By: The Kit

You’ve seen them everywhere -- there isn’t a shop window or in-store display that doesn’t have mannequins rocking the statement-making, bold and brightly-coloured jeans that everyone is wearing this spring.

And this trend is not just for the daring 20-something; anyone, in any age group, can wear this pop of colour. It all just comes down to the styling. One of The Kit’s go-to stylists and contributors, Ingrie Williams, gives advice on how to pull off the hottest trend this season -- no matter what your age!

In your 50s and 60s

The Inspiration: Kris Jenner

Related: Shocking and Extreme Coloured Jeans for Your 20s

What to look for: “A flattering fit is the most important thing to look for when it comes to coloured denim and for women in their 50s and 60s, a higher quality denim can go a long way towards a stellar fit,” says Williams. She suggests a snug fit without feeling constricted. Look for a heavier gauge weave, as it can be more forgiving over the thighs and butt.

Related: Go Monochromatic Or Colour Block With Coloured Jeans In Your 30s

Ways to wear them: “Overall, I think the deeper colours work well on women in their 50s and 60s. Jewel tones of emerald green, ruby red and deep purple, as opposed to the neon shades, are all on trend without being over the top.”

Related: Balance Daring Coloured Jeans With Polished Pieces For Your 40s

Here are 10 clothing items you can add to your closet to make your wardrobe feel on-trend and springy. Story continues below slideshow.

But if you're drawn to a bright pair, Williams says, “Go for it! Either way, a simple white button front shirt or tailored jacket would be an elegant pairing to any of these shades.”

More from TheKit.ca:

Sorel launches sandals for spring

My Name is Kay’s closet must-haves

Get a bright spring scarf

Flu vaccination rates declined in more than 100 areas after the government scrapped the national awareness campaign, according to a Labour analysis of official figures.

One primary care trust - Havering in Essex - saw the uptake of vaccinations by "at risk" under-65s fall by a quarter, or 25.2%, in 2010/11 compared with 2009/10.

The second biggest drop was by 14.2% in Wolverhampton City, Labour said, with 107 out of 148 trusts in total showing a decrease.

Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said the figures were the result of the coalition's "reckless" decision to end the national flu campaign.

Labour's analysis of the Department of Health figures comes after former chief medical officer Professor Sir Liam Donaldson said the move may may have contributed to a host of preventable deaths.

In a report, he concluded there were more fatalities and admissions to hospital in England in the winter of 2010/11 than during the flu pandemic the previous year.

Burnham said: "Andrew Lansley's decision to scrap the winter flu campaign just one year after a global flu pandemic was an early illustration of his reckless approach to the running of our health service.

"The health secretary ignored the advice of public health experts and these figures reveal the consequences on the ground of his arrogance and inability to listen.

"The government's failure to run a proper national campaign was a false economy. It created wide variation and put the public at greater risk with fewer vulnerable patients in two thirds of England taking up the flu vaccine."

The government's director of immunisation, Professor David Salisbury, said:

"There is always regional variation in the numbers of people who have the flu vaccine each year.

"But overall, more people - about half a million more - had the vaccine in 2010/11, when there was no national media advertising campaign, than the year before.

"Rather than having a paid for advertising campaign, we took a more targeted approach and asked GPs to contact their patients who were eligible for the vaccine. Once again we ran a hand hygiene campaign in an attempt to limit the spread of flu.

"Even more people had the vaccine this past winter - around an extra million compared to 2009/10 when we last ran the advertising campaign."

Check out the news of the day in pictures below:

Keeping active can reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease even in people over the age of 80, a study has found.

Researchers asked 716 volunteers with an average age of 82 to wear a device that monitors day-to-day activity.

Study participants were also given cognitive tests to measure memory and thinking ability. After around three years, 71 of the volunteers developed Alzheimer's disease.

The research showed that the least active were more than twice as likely to develop the disease as those who were most active.

Dr Aron Buchman, from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, said: "The results of our study indicate that all physical activities including exercise as well as other activities such as cooking, washing the dishes, and cleaning are associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease.

"These results provide support for efforts to encourage all types of physical activity even in very old adults who might not be able to participate in formal exercise, but can still benefit from a more active lifestyle."

The findings appear in the online issue of the journal Neurology.

Dr Anne Corbett, research manager at the Alzheimer's Society, said: "It is well established that regular physical exercise is an important way to reduce your risk of developing dementia.

"It can reduce the risk by up to 45%. This study adds to this evidence and suggests that simple things like cooking and cleaning can also make a difference.

"One in three people over 65 will die with dementia, but as this shows, there are things you can do to help reduce your risk. It is important to maintain a healthy weight and stop smoking.

"Eating a Mediterranean diet high in antioxidants and oily fish and even the odd glass of red wine can also help."

Dr Simon Ridley, head of research at the charity Alzheimer's Research UK, said: "There is already some evidence that exercise in mid-life can help to reduce the risk of Alzheimer's. This study adds to this by suggesting that daily physical activity like doing household jobs or playing cards could have benefits into older age.

"One of the strengths of this study is that physical activity was measured using a small monitoring device, rather than relying on self-reported questionnaires which can often be unreliable.

"While the study highlights an association between physical activity and cognitive decline, more research is needed to explore this relationship further."

If you're the type of woman who loves to splurge on shoes and handbags, it may be time to check in on how you're feeling.

Researchers in New Zealand have found women who feel more insecure about their bodies opt to buy shoes and handbags over dresses and pants.

According to lead researcher Jessica Boyce, of the University of Canterbury, women negatively compare themselves to the models they see in clothing ads. Because many women don't feel they measure up, they start to doubt their ability to fit into the clothes they see advertised. That then leads them to purchase accessories as a way to update their wardrobe.

"What the research suggests is that shoes and handbags are more appealing to insecure women because they increase physical attractiveness without drawing attention to one's figure. Trousers, on the other hand, tend to draw attention and that is why they are shunned by this group of women,'' she tells The New Zealand Herald.

The study involved over 1,000 undergraduate students, mostly from the University of Alberta.

With the proliferation of ever-shrinking models -- like Ioana Spangenberg and her 20-inch waist -- it's no wonder ads are impacting not only a woman's self-esteem, but also her shopping habits.

What do you think?

Here are a few stars who have shed (maybe too many) pounds in an effort to "keep up appearances."

The first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of Dick Clark is probably not "style star."

But after being on camera for decades as the host of "New Years' Rockin' Eve" and "American Bandstand," it's clear the man knew a thing or two about wearing a suit and tie. After passing away at the age of 82, we're here to salute the man who made the suit, shirt and tie combo a staple among television anchors and journalists.

Even when hanging out with celebrities, Clark's outfits were sleek, well-tailored and always full of personality (hello, plaid suit!). He looks composed, confident and was always one of the most trusted entertainment anchors on air.

Take a look at a few of his looks over the years. And let us know what your fondest Dick Clark style memory is below.

By: Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Published: 04/17/2012 05:09 PM EDT on LiveScience

The activity in a region of the brain associated with reward can predict who will gain weight or have sex in the next six months, according to new research.

The nucleus accumbens, buried deep in the brain, has been linked to both pleasure and addiction. Now, a new study finds that young women whose nucleus accumbens reacts strongly to pictures of appealing food are more likely to gain weight in the next six months compared with women with more muted responses. Likewise, when the nucleus accumbens responds more strongly to sexual imagery, women are more likely to be sexually active within the next six months.

"This study is nice in a sense in that it's one of the first ones to actually tie your brain responses to more long-term measures of behavior," study researcher Bill Kelley, a psychologist at Dartmouth University, told LiveScience.

In the long run, Kelley added, the brain's reward system is likely to be only a piece of the puzzle. How good a person is at overriding that system through willpower will matter too, he said.

Brain and behavior

Certain health conditions, including bulimia and obesity, have already been linked to high nucleus accumbens activity in response to food-related cues. Kelley and his colleagues wanted to find out if there was any predictive power to such linkages. So the researchers recruited 58 female college freshmen for a study in which they weighed the women and calculated their body mass index, or BMI (a measure of fatness). College freshmen were chosen because of the dreaded "Freshmen 15" weight gain, Kelley said. The researchers wanted a group of volunteers who might be at risk for putting on pounds. [8 Reasons Our Waistlines are Expanding]

Next, the researchers scanned their volunteers' brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while the young women viewed a series of pictures of delicious-looking food, environmental scenes and people. Some of the people-related images included erotic imagery, such as nude couples kissing. The women had no idea of the real purpose of the study

The imaging technique measures blood flow to brain regions, offering a real-time picture of changing energy use in the brain at any given moment. Six months later, the researchers asked the same women back for another weigh-in and further surveys. All but 10 returned, leaving a final sample of 48.

Predictive powers

The women whose nucleus accumbens responded more strongly to pictures of food  were the ones most likely to gain weight over the next six months, the researchers report Wednesday (April 18) in The Journal of Neuroscience. About half of the women were sexually active, so researchers checked on sexual behavior, too. It turned out that women with a stronger nucleus accumbens reaction to erotic images were more likely to report at least one sexual partner during the six months following the brain scans. A strong nucleus accumbens reaction was also linked with more sexual desire, as reported on questionnaires.

Importantly, these reactions were behavior-specific. Weight gain was linked only with a nucleus accumbens response to food pictures, not to sexy images or neutral environmental scenes. And sexual desire and activity were linked only to the response to sexy pictures. That means specific temptations, not just an overactive nucleus accumbens, trigger these behaviors, Kelley said.

Controlling temptation may be a careful balancing act between parts of the brain that get excited for rewards and parts of the brain that rein in these urges, the researchers wrote. The nucleus accumbens activity could stand in as a proxy for future appetites, they reported, signals that other parts of the brain would need to combat in order to abstain. The women in the study may have had an uphill climb of it, given that stress can disrupt self-regulation and that the first year of college is often a stressful time.

Kelley said he suspects that the activity of the reward system may not predict weight gain over longer time periods, because people's ability to self-regulate — their willpower — may change. Unlike the unconscious "I want that!" of the brain's reward system, self-regulation is conscious and effortful. Thus, knowing your brain's triggers can help avoid them, Kelley said.

"Having the knowledge that these things can influence us in these implicit, unconscious sorts of ways is helpful in a sense because it allows us to be aware that when we're seeing these things we really have to be switched on and self-regulate," he said.

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

• 7 Biggest Diet Myths
• Inside the Brain: A Journey Through Time
• The Sex Quiz: Myths, Taboos and Bizarre Facts

By Christie Wilcox
(Click here for the original article)

Cardiovascular disease is the world’s leading cause of death. Approximately every 25 seconds, an American has a heart attack. One of the vessels to the heart gets blocked, cutting off blood flow to part of the heart. Then, the starving tissue begins to die, causing pain in the chest and difficulty breathing and, eventually, death. Every minute, someone in America dies from one of these coronary events. Those that survive the attack are still at risk for future problems as dead heart muscle leads to scar tissue that weakens the heart and increases the chance of heart failure. Until now, there was little that could be done for them, other than to encourage healthy lifestyle practices.

Just this week, Gladstone researchers announced a major breakthrough in heart disease research: they successfully reprogrammed scar tissue in live mice back into functional heart muscle.

The researchers were able to use a virus-based system to deliver three key genes that guide embryonic heart development—Gata4, Mef2c and Tbx5 (GMT)—to areas of mouse hearts that were damaged in a heart attack. Within a month, cells that normally became scar tissue were beating away again as if they were not knocking on death’s door just 30 days before. By the three month mark, treated mice showed marked improvements in cardiac functioning.

“The damage from a heart attack is typically permanent because heart-muscle cells—deprived of oxygen during the attack—die and scar tissue forms,” said Dr. Deepak Srivastava, director of cardiovascular and stem cell research at Gladstone. “But our experiments in mice are a proof of concept that we can reprogram non-beating cells directly into fully functional, beating heart cells—offering an innovative and less invasive way to restore heart function after a heart attack.”

“This research may result in a much-needed alternative to heart transplants—for which donors are extremely limited,” said lead author Dr. Li Qian, a post doc at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. But the best part is that this method would use the person’s own cells, removing the need for stem cells or donor hearts. “Because we are reprogramming cells directly in the heart, we eliminate the need to surgically implant cells that were created in a petri dish.”

“We hope that our research will lay the foundation for initiating cardiac repair soon after a heart attack—perhaps even when the patient arrives in the emergency room,” said Srivastava. The ability to regenerate adult heart tissue from its own cells is a promising approach to treating cardiac disease because it may face fewer obstacles to clinical approval than other approaches. However, there is much to be done before this breakthrough becomes a treatment. “Our next goal is to replicate these experiments and test their safety in larger mammals, such as pigs, before considering clinical trials in humans.”

Previous work has been able to do this kind of cellular reprogramming in cultured cells, but clinically it is much more efficient if a treatment can work directly on live hearts. In 2010, coronary heart disease was projected to cost the United States $108.9 billion, including the cost of health care services, medications, and lost productivity. If research such as this can lead to improved functioning after a heart attack, it could save millions in health care costs, not to mention potentially save lives by preventing heart failure down the line. While this research’s implications for heart disease treatment is clear, this kind of in vivo reprogramming may be also useful in a variety of other diseases where tissue damage is a major cause of symptoms, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

According to recent research from the University of Michigan School of Public Health (U-M SPH) Caucasians are 1.52 times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants than Hispanic and African-American patients being treated for major depressive disorders.

In a statement, Rajesh Balkrishnan, associate professor at U-M SPH, said: “This study confirmed previous findings that sociological factors, such as race and ethnicity, and patient health insurance status, influence physician prescribing behaviors. This is true in particular for major depressive disorder treatment."

Researchers examined data from 1993 to 2007 to try to understand the antidepressant prescribing patterns of physicians. They looked at two things: who received antidepressants, and what type of antidepressant was prescribed.

London-based GP and chair of council of the Royal College of General Practitioners, Dr Clare Gerada, told HuffPost Lifestyle: “This research could show a link between overdiagnosis of depression amongst those who have health insurance in America, as it’s more likely that white people people will have insurance.”

Dr Gerada concludes this could mean whites are being over “diagnosed’ and put “needlessly at risk” from the side effects of depression medications.

“There’s evidence that paying for treatment means patients are more likely to be given medication,” she says. “And what they are being ‘given’ might be an antidepressant.”

In light of recent allegations of government privatisation by stealth, Dr Gerada highlights the importance Nhs patient care remaining free from market forces.

“You need to worry if the market appears to be influencing prescribing behaviour. The figures are stark - and this could be further evidence that marketisation of health care distorts doctors' behaviour.”

American researcher Loretta Jones, executive director of Healthy African American Families, who has spent 30 years studying minority health policy, believes the problem is bigger than just payment, she told The Atlantic.

When looking at blacks' interactions with antidepressants, the problem is three-fold, says Jones, who has been focusing on depression in African-American communities since 2003.

First, African Americans are less likely to take antidepressants, because they're less likely to ask for them. Second, many physicians don't want to talk about antidepressants to African American patients, as many are seen in centres and clinics where they are rushed through their visits. Three, African Americans don't want to be considered "crazy", so they're less likely to take the medicine, she explains.

Check out the news of the day in pictures below:

Cora Hansen, Canada's oldest known living person, has died in Medicine Hat, Alberta, at the age of 113. She became a "supercentenarian" after she passed the age of 110, one of only a dozen or so in the world.

The last person who had lived through three centuries currently in Canada, Hansen was born in Minnesota on March 25, 1899 to Norwegian immigrants, and moved with her parents and nine siblings to Jenner, Alberta when she was 13 years old.

Hansen (nee Clausen) and her husband Richard Hansen were married for 41 years before he passed away in 1975, and she eventually moved from their retirement town of Elkwater, Alberta into care facilities, first in Saskatchewan, and then in Medicine Hat, near her daughter.

Alberta Premier Alison Redford visited Hansen in honour of her 113th birthday in March this year, and released a statement this morning. “I am deeply saddened to hear that Cora passed away,” she noted.

On her 107th birthday, Hansen told the Medicine Hat News, the key to a long life "is in God's hands. I didn't drink or anything like that. I lived a plain life." Hansen's 75-year-old daughter, Eleanor MacArthur, who was by her mother's side when she passed away, attributed her long life to "good genes," according to the Calgary Sun.

SEE: Healthy habits to help you live longer:

TORONTO - There is more variation in breast cancer than current treatment approaches acknowledge, according to the largest effort to date to distinguish between and find out what's driving breast cancer tumours.

The work, by a consortium of Canadian, British and other researchers, suggests there are at least 10 subtypes of breast cancer, an increase from the current belief that these tumours can be classified into four or five types.

The findings, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, are based on the detailed study of more than 2,000 breast cancer tumours and should have major implications for treatment of the disease.

"If you believe one breast cancer to be the same as any other breast cancer — but it really isn't — then you're really applying therapies that either may be ineffective or worse, actually quite toxic, and not produce benefit," senior author Dr. Samuel Aparicio of the B.C. Cancer Agency explained in an interview.

The findings point to a time when medicine will be able to more accurately target breast cancer therapy, knowing which tumours require aggressive treatment and, conceivably, which might be safely treated with a minimalistic approach because they are unlikely to be dangerous.

"What we anticipate is that in the future, the knowledge of the genes that are mutated in these specific subtypes will lead us to two things," Aparicio said.

"One is a better way of predicting whether existing therapies are going to be useful or not in a particular subtype. And the other is that it's taking us into the domain of having to develop new drugs. We see from the variation that we just don't have enough drugs being developed yet to combat each of these different subtypes."

The work was done by scientists from the B.C. Cancer Agency, the University of British Columbia, Cambridge University in Britain and the University of Manitoba's Institute of Cell Biology, among other institutions in Britain, the United States and Norway.

They studied both the DNA and RNA of this large group of tumours, looking for genetic faults — mutations — that spur development of cancer. In the process, they discovered several genes that had not previously been linked to breast cancer development.

They were looking in particular for "driver mutations" — changes that seem to trigger cancer development and growth. These mutated cells are potentially useful both for predicting the course a cancer will take and as a target for a drug therapy.

"If we want more success against the harder-to-treat cancers, we're going to have to develop more drugs and learn how to combine them. And this gives us a road map for that," Aparicio said.

Being able to distinguish one type of breast cancer from another is important in figuring out how aggressively to treat the tumour.

In one type of estrogen-receptor or ER positive breast cancer, about 70 per cent of women are still alive 15 years after their diagnosis. But another type of ER positive breast cancer has a much poorer prognosis; at 15 years, only 30 per cent of women with this type of tumour are still alive.

The implication: In the quest to successfully treat the women with the more aggressive cancer, doctors are likely subjecting some women to treatments they don't actually need.

"It's very hard to distinguish those patients at the moment," Aparicio said.

"It's not desirable to over-treat patients, of course. But the current situation is really dictated by a lack of knowledge as to who will respond and who won't."

Aparicio and his co-authors liken their findings to an encyclopedia of breast cancer, though they admit more chapters will be written as future work reveals finer distinctions between the various groupings. As it is, although most of the subtypes seem to fall into distinct groups, in a couple of cases the divisions are more hazy.

Now work needs to be done to test treatment regimes within the groups to see whether enough has been learned to be able to determine the best treatment approaches for each of the subtypes.

"So we're definitely seeing those sub-groups," said Aparicio. "And we now need to go out and test, formally in a clinical trial setting, whether stratifying treatment on that basis will reduce morbidity."

Japanese inventors have designed a hi-tech (and slightly bonkers) device that claims to help people lose weight – and it involves a pair of ‘slimming spectacles’ that trick the brain into thinking that food is 50% bigger than it really is.

The ‘Meta Cookie+’ gadget has been developed by a team of researchers from Tokyo University, Japan and was showcased at Tokyo's Digital Content Expo.

The virtual tasting headgear screens a larger-looking image of the food in front of the wearer and supposedly suppresses the appetite by tricking the brain’s perception of food size.

After trialling the gadget, researchers claim those who wore the food goggles, ate 9.3% less than those who didn’t try out the specs.

Another tool the gadget boasts is the ability to manipulate the smell and taste of the food.

The virtual eye wear is able to cleverly transform bland-tasting food into something more appetising and indulgent.

The headgear sends a shot of ‘smell’ through a tube that is sent direct to the wearers nose as the wearer eats a tasteless cookie – all while watching an image of the desired food on the screen in front of their eyes.

The idea behind this concept is that the brain will be duped into thinking that what is seeing and smelling is real, and it therefore changes the taste of the food that is eaten.

Professor Michitaka Hirose says the taste is altered virtually using the trickery of smell. “Among virtual reality technologies, taste is the least advanced. So we thought it would be good to have a system that can render flavours digitally,” prof Hirose said at the Expo.

“Wearers can experience the taste of the cookie psychologically.”

The slimming goggles aren’t the first set of eyewear aimed at dieters – another wacky attempt includes a less techno design, a pair of deep blue aviator-style glasses.

These specs claim to suppress the appetite by making items appear blue and unappealing. The brains behind this invention, a Japanese company called Yumetai, say that blue colours calms the brain’s hunger sensors.

All images supplied by London Media.

ATLANTA — Last year was the worst year for measles in the U.S. in 15 years, health officials said Thursday.

There were 222 cases of measles, a large jump from the 60 or so seen in a typical year. Most of the cases last year were imported – either by foreign visitors or by U.S. residents who picked up the virus overseas.

U.S. children have been getting vaccinated against the measles for about 50 years. But low vaccination rates in Europe and other places resulted in large outbreaks overseas last year.

So far this year, 27 U.S. cases have been reported and it's too early to gauge whether 2012 will be as bad as last year. But with large international events like the London Olympics coming up, health officials are urging everyone – particularly international travelers – to make sure they're fully vaccinated.

"For those of you traveling abroad, bring back memories and not measles," said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Generally, the Americans who got measles last year were not vaccinated. At least two-thirds of the U.S. cases fell into that category, including 50 children whose parents got philosophical, religious or medical exemptions to skip the school vaccinations required by most states, CDC officials said.

The vaccine is considered very effective but a few vaccinated people still get infected.

Measles is highly contagious. The virus spreads easily through the air, and in closed rooms, infected droplets can linger for up to two hours after the sick person leaves.

It causes a fever, runny nose, cough and a rash all over the body. In rare cases, measles can be deadly, and is particularly dangerous for children. Infection can also cause pregnant women to have a miscarriage or premature birth.

No measles deaths were reported in the U.S. last year; the last one occurred in 2003. But about a third of the 2011 cases were hospitalized, and one child was touch-and-go for about a week before finally recovering, one CDC official said.

Officials traced 200 of last year's 222 cases to measles in another country, said Schuchat, director of the CDC's Office of Infectious Diseases. The largest outbreak was in the Minneapolis area where 21 cases were traced to a child who got sick after a trip to Kenya.

The last time the United States had more measles was in 1996, when 508 cases were reported.

Before the vaccine was available, nearly all children got measles by their 15th birthday and epidemics cycled through the nation every two to three years – generally peaking in the late winter or spring. In those days, about 450 to 500 Americans died from measles each year.

Two doses of a measles-mumps-rubella vaccine are recommended for all children, including a first dose given around a child's first birthday and a second dose around the time of preschool. These vaccinations are believed to last for a lifetime. Children as young as 6 months can get a first dose if they're going to a country with measles outbreaks, health officials say.

___

Online:

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr

A British woman has revealed how a Jequirity bean bracelet bought on eBay ‘ruined her life’ after it became toxic.

Jo Wollacott from Bridport, Dorset, claims the bracelet, made from a thread of red and black ‘love’ beads (jequirity seeds), caused sickness and severe hallucinations.

Jo claimed the hallucinations become so bad, she ended up being sectioned under the mental health act.

The mother-of-two also suffered from skin abrasions, hives and the £1 deadly beads she was wearing on her wrist even caused abscesses in her mouth during her ordeal, unbeknown to her.

“I was being physically sick throughout the summer - suffering diarrhoea and vomiting - but I just put it down to having a bad bug. Then my life started to spiral out of control.” Wollacott told SWNS.

Talking about being sectioned in the Forston Clinic, Dorcester in 2010, Wollacott said:

“I was also in hospital for a few days with hallucinations - I did not know what was going on. Doctors could not work out what was wrong with me - they did not know what medication to put me on.”

Sadly, Jo’s mystery illness got so bad, her relationship broke down and she was forced to quit her mosaic design business. Jo later run into debt and had to sell her home as a result.

After suffering from ill health for over a year, Jo decided to stop wearing the bracelet and put it away in a jewellery box. It wasn’t until after she did this, that her symptoms began to improve.

Following her recovery, Jo’s son, Dagan, bought a letter home from school warning about the dangers of Jequirity bean bracelets.

“The letter had a picture of my bracelet on. When I got the warning letter I came home and got the bracelet and realised how long I’d been wearing it for.

“I couldn’t believe it. When I found out hallucinations were part of the side affects of the bead poisoning I started to piece things together.”

What are Jequirity beans?

The Jequirity bean bracelet is made from the deadly seed of the plant, abrus precatorious, which originate from Peru. It contains the toxin abrin that if swallowed, has the potential to kill in doses of just 3 micrograms. Abrin is chemically similar to ricin, a chemical warfare agent.

The abrin substance is currently prohibited under the Terrorism Act due to its deadly drug-like compounds and poison content.

The Public Health Agency (PHA) has recently issued a warning about a potential health risk associated with a strung seed bracelet in the UK, with it prompting the Eden Project, in Cornwall, to recall all of its bracelets as a result.

Dr Gerry Waldron, a health protection consultant from the PHA, said in a statement: “The beans have a characteristic red and black ladybird-like appearance.

“Although these bracelets are not known to have been sold through any outlets in Northern Ireland, the PHA is alerting the public so that in the unlikely event that anyone has one of these bracelets, they can dispose of them safely.

“People who have been bought or given this type of bracelet in the last two years should put it in a sealable bag and dispose of it in their household waste. As an additional precaution, owners should also wash their hands and avoid contact with eyes after bagging.”

Drinking your meals sounds like heaven for some, and hell for others -- but Julie McClure is on a mission to convince either side that it's exactly what they need.

Benourished, McClure's company, is in the business of nutritional cleanses, offering up a variety of meal options to fulfil people's daily caloric intakes. While there are salads and snacks available, the big push is for juice cleanses, a trend that has not been without its controversy.

Medical professionals against the practice emphasize the body's natural cleansing systems and insist there's no reason to try out these regimens -- particularly if they're being used as dieting tactics.

The Master Cleanse, a program based on a book published in the 1940s, is the one often discussed in reference to juice cleanses. It has also, however, added to the controversy, given its focus on laxatives and one juice consisting of lemonade and cayenne pepper.

From McClure's perspective, however, cleanses are less about weight loss, which comes mostly from losing water weight, and much more about nutrition.

"Our philosophy is to give your digestive system a break for a few days," she explains. "Particularly with the standard North American diet, people are eating foods that irritate the body. So we just want to flood you with nutrients in a very clean diet so that more of your energy can be dedicated to your repair and catching up."

The company offers programs of all-juice or juice and food combinations, ranging from two days to a full week. The juices are hydraulically pressed for maximum nutritional value, and include products with names like Zesty Lemonade juice (for better circulation) and Maca Magic snack bar (to balance energy without caffine).

SEE: 10 of the most cleansing ingredients for your system included in Benourished's products. Story continues below:

Side effects on the first or second day of a cleanse can include headaches, symptoms of a cold and low energy, and some people have complained of nausea. But the benefits, McClure notes, include feeling less bloated, feeling generally lighter, brighter eyes, glowing skin, and better sleep.

"Sleep’s been a big one," she says. "I think you’re taking out a lot of the stimulants and it’s very clean eating, so you sleep soundly."

For those diving into the cleanse, she recommends phasing out dairy, meat, eggs, gluten, refined sugars, alcohol, coffee, corn and soy beforehand -- the major allergens McClure says irritate the digestive system.

Though McClure says none of her clients have had adverse reactions to the cleanse, she does warn against those who are pregnant, breast-feeding, have a compromised immune system or have diabetes doing a cleanse. And she tells all clients to let their GPs know about any changes in diet.

McClure, who studied naturopathic medicine and credits nutrition with helping her get over a chronic migraine condition, stresses the importance of changing your diet slowly. "Even adding a Green Alkalizer juice [based on leafy greens] to your normal diet is a major step forward if you're used to a lot of processed foods."

WASHINGTON — A consumer advocacy group is calling on government regulators to withdraw a diabetes drug from Novo Nordisk, saying the injectable medication raises the risk of thyroid cancer, pancreatitis and kidney failure.

Public Citizen sent a petition to the Food and Drug Administration saying the risks of Victoza far outweigh its benefits as a diabetes drug, a crowded field that includes nearly a dozen similar medications.

Citing internal agency documents, the group notes that FDA approved the drug in 2010 against the recommendation of three staff scientists.

"The need for new therapies for Type 2 diabetes is not so urgent that one must tolerate a significant degree of uncertainty regarding serious risk concerns," wrote reviewer Dr. Karen Mahoney, in an agency memo obtained by Public Citizen.

Mahoney and two other reviewers noted that Victoza caused thyroid tumors in both male and female rats and mice. The warning label for Victoza currently states it is "unknown whether Victoza will cause" thyroid cancer in humans because rodent studies cannot provide conclusive evidence of human outcomes. The label recommends patients with a family history of the disease not use the drug.

The FDA reviews drugs using teams of doctors, pharmacists and scientists. It is not unusual for some team members to disagree on the safety of a drug.

Public Citizen also cites Victoza's association with pancreatitis, reports of which were 3.7-fold higher among patients tested with the drug than those taking other diabetes drugs. In its first 17 months on the market, the FDA received 200 reports of patients diagnosed with pancreatitis, according to a search of FDA databases. Public Citizen estimates only 10 percent of cases are reported to the agency, suggesting there may be as many as 2,000 cases of among patients taking Victoza.

About 150,000 prescriptions for the drug are filled each month in the U.S.

Any citizen or group can petition the FDA to remove a product from the market based on safety, economic or environmental reasons. The FDA often takes months or even years to render a decision on such requests.

By Cassie Rodenberg
(Click here for the original article)

Instant gratification culture has now reached the seemingly endless pain that is the hangover. Hangover Heaven, a bus operated out of Las Vegas, feeds customers a drip IV concoction of a “vitamin mix” meant to fix or drastically lessen the head-wrenching, queasy, post-party problem.

Hangover Heaven’s site says the basic service yields a hydration IV, while a premium package injects “intravenous hydration, anti-nausea and anti-inflammatory medications” as well as a “vitamin supplementation.” What’s in that mixture? The website doesn’t say, though it assures that pre-existing customer medical issues are taken into account. Uh-huh.

Along with resolving a hangover the company also touts improved skin appearance and general state of health. So you come out of a hangover better than before?

Other companies proffer hangover “recovery pills.” Here, advertising depicts someone drunk with jarring accompanying text such as, “in 5 hours he’ll be clearing flight 87 for takeoff.”

Both the ad and the bus send messaging to drink as much as you want, whenever you want, then cure yourself quickly and easily.

As a refresher, what is a hangover?

Alcohol causes the brain to block creation of the antidiuretic hormone vasopressin, which is responsible for sending water to our kidneys. Without it, the brain sends water to the bladder, bypassing body reabsorption and use. For every alcoholic beverage we drink, our bodies expel about four times that amount of water, known as the diuretic effect. As we expel water, we also expel essential salts and potassium necessary for good muscle and nerve function. Loss of sodium and potassium causes headaches.

Bottom line, we’re losing electrolytes and water, causing our cellular processes to struggle, leaving us with dry mouth, queasiness and headaches. Our bodies, through an array of unpleasant aftereffects, are screaming for all kinds of things, and biologically, teaching us a lesson for depriving our cells of nutrients.

Hangovers are a flashing warning of overload: Too much!

So what?

Not only are downing relatively unknown and non-medically supervised treatments potentially dangerous, they also makes binge drinking seem all the more acceptable, commonplace and non-severe. With college-age student alcohol overdose rates on the rise (29,000 alcohol-only ODs estimated in 2008), among other demographics around the country, what message are we sending?

(Adds details on other studies, analyst comment, background)
April 19 (Reuters) - An experimental hepatitis C drug acquired by Gilead Sciences Inc when it paid nearly $11 billion to buy Pharmasset has produced encouraging results in a closely-watched clinical trial, results of which were released in Barcelona.
The U.S. company said that of 25 patients with genotype 1 hepatitis who completed 12 weeks of treatment with a combination of GS-7977 and the older antiviral ribavirin (RBV), 88 percent still had undetectable levels of virus four weeks after completion of treatment.
Three patients in the study, known as ELECTRON, experienced viral relapse.
A second study, QUANTUM, which contained more difficult to treat patients, produced less impressive results, with 59 percent of patients having undetectable virus levels.
Mark Schoenebaum, an analyst at ISI Group, said the ELECTRON data was better than expected, since most analysts had expected a result around 50 percent, while the QUANTUM result was about in-line with expectations.
The market for treating hepatitis C has burgeoned in the last year with two new breakthrough treatments approved for sale in the United States and the promise of even better medicines in the pipeline, like the Gilead drug GS-7977.
GS-7977 works by blocking an enzyme essential to the replication of the hepatitis C virus. It is one of a new class of treatments designed to be given without interferon, which helps boost the body's immune system but can also cause debilitating, flu-like symptoms.
Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc's new hepatitis C drug Incivek and Merck & Co's Victrelis both won U.S. approval last year. (Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Mark Potter)

Last fall, we put together a list of 30 celebs who are aging gracefully -- famous entertainers who have refused to give into Hollywood's prevailing "pro-youth" stance. Every person on that list was doing so in his or her own way, whether it was refusing to go under the knife or celebrating the wisdom and vitality that more years can bring.

We got a lot of feedback (no, we didn't set an age cut-off; this is about people who are throwing their arms around the aging process, no matter how many birthdays they've had), which is why we feel it's time to revisit the topic.

This time around, we've got 10 more celebrities -- folks who have been particularly outspoken about some aspect of aging with courage and grace. And a lot of these faces? You suggested them.

Any celebs who you find personally inspiring when it comes to aging gracefully and who you can't believe we overlooked on this list (or the last)? Let us know!

Nearly a third of new mothers go into debt due to taking maternity leave, while one in 10 cut their time off short to ease financial pressures, a study has suggested today.

Some 28% of those surveyed had gone into the red due to their time out of work, typically accruing almost £2,500 in debts, while just a quarter felt financially prepared for motherhood, according to research from uSwitch.com.

Some 11% of mothers said they had ended their maternity leave early to boost their ailing finances, while 9% said they had been forced to reconsider plans not to return to work.

Those mothers surveyed said their net monthly household income had dropped from £2,866 on average to £1,654 typically while they had been on maternity leave.

One in 10 people questioned said they had borrowed cash from relatives, while 14% had used credit cards, loans and overdrafts to help tide them over.

Families' incomes have been squeezed by high inflation and soaring bills, at a time when people are seeing little return on their savings due to three years of record low interest rates.

A recent study from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tank found that families with children stand to lose £511 a year on average under tax and benefit changes which came into force this month.

Shadow chancellor Ed Balls previously said the impact calculated by the IFS was proof of a "tax credits bombshell", with up to a million households losing eligibility entirely.

Justine Roberts, chief executive and co-founder of the Mumsnet website, said: "Statutory maternity pay at just over £100 a week after the first six weeks of maternity leave represents a real pay cut for most women.

"This, coupled with inflated fuel and food prices and the VAT increase, means that new mums are reporting feeling an exaggerated version of the pressures currently faced by most families.

"This Government promised to be the most family friendly in Europe, as things stand it still has a long way to go."

A Government spokesman said: "This is exactly why we have proposed changes to the current outdated maternity leave arrangements, replacing it with a new flexible parental leave model to better meet the needs of modern families and modern workplaces.

"Under the new system families can chose how to divide their leave with fathers being able take on more paid leave as a result. In particular this will benefit families where the mother is the main income earner in a household.

"In addition to this, we're taking millions out of tax altogether by raising the personal allowance, which is putting up to £126 cash back in people's pockets this year.

"The Chancellor has confirmed that working age benefits will go up by 5.2% in April and the child element of the child tax credit will increase by inflation from April - which could mean up to £135 extra per child. We also know that families are worried about the cost of living and so we've cut fuel duty and frozen council tax."

More than 1,000 mothers took part in the uSwitch study.

Check out the news of the day in pictures below:

In a wide-ranging new study, researchers have classified breast cancer into 10 different subtypes — a finding that could change the future of breast cancer diagnoses, treatment and survival.