Lakesha

Many parents are nervous about allowing their children to have the MMR vaccination due mainly, I believe, to its link with autism. Most people have quite a fixed opinion I have found, though are unsure what the actual evidence is that they are believing. There is no shortage of information about MMR and autism, and it is easily found on the internet. However there seems to be a lot of junk science available, and those scientifically untrained may be unable to separate the junk from the real thing. They therefore tend to believe that which affects them most. THE START The whole debate started in 1998 when gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield, in association with others, claimed that MMR might trigger autism. Based on only 12 children, most of the others who authored the paper later retracted the findings. It was based on the possibility of the measles virus, given live as part of the vaccine, causing enterocolitis bowel inflammation and releasing toxins which attack the brain, causing autism. Parents panicked, vaccination rates dropped dramatically and Wakefield cited data...

If you have gone through a major life change or trauma which created the physical symptoms of anxiety or grief, you understand how physically uncomfortable this can be with stomach aches, elevated heart rates and such. Not only do these symptoms happen at the time; but often months or years later, a memory of the event can trigger these symptoms again. These are strong emotions associated with big events. Most of us like to avoid uncomfortable feelings whenever possible, right. With big, life altering events, it s easy to recognize memories and events that trigger bad feelings. The emotions are strong and hence the physical response is strong as well. But what about lesser events. AND What does this have to do with fitness. Let s say you are a 35 year old man who was an athlete in High School. You developed a nice athletic body that has served you well. But lately, you are feeling like you look a bit soft and feel sluggish. So you decide that you should work on your body some. After all, you used to be very fit, so it should be easy to get it back. You enter the gym. It s...

Authors of The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter Using the label organic to distinguish one tomato from another is a big stretch from the word s original meaning, for until the middle of the twentieth century it simply meant something living or derived from living matter. In that sense, the idea of an inorganic tomato is a contradiction in terms, unless it is, say, a tomato-shaped glass ornament. With very few exceptions -- salt is one -- all our food is organic no matter how it is produced. The specific sense of organic we use when we speak of organic food today traces back to 1942, when J. Rodale launched a magazine called Organic Gardening. Nowadays Rodale is hailed as a pioneer, but then he was often derided as a crank and a throwback to obsolete ways of farming. He advocated maintaining soil fertility and stability by putting organic matter -- animal manure or compost -- back into the soil rather than relying on the inorganic, or synthetic, fertilizers that were then widely seen as the modern way to go. So in Rodale s usage, it was the fertilizers, and from...