusion is that hypnotherapy could reduce both the consumption of healthcare and the cost to society, and that hypnosis therefore belongs in the arsenal of treatments for IBS.”

Irritable bowel syndrome is the name doctors have given to a collection of otherwise unexplained symptoms relating to a disturbance of the colon or large intestine.

IBS affects around a third of the population at some point in their lives and about one in 10 people suffer symptoms severe enough to seek help from their GP.

According to the IBS Network, the following are common symptoms of IBS:

  • Abdominal pain and spasms, often relieved by going to the toilet
  • Diarrhoea, Constipation or an erratic bowel habit
  • Bloating or swelling of the abdomen
  • Rumbling noises and excessive passage of wind
  • Urgency (An urgent need to visit the toilet) or incontinence (if a toilet is not nearby)
  • Sharp pain felt low down inside the rectum
  • Sensation of incomplete bowel movement

Symptoms frequently occur in other parts of the body. These may include headaches, dizziness, backache, passing urine frequently, tiredness, muscle and joint pains, ringing in the ears, indigestion, belching, nausea, shortness of breath, anxiety and depression.

A similar range of symptoms are reported by patients with other medically unexplained illnesses, such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia and Functional Dyspepsia, suggesting they all might all be expressions of an alteration in sensitivity or irritability affecting the mind and the body.

Are DNA Patents Doomed?

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By Ricki Lewis
(Click here for the original article)

DNA is special. Unlike other body parts, it holds information. Even discarding a blood spot or saliva sample doesn’t necessarily prevent the telltale DNA sequences from living on in a database.

We guard our DNA data in a way that we don’t other test results, such as cholesterol levels. “Genes are uniquely ‘ours.’ They say something about us at some fundamental level, more than a mammogram or a Pap smear or an x-ray,” said James Evans, MD PhD, professor of genetics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, at a symposium on DNA patenting at the International Congress of Human Genetics in Montreal in October 2011.

Our emotional attachment to our genomes may be part of why the patentability of the breast and ovarian cancer susceptibility genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 has been pinging from court to court for years. The latest chapter: on March 26, the U.S. Supreme Court asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which had upheld the Myriad Genetics and University of Utah’s patents on the two genes, to reconsider.

This move, many think, stemmed from the March 20 invalidation of Prometheus Laboratories patents on measuring levels of a metabolite to assess whether a dosage of 6-mercaptopurine to treat inflammatory bowel disease is too low to work or high enough to cause adverse effects, procedures that the court found “add nothing specific to the laws of nature other than what is well-understood, routine, conventional activity.” Patents for cancer genes useful as a diagnostic may seem to have little to do with measuring a metabolite to adjust a dosage, but, at the risk of evoking a double negative, they share a lack of “non-obviousness,” one of the key requirements of a patentable invention.

Cervixes and Spleens Led the Way

The two most famous cases of body parts exploited for profit – Henrietta Lacks’s wild cancer cells and John Moore’s celebrated spleen – can’t match the power in the 3-billion-bit identifier that is a human genome.

HeLa cells originated in the cervix of a poor, uneducated African-American woman. In 1951 Henrietta Lacks’s unusually prolific cells were sampled, cultured, and sent to labs all over the world, without her or her family’s knowledge.

John Moore gave up his swollen spleen in 1976 to treat his leukemia, unaware that his physician, hospital, and a biotech company would patent the cells and sell an unusual protein that they produced. Moore sued, but the California Supreme Court ruled against him, finding that removed cells are not the equivalent nor the product of a person.

A Brief History of DNA Patents

The U.S. Patent Act, passed in 1790, defined a patentable invention as novel, useful, and non-obvious to an expert in the field. It’s easy to see how a patent might apply to a self-flushing toilet or an electronic gadget, but the picture gets murky on the matter of DNA.

One can’t patent ideas, laws of nature, or products of nature. But it’s been okay to isolate a chemical from nature since Parke-Davis claimed adrenaline in 1911, deeming it different outside a body.

U.S. patent law ventured into biology in 1980, with General Electric’s “oil eater” bacterium that combined DNA rings from four microbes. Nature hadn’t invented that. Then in 1990, the patent office added rules for claiming DNA sequences. Within a year, Amgen patented the first gene, erythropoietin (EPO), used to treat anemia. The European Union declared genes patentable in 1998.

Isolating a gene supposedly renders it patentable, for it is no longer a “product of nature,” separate from its chromosome, its non-essential parts removed. The remaining DNA becomes a novel ‘composition of matter.’

Two Controversial Cases

An early gene patenting battle concerned Canavan disease, which strips brain cells of their insulating myelin coating beginning in infancy and usually lethal in childhood. The patent holders – four researchers and the University of Miami – developed a diagnostic test using the gene. Then families who had donated their children’s brains to the gene researchers found themselves having to pay to test their other children. Although that case was settled when the plaintiffs ran out of funds, with the cost of the test dropped and the gene made available to researchers, it set an informal precedent for the current BRCA controversy.

Three years after the Canavan gene patent issued, in 2000, the first of Myriad Genetics’ BRCA patents issued. They’ve triggered outrage ever since.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Association for Molecular Pathology, representing 150,000 geneticists, cancer survivors, pathologists, and others, sued the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Myriad, and the University of Utah in May 2009. On March 29, 2010, senior judge Robert W. Sweet for the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled the patents invalid. Said he at the International Congress of Human Genetics, “A human gene is not an invention. DNA’s existence in an isolated form alters neither this fundamental quality of DNA as it exists in the body nor the information it holds.” In August 2011 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned Judge Sweet’s decision, and now the March 26, 2012 Supreme Court’s setting aside of that ruling for further discussion is keeping the patent ball in play. The final result, whatever it is, will be important to many, because a fifth of the 20,325 or so human genes are patented.

The Cat’s Out of the Bag

It looks, at least this week, like DNA patents will become a thing of the past as consensus slowly builds that a product of nature isn’t an invention after all. But another reason why such patents are headed for extinction, I think, is that DNA testing has transcended the single-gene legacy of Gregor Mendel that peaked in a crescendo of discoveries in the 1990s, giving way to the age of genomics. Genes are no longer seen as islands. Even the three most common mutations in the much-discussed BRCA genes impart susceptibility, not certainty, with actual risk reflecting influences of other genes and the environment.

Here are four ways that average people are encountering genes, without a thought to who or what entity “owns” them.

Three-year-old Gavin Stevens, blind from birth, had been tested for more than a dozen genes known to cause Leber congenital amaurosis when his parents, Troy and Jennifer, met with John Chiang, PhD, director of the Molecular Diagnostic Laboratory at the Casey Eye Institute in Portland, Oregon, who sent the family’s DNA samples to the Beijing Genomics Institute to have their exomes sequenced. And within this protein-encoding portion of the genome lay the answer: Gavin’s mutant gene – the first stage in developing a gene therapy.

Clients of direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies are providing the numbers to accelerate discovery of the many genes that contribute to common diseases. 23andMe has already found two new Parkinson’s disease, susceptibility genes, thanks to the DNA of 3,426 customers with the disease and nearly 30,000 controls.

Forensic DNA databanks track some two dozen sites of short repeated sequences in the genome that collectively vary in more ways than there are people on the planet. DNA profiling has led to hundreds of exonerations and convictions. Several states have recently expanded their forensic DNA databases.

Every few weeks, Family Tree DNA alerts me to the existence of a possible long-long-lost cousin among the many consumers sending in DNA samples. The power of tracing the deeper branches of the human family tree, of inferring when and from where and how many times some of our ancestors left Africa and spread around the globe, depends upon amassing DNA information from as many populations as possible.

Could any of these potentially life-altering uses of DNA sequencing have happened if gene patent-holders charged prohibitively high licensing fees to the companies that package their discoveries into test panels and kits? Will our courts allow patented genes to impede progress at the genomic level, like tiny private stretches of sand interrupting an extensive public beach? Because so many applications of the information in our genomes are clearly already here, I think that the idea of owning a gene is already obsolete, and the courts need to catch up with the science.

Summed up James Evans, “the human genome is a shared legacy.” I couldn’t agree more.

A Chinese Medicine As Cancer Treatment

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Scientists studying a four-herb combination discovered some 1,800 years ago by Chinese herbalists have found that the substance enhances the effectiveness of chemotherapy in patients with colon cancer.

The Week's Best Parenting Tweets

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Are the best parenting tweets sarcastic or earnest? Crushed or contented? Heartfelt or hilarious? Over the past week, we've stumbled on gems in all these categories -- and more -- from parents throughout the Twitterverse. (Go ahead. Tell us you can read Sean Ottaway's tweet about his daughter without melting a little bit inside.) Our favorites are collected below. Please nominate any brilliant quips we missed in the comments or tweeting them to @HuffPostParents!

Yes, Food Can Be Addictive

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Can food really be as addictive as drugs? In an impassioned lecture at Rockefeller University on Wednesday, Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, made the case that the answer is yes and that understanding the commonalities between food and drug addictions could offer insights into all types of compulsive behavior.


Tobacco Crackdown Sees Cigarettes Hidden From Children

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A ban on tobacco promotion comes into force on Friday in a bid to cut down on the number of people smoking.

The new legislation means all large shops and supermarkets in England must cover up cigarettes and hide tobacco products from public view.

The Department of Health said the move was in response to evidence that cigarette displays in shops can encourage young people to take up the habit.

More than 300,000 children under 16 try smoking each year and 5% of children aged 11 to 15 are regular smokers, according to its figures.

Meanwhile 39% of smokers say that they were smoking regularly before the age of 16.

Health secretary Andrew Lansley told the BBC on Friday morning he'd eventually like society to become "smoke free."

"Frankly I’d like us to arrive at a place where pretty much we have a smoke free society. It is not like other things, it is not like alcohol, you know drink is a normal part of life, it is a perfectly acceptable part of life and it doesn’t cause people any harm in moderation," he said. "Smoking isn’t like that and we arrive at a place where two thirds of smokers say they started smoking under the age of 18, where large numbers become habitual smokers or addicted to nicotine."

Shadow public health minister Diane Abbott welcomed the ban, saying: "Reducing smoking prevalence, particularly amongst the most disadvantaged in society, is the most effective means of improving public health and reducing inequality. Smokers start as children and continue as addicts: two thirds of smokers start before the age of 16 and the vast majority while still teenagers."

Under the new rules all tobacco products must be kept out of sight except when staff are serving customers or carrying out other day-to-day tasks such as restocking.

Those found not complying with the law could be fined up to £5,000 or face imprisonment.

The ban on displays will roll out to smaller shops and businesses in three years time while the government is also consulting on introducing plain packaging for packets of cigarettes and other tobacco products.

A spokesperson for British American Tobacco said they did not believe the ban would work: "We do not believe that hiding products under the counter or behind curtains or screens will discourage people, including the young, from taking up smoking.

"There's no sound evidence to prove display bans are justified."

QUIZ: How Many Calories Are In Your Easter Candy?

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Chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, marshmallow Peeps -- Easter candy is festive, fun and nearly irresistible. In fact, Americans love their seasonal sweets so much, we'll shell out more than $2 billion on Easter treats this year, up 11 percent from last year's spending, according to the National Retail Federation. The average person will spend $20.35 on those bunnies, eggs and jelly beans.

But all those treats will also cost you calories. If you ate one serving of everything in this quiz, you'd rack up almost 3,500 calories -- almost as many as you should eat in two days! We know those Cadbury Cremes are only available once a year; just pick and choose when to indulge, and do so in moderation!

Think you can identify a serving of your favorite Easter treats? Know which ones pack the most fat or sugar? Take our quiz to test your knowledge.

For more on diet and nutrition, click here.

Photos by Damon Dahlen/AOL

15 Hilarious GIFs From #whatshouldwecallme

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It's a classic Internet success story. Two college BFFs move to opposite coasts for law school and stay in touch via G-chat, sending each other funny GIFs to describe and share events, situations, and the way they're feeling. The girls decide to turn their GIF convos into a Tumblr page, which goes viral and now receives between one and two million hits per day. Such is the story of the newest viral Tumblr sensation, #whatshouldwecallme.

The blog's founders, who wish to remain anonymous, told The Huffington Post: "One day we decided to create a Tumblr account where we could both post about what was going on in our lives -- that way, the other one could check it to stay in the loop. Within a month, we had a few thousand followers, and now we have almost 80,000."

And the rest is history. The GIFs on the blog feature Disney characters like Arielle from The Little Mermaid, Mrs. Doubtfire, Pauly D from Jersey Shore, Michelle Tanner from Full House, cute animals, and more to illustrate some of life's most relatable quandaries (for example, "When I realize it's not Friday yet" and "When I almost hooked up with my friend's ex.")

We couldn't resist rounding up 15 of our favorite GIFs from the blog. Check out the below slideshow, and tell us which is your favorite in the comments below!

7 Ways To De-stress For National Stress Awareness Month

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In case you haven't heard (you know, because of all the stress in your life) -- April is National Stress Awareness Month.

A little bit of stress is good for us, in that it provides energy and keeps us aware of everything going on in our lives. But even though stress is a daily occurrence for all of us, it's important to keep it in check. When left to its own devices, it can lead to or exacerbate a number of health problems, from heart disease, to acne, to obesity, to depression and anxiety. It can even worsen ulcers, WomensHealth.gov reported.

Fortunately, there are a number of things backed up by research that you can do, right now, to lower your stress levels. Click through the slideshow for our round-up of stressbusters, and tell us in the comments: What do you do to de-stress?

Nevada Working To Curb Backroom Doctors, Dentists

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LAS VEGAS — When their patient became ill from a buttocks enhancement injection, unlicensed caregivers Ruben Dario Matallana-Galvas and his wife, Carmen Olfidia Torres-Sanchez, fled to McCarran International Airport. They were arrested trying to board a flight home to Colombia.

The 42-year-old mother of three they were treating in the back room of a Las Vegas tile store died.

Shortly after Matallana-Galvas and Torres-Sanchez were sent to state prison, a complaint about cars blocking a driveway led police to find people dressed in surgical scrubs inside a southwest Las Vegas home. Prosecutors say a New York woman was performing eyelift surgeries in the living room. Patients with bandaged faces were taken to a hospital. The woman, 55, was taken to jail.

She told officers she had been a doctor in China. Authorities say she's not licensed in Nevada.

In Reno, a person hospitalized with life-threatening complications from a botched dental procedure told police about a man practicing dentistry in a nondescript mobile home. The man, 56, claimed he was a dental assistant in another country, police said. But he also had prior convictions locally for practicing dentistry without a license.

"We suspected this was going on," said Reno police Lt. Mohammed Rafaqat several days after the March arrest of the fake dentist, "but as we dug into it we found it was more common.

"No insurance. No money. People want to get treated," Rafaqat said. "This is what happens."

Las Vegas and Reno are glitzy cities where looks matter and sex sells. Even so, the gambling meccas are not unique among places where cosmetic procedures can be had for a price in a back alley.

In Florida, a 32-year-old woman faced new unlicensed practice of medicine charges last month after she was accused of injecting patients with flat-tire sealant and glue as a buttocks enhancement procedure. In Philadelphia last year, a 20-year-old British tourist died after receiving cosmetic buttocks enlargement injections at a hotel near Philadelphia International Airport.

But the April 2011 death of Elana Caro and more recent discoveries of unlicensed providers brought exposure to a shadowy underworld in Nevada, and pushed health officials to seek reforms.

The accused mobile home dentist in Reno and self-described Chinese doctor in Las Vegas await evidence hearings to determine if they will face trial in state court. Another Reno man faces trial in May on felony charges of practicing medicine without a license.

"Every group that is uninsured and underinsured is vulnerable to this situation," said Atzimba Luna, a Consulate of Mexico community affairs officer in Las Vegas who tracks the issue. "There are real health needs that are not being really addressed, and people are trying to address them by going to these places."

It's common knowledge that fake doctors market their services in the Spanish-language community, Luna said. But she echoed Rafaqat's assessment that it may be hard for many low-income residents to find proper health care.

"Particularly regarding cosmetic surgery, it's very difficult to know where to go for a certain procedure if you don't know someone who has been there," Luna said.

Nevada state health officials are trying to cope more effectively with phony providers. A former Nevada state attorney general is heading a task force examining the issue, and the Latino Research Center at the University of Nevada, Reno, has been commissioned to document reports of unlicensed care in the state's Hispanic community.

The goal is to provide recommendations in June for the state Legislature.

"I think this is actually quite prevalent," said Keith Galliher Jr., a Las Vegas personal injury lawyer pressing what he believes is a groundbreaking civil wrongful death and negligence lawsuit on behalf of the family of Caro. "It was obviously common knowledge in the Hispanic community."

Galliher called it difficult to identify and hold defendants responsible in an insular community with a cultural mistrust of governmental authorities.

He said he obtained hand-written ring binders showing the Colombians who performed the procedure on Caro were booked days in advance for procedures on more than 20 people. Galliher said he intends to talk with those people before taking his civil case to a Clark County District Court jury.

The Clark County coroner ruled that Caro died of an adverse reaction to anesthesia. Matallana-Galvas and Torres-Sanchez pleaded guilty to felony charges before trial, and are each serving up to eight years in state prison.

Galliher concedes he may not be able to collect damages from them, but the lawsuit also names as defendants the owners of a beauty shop that Galliher blames for referring Caro to the Colombians, and the owners of the tile store who have since closed and declared bankruptcy.

A lawyer for the Tiles `N' More store owners didn't respond to messages. The building is now a clothing boutique.

An attorney for Sinaloa Beauty Salon owners Aurora Cardenas and Coco Cardenas said his clients aren't responsible for Caro's death.

"They received absolutely nothing," defense attorney Michael Hamilton said. He insisted that Coco Cardenas, the salon proprietor, "didn't give a referral, didn't provide a name and didn't receive any remuneration."

Hamilton said Matallana-Galvas was well-known in the Hispanic community for performing cosmetic procedures.

Almost 2 million of Nevada's 2.7 million residents live in and around Las Vegas. Today, 26.5 percent of state residents are of Hispanic or Latino origin, and more than 28 percent speak a language other than English at home. The U.S. Census found that 21 percent, or more than one in five Nevadans, didn't have health insurance in 2010.

The Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners doesn't keep data about unlicensed practitioners. But Douglas Cooper, board executive, said prospective patients only need to check the board website to verify a doctor's license. He characterized the unlicensed practice of medicine as "assault and battery and a criminal act."

"You treat people, you don't abandon them," Cooper said of the Caro case. "And no one gets treated in a back room."

Drew Bradley, outreach coordinator for the Latino Research Center at UNR, said that because most Nevada doctors speak English, immigrants will gravitate toward those who speak their native language, even if they are fakes.

"Most people are going to know, `I'm in a garage and this is weird,'" said Bradley, who's is working with the state health department to raise public awareness. "But I think that they want to believe it's a good deal because they don't really feel like they have a better option."

Luna said she worries that a state crackdown might drive phony physicians further underground.

"The main issue is access," Luna said. "What are the options of people who don't have enough to pay or don't have insurance? Telling them not to go (to an unlicensed practitioner) does not address the issue."

Luna said the Consulate launched a "Window of Health" program to teach people about preventive health care, local bilingual doctors and affordable health services.

State lawmakers in February approved a program to warn of the dangers of going to unlicensed medical personnel.

Dr. William Zamboni, surgery department chairman and chief of the plastic surgery division at the University of Nevada School of Medicine in Las Vegas, said prospective patients should be aware of their surroundings and buyers need to beware.

Patients shouldn't be shy about questioning a doctor's qualifications, he said.

"If their address is their home," Zamboni said, "pull away as fast as you can."

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