What's killing us this week?

Pyrrho · Post by **Pyrrho** » Sat Sep 16, 2017 7:11 am

Diet soda is the latest rage. Apparently causes everything. Should I also give up sucralose?

Doctor X · Post by **Doctor X** » Sat Sep 16, 2017 8:17 am

[youtube][/youtube]

--J. "You Fucked Up! You Trusted Us!" D.

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Sat Sep 16, 2017 4:25 pm

Has a chapter "Salad, the silent killer"…

Bruce · Post by **Bruce** » Sat Sep 16, 2017 5:41 pm

Netflix has a special on the sugar industry.

Refined sugar (sucrose) is bad. It started out as a "natural" sweetener, but it's addictive. Nobody wants to think of things they like as addictive, especially when production and sale of it balloons into a multi-billion dollar industry with solid government backing. Sugar is literally in every processed food product. Unless you are surviving on food from your garden, you are probably eating sugar.

Then came artificial sweeteners. The alternative to sugar. They started out innocent enough. Artificial sweeteners have a higher sweetness than sugar, so you can use less, thus you are only getting a small dose. That's how it started, but it wasn't long before artificial sweeteners started turning up in everything, and in higher doses as well.

The insane doses of sugar and artificial sweeteners the average person ingests per day from processed foods makes it obvious why more the 1/4 of the US population is diabetic and obese, and those numbers continue to climb.

Don't worry about it, though. YOU are safe. Enjoy your Vitamin water. It's water....with vitamins. Healthy, right? It's right in the name. Coke wants you to be healthy. Right?

http://www.motherjones.com/food/2013/01 ... r-obesity/

Back in 2009, the Center for Science in the Public Interest sued Coca-Cola for making “deceptive and unsubstantiated” health claims about the products. In 2010, a US federal district court judge rejected Coca-Cola’s motion to dismiss the suit (document here), noting that Coke’s lawyers had made a remarkable argument: “At oral argument defendants suggested that no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitaminwater was a healthy beverage.”

shemp · Post by **shemp** » Sat Sep 16, 2017 5:42 pm

My back.

shemp · Post by **shemp** » Sat Sep 16, 2017 5:45 pm

Witness wrote:

Has a chapter "Salad, the silent killer"…

Monsieur Mangetout

Bruce · Post by **Bruce** » Sat Sep 16, 2017 5:55 pm

Pyrrho wrote:Diet soda is the latest rage. Apparently causes everything. Should I also give up sucralose?

Sucralose got it's fame because it's a powerful sweetener that supposedly does not react with the human body. This was the conclusion based on studies showing that the amount that was ingested was the same quantity that was pissed and sweated out. It apparently passes right through you, so it's harmless, right?

Like all other artificial sweeteners, sucrose fucks with your pancreas. You body senses sweet stuff entering you digestive system, so your pancreas releases insulin to process it. Except insulin doesn't interact with artificial sweeteners, so there it sits in your guts, which fucks with your appetite. Ever notice how hungry you feel after drinking a diet soda, or vitamin water, or anything that's loaded with artificial sweetener? You will continue to feel hungry until you've gorged yourself on stuff with real sugar, which is everything else.

Don't worry though. It's just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. Easily dismissed. You're diet is healthy enough. Just one chai latte tea from Starbucks will hit the spot. It's tea. Tea is healthy. It comes from the earth. And latte is milk, which comes from cows, which also come from earth. Starbucks is a health conscious company. They care much more about your health than the evil Coke company.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/do-you-kno ... cks-drink/

Venti chai tea latte -- 52 grams of sugar (about 13 teaspoons)

For comparison, a can of Coke contains 33 grams of sugar.

Bruce · Post by **Bruce** » Sat Sep 16, 2017 6:02 pm

shemp wrote:Monsieur Mangetout

I'll counter that wiki with another wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pica_(disorder)

Pica is characterized by an appetite for substances that are largely non-nutritive, such as ice (pagophagia); hair (trichophagia); paper (xylophagia);[1] drywall or paint; metal (metallophagia); stones (lithophagia) or soil (geophagia); glass (hyalophagia); or feces (coprophagia); and chalk.[2] According to DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition) criteria, for these actions to be considered pica, they must persist for more than one month at an age where eating such objects is considered developmentally inappropriate

So Mr. Mangetout lived to be 57. Good for him. I had an uncle that smoked two packs a day and lived to be 90. Guess that means cigarettes are healthy.

Bruce · Post by **Bruce** » Sat Sep 16, 2017 6:09 pm

Don't think for one second that I'm at all health conscious. I'm currently sucking on a shard of jawbreaker that I bought on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Y1 ... =UTF8&th=1

Heaven!

I'm just in a trolling mood because I'm also having a caffeine high from a Starbuck's dark roast that I just sucked down.

The only difference between me and everyone else is that I don't mind admitting that I'm a hypocrite. I hold others to a higher standard than I do for myself. Nothing wrong with that.

Anaxagoras · Post by **Anaxagoras** » Sun Sep 17, 2017 12:27 pm

Witness wrote:

Has a chapter "Salad, the silent killer"…

Does he eat glass, like David Blaine?

That man is mental.

Pyrrho · Post by **Pyrrho** » Sun Sep 17, 2017 12:56 pm

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Mon Sep 18, 2017 12:45 am

Multivitamins are, at best, a waste of money, Johns Hopkins doctors say

The latest issue of Annals of Internal Medicine contains three articles addressing "the role of vitamin and mineral supplements for preventing the occurrence or progression of chronic diseases." An editorial in the same Dec. 17 issue offers the following recommendation, based upon the most current research: "Most supplements do not prevent chronic disease or death, their use is not justified, and they should be avoided."

Details: https://hub.jhu.edu/2013/12/17/vitamins ... e-harmful/

So do not fail to supplement your industrial food with industrial vitamins.

Doctor X · Post by **Doctor X** » Tue Sep 19, 2017 8:22 am

Do not eat human brains if you do not know the medical history of your order.

--J.D.

Pyrrho · Post by **Pyrrho** » Sat Sep 23, 2017 12:09 pm

Supermalaria.

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-41351160

The rapid spread of "super malaria" in South East Asia is an alarming global threat, scientists are warning.
This dangerous form of the malaria parasite cannot be killed with the main anti-malaria drugs.
It emerged in Cambodia but has since spread through parts of Thailand, Laos and has arrived in southern Vietnam.
The team at the Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit in Bangkok said there was a real danger of malaria becoming untreatable.

Doctor X · Post by **Doctor X** » Sat Sep 23, 2017 12:29 pm

Yet another reason South East Asia is a one huge "Nope."

--J.D.

Anaxagoras · Post by **Anaxagoras** » Sat Sep 23, 2017 12:55 pm

Gene drive.

We already have the technology to eliminate malaria.

Possibly. We just need to be brave enough to actually release it.

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Sat Sep 23, 2017 4:36 pm

Anaxagoras wrote:Gene drive.

We already have the technology to eliminate malaria.

Possibly. We just need to be brave enough to actually release it.

That is true, or at least I too read that somewhere on the internet so it must be.

But environmentalists would have a fucking meltdown. And honestly, unless you really know the unforeseen consequences it might be better to just let malaria do its thing. What feeds on mosquitoes?'
http://www.mosquitomagnet.com/articles/ ... mosquitoes

Anaxagoras · Post by **Anaxagoras** » Sat Sep 23, 2017 10:42 pm

Rob Lister wrote:
Anaxagoras wrote:Gene drive.

We already have the technology to eliminate malaria.

Possibly. We just need to be brave enough to actually release it.
That is true, or at least I too read that somewhere on the internet so it must be.

But environmentalists would have a fucking meltdown. And honestly, unless you really know the unforeseen consequences it might be better to just let malaria do its thing. What feeds on mosquitoes?'
http://www.mosquitomagnet.com/articles/ ... mosquitoes

The neat thing is that the gene drive doesn't even need to kill the mosquitos. It just gives them a mutation so that they no longer carry the malaria parasite. Although there are thousands of species of mosquitos, only one of them spreads malaria. So things that eat mosquitos would not be affected.

https://www.nature.com/news/gene-drive- ... ia-1.18858

Doctor X · Post by **Doctor X** » Sun Sep 24, 2017 1:14 am

--J.D.

sparks · Post by **sparks** » Sun Sep 24, 2017 5:12 pm

"I wants yur blood!"

Pyrrho · Post by **Pyrrho** » Thu Nov 23, 2017 1:11 pm

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 71546.html

An Indian health minister has sparked outrage after claiming cancer is caused by sins in a past life.

Himanta Biswa Sarma, who holds office in the Assam state government, said people could also develop the disease through “divine justice” if their parents had sinned.

...

“Sometimes we come across young men getting inflicted with cancer or young men meeting with accidents.

“If you observe the background you will come to know that it's divine justice. Nothing else. We have to suffer that divine justice.

"In this lifetime or in our previous life, or perhaps my father or mother, perhaps that young man did not do but his father has done something wrong.”

They should have asked him how far back to go...

Doctor X · Post by **Doctor X** » Thu Nov 23, 2017 10:04 pm

I fucking hate people like that.

--J.D.

Pyrrho · Post by **Pyrrho** » Thu Nov 23, 2017 11:47 pm

Asshat relatives? Pre-existing condition. Coverage denied.

shemp · Post by **shemp** » Fri Nov 24, 2017 12:25 am

Yeah, the insurance companies would love to use that.

Fucking stupid idiot asshat.

sparks · Post by **sparks** » Fri Nov 24, 2017 2:11 am

Hey! Even if you can't remember what a dickwad you were in a past life does not excuse you from it!!11Eleventy Gawd loves you, but not that much.

Take that!! Sceptics!

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Sat Nov 25, 2017 3:09 am

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Mon Dec 04, 2017 6:26 am

LA Times wrote:In California, an unexplained increase in valley fever this year

This year is shaping up to be the worst on record in California for people infected with valley fever, a lung infection caused by a fungus found in soil.

State health officials announced earlier that 2016 broke the record for the most valley fever cases reported since the state started keeping count in 1995. Now, 2017 is on pace to have even more infections.

From January through October, 5,121 cases were reported to the state health department, compared with 3,827 cases during the same period in 2016.

People contract valley fever by breathing in dust that contains a fungus called Coccidioides, which is common in semiarid regions of the country. So although anyone can get valley fever, people who work in fields or construction sites where soil gets kicked up are particularly at risk.

Health officials said Tuesday that they didn’t know why cases were increasing. Experts have said the rise in valley fever — which has increased nationwide in recent years — could be linked to climate change or droughts because hotter and drier weather leads to more dust in the air.

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-ln- ... story.html

Bruce · Post by **Bruce** » Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:57 am

Snorkeling.

Snorkeling is killing us on our Hawaiian vacations.

Experts: Why Do So Many Hawaii Visitors Die Snorkeling?

Dr. Philip Foti, an Oahu physician who specializes in pulmonary and internal medicine, is developing a “gadget” that will be able to test different types of snorkel tubes to see which ones create the most resistance while breathing through them.

This is a countermeasure against the deadly doodads.

He told an audience of lifeguards, government officials and others at a drowning-prevention conference Friday in Honolulu that snorkel companies have added new “doodads” to the tubes over the years — mostly aimed at keeping water out — but they may have unintended consequences.

Foti was also concerned about the full-face snorkel masks that are now “all the rage.” He called them a “recipe for disaster,” noting the need to scrutinize this equipment as well.

“I am trying really hard to get a device that will allow us to be the filters of which snorkels to use and which snorkels not to use,” he said. “We need to find out how to test them and then what to do about protecting people from using them.”

It's not that hard, really. The deeper you go and the more volume you have to pull at that depth, the harder your lungs have to work. Turns out that when you put too much strain on your lungs, awful things can happen, like this:

Foti said he determined she had negative pressure pulmonary edema, which is caused by an upper airway obstruction generating enough pressure to pull fluid from the arteries that take blood to the lungs.

I, for one, don't want to spend my vacation drowning in my own blood. I'll stay home and watch the Travel Channel, thanks.

Doctor X · Post by **Doctor X** » Fri Dec 15, 2017 9:51 am

I prefer to watch people drowning in the lagoon.

As I swirl my glass.

--J.D.

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Sat Dec 16, 2017 5:45 am

BBC wrote:A surgeon who marked his initials on the livers of two transplant patients has admitted assault by beating.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42344180

Bruce · Post by **Bruce** » Sat Dec 16, 2017 9:41 pm

Apathy.

Apathy is killing us this week.

shemp · Post by **shemp** » Sat Dec 16, 2017 11:02 pm

Bruce and Abdul have something in common.

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Mon Dec 18, 2017 3:47 am

The Sun (yep!) wrote:Snapping regular selfies could be a sign of loneliness and mental health issues

Brits now snap more than 1.2 billion self-portraits annually on their smartphones. But many who shared them on social media did so to ease loneliness, a study found in Thailand.

And selfie fans are more likely to be dangerously self-obsessed, narcissistic and attention-seeking, the report said.

Lead researcher Dr Peerayuth Charoensukmongkol warned of “unhealthy behaviours” associated with the craze.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/1926754 ... th-issues/

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Fri Jan 05, 2018 11:15 pm

Booze. Booze is killing us in new ways:

Cancer Research UK wrote:New research shows how alcohol damages DNA and increases cancer risk

Scientists have shown how alcohol damages DNA in stem cells, helping to explain why drinking increases your risk of cancer, according to research part-funded by Cancer Research UK and published in Nature today.

Much previous research looking at the precise ways in which alcohol causes cancer has been done in cell cultures. But in this study, researchers have used mice to show how alcohol exposure leads to permanent genetic damage.

Scientists at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, gave diluted alcohol, chemically known as ethanol, to mice. They then used chromosome analysis and DNA sequencing to examine the genetic damage caused by acetaldehyde, a harmful chemical produced when the body processes alcohol.

They found that acetaldehyde can break and damage DNA within blood stem cells leading to rearranged chromosomes and permanently altering the DNA sequences within these cells.

It is important to understand how the DNA blueprint within stem cells is damaged because when healthy stem cells become faulty, they can give rise to cancer.

These new findings therefore help us to understand how drinking alcohol increases the risk of developing 7 types of cancer including common types like breast and bowel.

http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-u ... ancer-risk

Grammatron · Post by **Grammatron** » Sat Jan 06, 2018 4:34 am

shemp wrote:Bruce and Abdul have something in common.

Abdul doesn't have a sense of humor where is Bruce just has crippling depression. That means Bruce can get better.

Bruce · Post by **Bruce** » Sat Jan 06, 2018 8:22 am

Grammatron wrote:
shemp wrote:Bruce and Abdul have something in common.
Abdul doesn't have a sense of humor where is Bruce just has crippling depression. That means Bruce can get better.

I've been on depression meds since I was 18.

All this time I've been on western meds, when I should have been doing shrooms:

Magic mushroom compound might treat depression by reviving emotional responsiveness in the brain

Psilocybin is the primary mind-altering substance in psychedelic “magic” mushrooms. The drug can profoundly alter the way a person experiences the world by producing changes in mood, sensory perception, time perception, and sense of self.

Imagine me popping hippy candy and writing stories. That would be a hoot.

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Sun Jan 07, 2018 5:56 am

↑ I'm sorry for you, Bruce.

Rob Lister · Post by **Rob Lister** » Sun Jan 07, 2018 1:01 pm

Love the data, hate the graph.

Bruce · Post by **Bruce** » Mon Jan 08, 2018 12:04 am

I'm reading that LSD is safer than caffeine. Good too know. I've never done the stuff, or anything else on the graph other than alcohol, but it's good to know that LSD is so safe.

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Mon Jan 08, 2018 3:36 am

Bruce wrote:I'm reading that LSD is safer than caffeine. Good too know. I've never done the stuff, or anything else on the graph other than alcohol, but it's good to know that LSD is so safe.

On April 19, 1943, Albert Hofmann, the Swiss father of psychedelic medicine, dropped lysergic acid diethylamide and went on a bike ride, becoming the first human to ever trip on acid. The rest is psychedelic history.

https://www.inverse.com/article/14503-b ... -acid-trip