by ilene - April 22nd, 2011 9:20 am
By AMIE NINH, courtesy of TIME
VERONIKA BURMEISTER VIA GETTY IMAGES
Consider this: of the trillions upon trillions of cells in the human body, only about 1 in 10 is actually human. The rest belong to microbes, which colonize every inch of you, from the inside of your mouth to the skin between your toes. It’s no wonder, then, that research is increasingly finding that the diversity of these microbes has important effects on health.
The vast majority of microbes — perhaps up to 100 trillion of them — live in our guts. So-called gut bugs help digest our food, assist our immune systems, maintain the health of the intestines, produce vitamins, aid metabolism and extract calories from food (which is why much research has associated gut bugs with obesity).
To better understand the way gut bugs work, a new study has aimed to categorize the lot of them. The study, led by Peer Bork of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, found that the bacteria in our guts falls into one of three distinct ecosystems, or "enterotypes."
"The three gut types can explain why the uptake of medicines and nutrients varies from person to person," Jeroen Raes, a bioinformatician at Vrije University in Brussels and coauthor of the new study, said in a statement. Which means that knowing a person’s enterotype could someday help doctors tailor drug treatments or diets to suit them better.
The New York Times reports:
Or, [Bork] speculated, doctors might be able to use enterotypes to find alternatives to antibiotics, which are becoming increasingly ineffective. Instead of trying to wipe out disease-causing bacteria that have disrupted the ecological balance of the gut, they could try to provide reinforcements for the good bacteria. "You’d try to restore the type you had before," he said.
For the new study, the research team evaluated stool samples from 22 European individuals, extracted the DNA and determined its composition by using DNA analysis and computers. They also compared the results to other published findings from Japanese and American subjects.
Scientists found that each of the three enterotypes was composed of a unique balance of microbe species. The team named each type after its dominant bacteria: Bacteroides, an enterotype that’s known to break down carbohydrates and is better at making vitamins B2, B5, C and H; Prevotella, which degrades mucus and produces more B1 and folic acid; and Ruminococcus, which…
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by ilene - February 10th, 2011 9:40 pm
Interesting study – the researchers controlled for exercise, weight, blood pressure, smoking and other factors correlated to vascular events, including strokes. So what might be the problem with diet soda? Perhaps the artificial sweetner itself (Aspartame/Nutrasweet?). Drinking sugary soda was not significantly correlated with an increased risk for vascular events. - Ilene
LOS ANGELES (AP) — It’s not definitive proof of harm, but new research raises concern about diet soda. It suggests that people who drink it every day have higher risks for stroke and heart attack than those who drink no soda of any kind at all.
The findings come from a federally funded study of about 2,500 adults in the New York City area.
Doctors have no explanation for why diet soda might be risky. It could be that people who drink lots of it also fail to exercise, weigh more or have other risk factors like high blood pressure and smoking. However, the researchers took these factors into account and found the trend remained.
Continue here: The Associated Press: Study suggests higher stroke risk with diet soda.
According to "Diet Soda May Heighten Risk for Vascular Events," the risk for "stroke, myocardial infarction, and vascular death," were elevated in the group that drank diet sodas every day. "People who had diet soda every day experienced a 61% higher risk of vascular events than those who reported drinking no soda," lead investigator Hannah Gardener, ScD, an epidemiologist from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Florida, told reporters attending a news conference here at the International Stroke Conference.
Details and limitations
Specifically, the University of Miami study (which followed more than 2,500 men and women aged 40 and older for an average of about nine years) found that people who drank diet soda daily were 61 percent more likely to experience a cardiovascular event than people who drank no diet soda.
That increase in risk held up after controlling for such factors as age, sex, smoking, physical activity and calories consumed each day. Even after the researchers controlled for metabolic syndrome and a history of heart disease, the people who drank diet soda daily had a 48 percent increased risk of having a stroke or heart attack compared to their non-diet soda drinking
…
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by ilene - August 30th, 2010 9:19 pm
By John Cloud, courtesy of TIME
One of the most contentious issues in the vast literature about alcohol consumption has been the consistent finding that those who don’t drink actually tend to die sooner than those who do. The standard Alcoholics Anonymous explanation for this finding is that many of those who show up as abstainers in such research are actually former hard-core drunks who had already incurred health problems associated with drinking.
But a new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that — for reasons that aren’t entirely clear — abstaining from alcohol does actually tend to increase one’s risk of dying even when you exclude former drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers’ mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers.
Moderate drinking, which is defined as one to three drinks per day, is associated with the lowest mortality rates in alcohol studies. Moderate alcohol use (especially when the beverage of choice is red wine) is thought to improve heart health, circulation and sociability, which can be important because people who are isolated don’t have as many family members and friends who can notice and help treat health problems.
But why would abstaining from alcohol lead to a shorter life? It’s true that those who abstain from alcohol tend to be from lower socioeconomic classes, since drinking can be expensive. And people of lower socioeconomic status have more life stressors — job and child-care worries that might not only keep them from the bottle but also cause stress-related illnesses over long periods. (They also don’t get the stress-reducing benefits of a drink or two after work.)
But even after controlling for nearly all imaginable variables — socioeconomic status, level of physical activity, number of close friends, quality of social support and so on — the researchers (a six-member team led by psychologist Charles Holahan of the University of Texas at Austin) found that over a 20-year period, mortality rates were highest for those who had never been drinkers, second-highest for heavy drinkers and lowest for moderate drinkers.
The sample of those who were studied included individuals between ages 55 and 65 who had had any kind of outpatient care in the previous three years. The 1,824 participants were followed for 20 years. One drawback of the sample: a disproportionate number, 63%, were men. Just over…
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by ilene - April 28th, 2010 8:11 pm
The good news is that this sugar and fat-loaded delight should readily pass future salt prohibitions with flying colors (strawberry red, cream and cheesecake yellow). - Ilene
Courtesy of Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker
What you’re seeing below is the latest innovation from the laboratory of Dine Equity ($DIN), the parent company of IHOP.
Yes, it’s a cheesecake-filled pancake.
My fellow Americans, you are all disgusting. General George Patton, Frank Sinatra and Steve McQueen are rolling in their graves.
Read more (if you must):
IHOP Offers Cheesecake Filled Pancakes (MSNBC)
See also: FDA salt crackdown is in bad taste, Daily Bruin
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by ilene - February 15th, 2010 11:18 pm
By Eben Harrell / London, courtesy of TIME
Time waits for no man, the old truism goes, but in recent years scientists have shown that it does seem to move more slowly for some. Molecular biologists have observed that people’s cells often age at different rates, leading them to make a distinction between "chronological" and "biological age."
But the reason for the difference remains only vaguely understood. Environmental factors such as smoking, stress and regular exercise all seem to influence the rate at which our cells age. Now, for the first time, researchers have found a genetic link to cellular aging — a finding that suggests new treatments for a variety of age-related diseases and cancers.
The field of "biological aging" has in recent years focused on the long molecules of DNA contained in human cells called chromosomes. All chromosomes have protective caps at either end called telomeres. Each time a cell replicates itself (as it does before it dies), the telomeres shorten, like plastic tips fraying on the end of shoelace. Shortened telomeres have been linked to a host of age-related illnesses such as heart disease and certain cancers. (Scientists have yet to study whether telomeres influence a person’s appearance). Last year’s Nobel prize in medicine was awarded to three American scientists for their work in the field, and many scientists now believe telomeres are the closest we may come to identifying a biological clock — and our best bet for one day learning how to stop or turn back that clock.
To better understand the aging discrepancy, a team of researchers in Britain and The Netherlands scanned more than 500,000 genetic variations across the human genome. Using a population of nearly 12,000, they then attempted to pinpoint a genetic link to telomere length. (See how to prevent illness at any age.)
In a significant breakthrough, the team successfully identified that a particular gene sequence was associated with differences in telomere length between individuals. What’s more, the sequence was clustered near a gene called TERC, which is already known to play a role in the production of an enzyme called telomerase. Telomerase repairs telomeres when they shorten. "That was very exciting for us," says Professor Nilesh Samani, a cardiologist at the University of Leicester who co-led the research, published last week in Nature Genetics. "It gave us great…
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by ilene - January 17th, 2010 6:42 pm
Is Twitter the best way to get breaking news? Or in this case Twitterly email? Thanks Market Guardian! – Ilene
p.s. Ilene on twitter here. 
Courtesy of John Carney at Clusterstock
CNN’s political ticker reports that Obama’s advisers believe that Coakley will lose.
Obama Defends Coakley, Healthcare Reform, and His Presidency In Boston
Brown Is Now The Favorite In Massachusetts Senate Race
Obama’s Prestige And Agenda Are Now At Risk In Massachusetts
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by ilene - January 12th, 2010 10:43 pm
Does anyone care more about Scott Brown’s posing naked than the chance to stop the ObamaCare bill? Just asking. – Ilene
Courtesy of Joe Weisenthal at Clusterstock Wow!
The special Senate election in Massachusetts is already way more exciting than anyone thought it would be.
And now get this… the insurgent Republican posed naked in Cosmo in 1982
Will it derail his campaign, which in itself could end up derailing healthcare? Maybe not.
This was 27 years ago, and his big problem is name recognition, which this helps solve.
(via Mediaite)
*****
Source: Republican Senate Candidate Scott Brown Posed Naked In Cosmo
Ilene here:
In the beginning:
Cosmopolitan dug through their archives to find a June 1982 issue featuring a very naked chap by the name of Scott Brown playing centerfold model. Flattering, in a certain light, but possibly problematic for Brown, who is running for Ted Kennedy’s United States Senate seat in Massachusetts. “Vote for Brown. He Has One Hell of a Stimulus Package,” the lady mag suggests as a slogan.
See also: Mass. Senate race becoming proxy on health bill
BOSTON (AP) – The race to succeed the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy has turned into a proxy battle over the fate of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.
A once-pedestrian contest between Democrat Martha Coakley and Republican Scott Brown has coarsened with a week to go, as the two have cast themselves as custodians of the pivotal Senate vote to determine the bill’s fate.
"As the 41st senator, I can stop it," Brown said last week during a debate, highlighting his potential to be the breakthrough Senate vote that upholds a GOP filibuster.
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by ilene - January 10th, 2010 12:49 pm
It’s still hard to believe a Republican could win in deep-blue Massachusetts, but if you’re interested in healthcare reform you must pay attention to the election that will take place on January 19th.
A new poll from PPP has GOP candidate Scott Brown leading Democrat Martha Coakley by 1 point.
How could a Republican win in a state that Obama carried by more than 20 points. It’s simple. Republicans are motivated by the chance to pull a gigantic upset and torpedo healthcare reform. Democrats aren’t so motivated, so the conventional wisdom is that the makeup of the electorate will be way different than it was last election day.
See Also:
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by ilene - January 8th, 2010 1:15 am
Your genes may not be your destiny, but when your grandmother over-ate that one long summer, that was a killer… Fascinating article on epigenetics. – Ilene
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By John Cloud, courtesy of TIME
The remote, snow-swept expanses of northern Sweden are an unlikely place to begin a story about cutting-edge genetic science. The kingdom’s northernmost county, Norrbotten, is nearly free of human life; an average of just six people live in each square mile. And yet this tiny population can reveal a lot about how genes work in our everyday lives.
Norrbotten is so isolated that in the 19th century, if the harvest was bad, people starved. The starving years were all the crueler for their unpredictability. For instance, 1800, 1812, 1821, 1836 and 1856 were years of total crop failure and extreme suffering. But in 1801, 1822, 1828, 1844 and 1863, the land spilled forth such abundance that the same people who had gone hungry in previous winters were able to gorge themselves for months.
In the 1980s, Dr. Lars Olov Bygren, a preventive-health specialist who is now at the prestigious Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, began to wonder what long-term effects the feast and famine years might have had on children growing up in Norrbotten in the 19th century — and not just on them but on their kids and grandkids as well. So he drew a random sample of 99 individuals born in the Overkalix parish of Norrbotten in 1905 and used historical records to trace their parents and grandparents back to birth. By analyzing meticulous agricultural records, Bygren and two colleagues determined how much food had been available to the parents and grandparents when they were young.
Around the time he started collecting the data, Bygren had become fascinated with research showing that conditions in the womb could affect your health not only when you were a fetus but well into adulthood. In 1986, for example, the Lancet published the first of two groundbreaking papers showing that if a pregnant woman ate poorly, her child would be at significantly higher than average risk for cardiovascular disease as an adult. Bygren wondered whether that effect could start even before pregnancy: Could parents’ experiences early in their lives somehow change the traits they passed to their offspring?
It was a heretical idea. After all, we have had a long-standing deal with biology:…
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by ilene - October 27th, 2009 11:55 am
John asks: "Why is the government trying to spread its public health message through children rather than parents?" Perhaps because a significant proportion of the nation’s parents distrust it and the pharmaceutical companies, so going straight to the kids may be a viable option. – Ilene
Everyone thought it was terrible because children could be convinced smoking was cool by cartoons.
(Or something. This never made a whole lot of sense since we’ve never really had a child smoking problem in the United States. Sure sometimes kids will take a puff or two as an experiment but real smoking didn’t stop until much later and there was never any evidence that teenagers were convinced to start smoking because of cartoons.)
The thing that really creeped most people out was that the use of cartoons seemed aimed at undermining parental authority and influence, getting between kids and their mom and dad. Oh, and the fact that most people are convinced that smoking is deadly.
So what should we make of this advertisement promoting flu shots? Believe it or not, flu shots are pretty controversial. There are a lot of people who believe that serious health issues are associated with the shots, although the evidence for this seems scant. Many more people just don’t think the risk of childhood flu is really worth the quite common side effects, limited risks and cost of getting the shot.
And a few of us have figured out that you can pretty effectively be a free rider when it comes to vaccinations. When my brother enrolled his daughter in pre-school, he was told that chicken pox shots were mandatory. As a Roman Catholic, he objected to the vaccine on pro-life grounds (lung tissue from aborted fetuses are used to generate the vaccine) and pointed out that if everyone else at school was vaccinated, there’s no way his daughter would catch or spread the chicken pox. She was effectively but indirectly vaccinated.
In any case, the risks and benefits of getting a flu shot seem to be something that should be left up to parents rather than decided by bureaucrats. Certainly, the image of the
…
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May 23rd, 2013 2:04 pm
Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.
Submitted by Tyler Durden.
(Milli)seconds after today's market open, utilities NextEra Energy (NEE) and American Electric Power (AEP) did what most stocks in the New Normal do when there is an unexpected event (like a 4 sigma plunge in the Nikkei): they flash crashed.
What is different about AEP and NEE is that unlike most other daily stocks that implode in a matter of milliseconds, the collective market cap of the two companies was nearly $60 billion, which in turn sent the broader utilities index down over 10%. Of course, for a few milliseconds it was more like $30 billion: because that is how much in capitalization was lost in under one second, when today's flash crash du jour struck.
But fear not: anyone who got...
May 23rd, 2013 1:40 pm
Reminder: David is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.
Click here for the full report.
May 23rd, 2013 11:47 am
Paul Price discusses the "Confidence Game" being played in the stock market and how to read the indicators. Some commonly used indicators are contrary indicators (e.g. individual investors' sentiment).
Paul made this video for Real Money Pro about a year and a half ago, so his closing thoughts on the market are out-dated.
It's a confidence gameCourtesy of Paul Price
...May 23rd, 2013 11:35 am
Courtesy of Doug Short.
Five years after the 2008 financial market collapse, governments and central banks across the globe have still re-ignited a sustained global economic expansion. What growth there has been, has been localized, sporadic and anemic. Europe remains mired in recession. The expansion in the U.S. is episodic, with alternating quarters of growth and contraction. While China, seemingly rebounding, lacks the aggregate demand to pull other economies along in its wake.
How to put the global economy on an even keel remains a puzzle to be solved. But, a more profound worldwide economic stagnation looms on the horizon. How we tackle today's problems will determine in part our ability to navigate the secular dearth of growth we are soon to face.
According to United Nations' projections, several nations in the developed world will begin to experience a contraction...
May 23rd, 2013 7:15 am
Submitted by Mark HannaCourtesy of MarketMontage. View original post here.
Some quick notes:
May 23rd, 2013 1:52 am
Courtesy of Sabrient Systems and Gradient Analytics
The market went through some gyrations on Wednesday in reaction to Fed Chairman Bernanke’s testimony before the Joint Economic Committee. He first defended continued quant easing by warning, “A premature tightening of monetary policy could lead interest rates to rise temporarily but also would carry a substantial risk of slowing or ending the economic recovery.” Stocks dutifully rallied and all major indexes hit new intraday highs.
But alas, consensus is apparently not a given over the longer term. The minutes hinted that a tapering off could start sooner, “A number of participants expressed willingness to adjust the flow of purchases downward as early as the June meeting if the economic information received by that time showed evidence of sufficiently strong and sustained growth.” So …...
May 23rd, 2013 12:00 am
Courtesy of Benzinga.
Few stocks have attracted more news over the last six months than nutritional supplement maker Herbalife (NYSE: HLF).
Even casual market observers are aware of the circumstances surrounding the the initial bout of extreme volatility in the name back in December 2012. The shares went into free-fall at the end of the year after hedge fund manager Bill Ackman revealed in typical sanctimonious fashion that his firm Pershing Square Capital Management was short around $1 billion worth of the stock.
Amid much pomp and circumstance, Ackman laid out his short thesis at a New York investment conference and...
May 22nd, 2013 8:36 pm
Today’s tickers: SKS, USG & PFE
SKS - Saks, Inc. – Timely bullish bets initiated in Saks options just seconds prior to the closing bell on Tuesday are generating sizable gains for at least one trader today, with shares in the high-end retailer up at the highest level since 2008. The stock closed Tuesday up 11% on the day at $13.67 after the company reported first-quarter revenue above average analyst expectations. Within minutes of the close shares in SKS moved sharply to the upside after the New York Post, citing a source familiar with the matter, reported...
more from Caitlin
May 19th, 2013 11:38 pm
Reminder: OpTrader is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.
This post is for all our live virtual trade ideas and daily comments. Please click on "comments" below to follow our live discussion. All of our current trades are listed in the spreadsheet below, with entry price (1/2 in and All in), and exit prices (1/3 out, 2/3 out, and All out).
We also indicate our stop, which is most of the time the "5 day moving average". All trades, unless indicated, are front-month ATM options.
Please feel free to participate in the discussion and ask any questions you might have about this virtual portfolio, by clicking on the "comments" link right below.
To learn more about the swing trading virtual portfolio (strategy, performance, FAQ, etc.), please click here
Optrader
...May 19th, 2013 1:09 am
NEW: Newsletter writers are available to chat with Members regarding topics presented in SWW, comments are found below each post.
Here's the latest Stock World Weekly! Just sign in with your PSW user name and password, or sign up to try it out.
...May 15th, 2013 7:35 pm
Reminder: Craigzooka is available to chat with Members regarding his virtual portfolio performance, comments are found below each post.
By Craigzooka
I am going to share with you how I manage my IRA and the power of reducing your cost basis. My goal each year is a 20% return in my IRA. Sometimes I make it and sometimes I don't, but I believe that all of my success is due to reducing my cost basis. To illustrate the power of reducing your cost basis here are some trades we did last year. These trades are taken from an educational portfolio we ran in a paper-trading account for a little more than a year.
May 12th, 2013 7:23 am
Courtesy of John Nyaradi.
Stock market posts another record setting week, but the big news came after Friday’s close.Courtesy of NASA
The stock market put on another record setting show with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) closing at a record high 15,118 and the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) closing at 1633.70, another all time closing high.
For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) gained 1%, the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) climbed 1.2%, the Nasdaq Composite (NYSEARCA:...
January 21st, 2013 8:09 pm
Reminder: Pharmboy is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.
Well, well, well....it is good to know that there are others in the scientific arena who believed that YMI Bioscience's data (cough - Gilead) is a better drug than Incyte's Jakafi. Now, the definitive data are still unknown, but there was enough evidence from a Phase 2 trial to take a small risk for a huge reward. So, let's forget about Apple (AAPL), and do nothing but biotechs from now until Congress passes universal health care coverage for prescriptions....and drive the prices down so that research and development is no longer feasible to conduct in the US. Even Seattle Genetics (SGEN) has been on a tear as of late...
Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
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Note: The material presented in this commentary is provided for informational purposes only and is based upon information that is considered to be reliable. However, neither Philstockworld, LLC (PSW) nor its affiliates warrant its completeness, accuracy or adequacy and it should not be relied upon as such. Neither PSW nor its affiliates are responsible for any errors or omissions or for results obtained from the use of this information. Past performance, including the tracking of virtual trades and portfolios for educational purposes, is not necessarily indicative of future results. Neither Phil, Optrader, or anyone related to PSW is a registered financial adviser and they may hold positions in the stocks mentioned, which may change at any time without notice. Do not buy or sell based on anything that is written here, the risk of loss in trading is great.
This material is not intended as an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any security or other financial instrument. Securities or other financial instruments mentioned in this material are not suitable for all investors. Any opinions expressed herein are given in good faith, are subject to change without notice, and are only intended at the moment of their issue as conditions quickly change. The information contained herein does not constitute advice on the tax consequences of making any particular investment decision. This material does not take into account your particular investment objectives, financial situations or needs and is not intended as a recommendation to you of any particular securities, financial instruments or strategies. Before investing, you should consider whether it is suitable for your particular circumstances and, as necessary, seek professional advice. |
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