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28 types of Weight loss pills banned by FDA

by wildcherry on Monday, December 22nd, 2008 | Health, News | 2 Comments

It’s the time of the year that we eat more than usual. By new year the most common new year’s resolution would be too loose weight or go on diet. So for those of you who’s thinking to go on diet please read this article carefully.

The government is warning people against taking 28 types of weight loss pills, and it is urging anyone who has taken them to be checked by a health care professional.

The tainted products contain potentially dangerous undeclared ingredients, the Food and Drug Administration found, including prescription drugs in levels much higher than the maximum recommended dosages.

The brands are Fatloss Slimming, 2 Day Diet, 3x Slimming Power, Japan Lingzhi 24 Hours Diet, 5x Imelda Perfect Slimming, 3 Day Diet, 7 Day Herbal Slim, 8 Factor Diet, 7 Diet Day/Night Formula, 999 Fitness Essence, Extrim Plus, GMP, Imelda Perfect Slim, Lida DaiDaihua, Miaozi Slim Capsules, Perfect Slim, Perfect Slim 5x, Phyto Shape, ProSlim Plus, Royal Slimming Formula, Slim 3 in 1, Slim Express 360, Slimtech, Somotrim, Superslim, TripleSlim, Zhen de Shou and Venom Hyperdrive 3.0.

Many of the products are marketed as “dietary supplements” and claim to be “natural” or contain only “herbal” ingredients. But the FDA said some of the pills include sibutramine, a controlled substance; rimonabant, a drug not approved for marketing in the U.S.; phenytoin, an anti-seizure medication; and phenolphthalein, a suspected carcinogen.
Sibutramine can cause high blood pressure, seizures, tachycardia, palpitations, heart attack or stroke. It can also interact negatively with other medications that patients may be taking. Rimonabant, which was evaluated but not approved for marketing in the U.S., has been associated with increased risk of depression and suicidal thoughts.

The FDA is seeking product recalls and may take further enforcement steps such as warning letters, seizures, injunctions or criminal charges.
Health care professionals and consumers should report serious side effects or other problems with the products to the FDA’s MedWatch Adverse Event Reporting program.

Visit http://www.fda.gov/cder/consumerinfo/weight_loss_products.htm for more information.

Tags: diet pill, diet pills, fast weight loss, free weight loss, loose weight, lose weight fast, low carb, low carb diet, quick weight loss, weight loss, weight loss diets, weight loss pill, weight loss pills, weight loss products, weight loss programs

Happiness is contagious

by bintangkecil on Sunday, December 7th, 2008 | Health, Knowledge | 9 Comments

If you’re feeling great today, you may end up inadvertently spreading the joy to someone you don’t even know.

New research shows that in a social network, happiness spreads among people up to three degrees removed from one another. That means when you feel happy, a friend of a friend of a friend has a slightly higher likelihood of feeling happy too.

The lesson is that taking control of your own happiness can positively affect others, says James Fowler, co-author of the study and professor of political science at the University of California in San Diego.

“We get this chain reaction in happiness that I think increases the stakes in terms of us trying to shape our own moods to make sure we have a positive impact on people we know and love,” he said.

“Your emotional state depends not just on actions and choices that you make, but also on actions and choices of other people, many of which you don’t even know,” said Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, a physician and medical sociologist at Harvard who co-wrote the study.

And getting connected to happy people improves a person’s own happiness, they reported in the British Medical Journal.

The Research

“What we are dealing with is an emotional stampede,” Nicholas Christakis, a professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, said in a telephone interview.

Christakis and James Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, have been using data from 4,700 children of volunteers in the Framingham Heart Study, a giant health study begun in Framingham, Massachusetts in 1948.

They have been analyzing a trove of facts from tracking sheets dating back to 1971, following births, marriages, death, and divorces. Volunteers also listed contact information for their closest friends, co-workers, and neighbors.

They assessed happiness using a simple, four-question test.

“People are asked how often during the past week, one, I enjoyed life, two, I was happy, three, I felt hopeful about the future, and four, I felt that I was just as good as other people,” Fowler said.

The 60 percent of people who scored highly on all four questions were rated as happy, while the rest were designated unhappy.

CONNECTIONS EQUAL HAPPINESS

People with the most social connections — friends, spouses, neighbors, relatives — were also the happiest, the data showed. “Each additional happy person makes you happier,” Christakis said.

“Imagine that I am connected to you and you are connected to others and others are connected to still others. It is this fabric of humanity, like an American patch quilt.”

Each person sits on a different-colored patch. “Imagine that these patches are happy and unhappy patches. Your happiness depends on what is going on in the patch around you,” Christakis said.

“It is not just happy people connecting with happy people, which they do. Above and beyond, there is this contagious process going on.”

And happiness is more contagious than unhappiness, they discovered. Sadness also spreads in a network, but not as quickly, the researchers found. Each happy friend increases your own chance of being happy by 9 percent, whereas each unhappy friend decreases it by 7 percent. This reflects the total effect of all social contacts.

INTERESTING FACEBOOK FACT

The researchers are also looking at the phenomenon on Facebook, which has more than 120 million active users. This study, which has not yet been published, looked at who smiles in their profile pictures who doesn’t, and whether their connections also smile or not, Fowler said.

“We find smiling profiles cluster in much the same way as happiness is clustering in the Framingham Heart Study,” he said.

This is a compilation of information from the following articles:

Happiness is contagious in social networks - CNN

Happiness is contagious: study - Reuters

Happiness is contagious, research finds - LA Times

Tags: happiness is contagious, happiness research, James Fowler, moods impact, Nicholas Christakis

Is autism rising?

by winstonian on Saturday, December 6th, 2008 | Family, Health, Health, Inspiration, Knowledge, Life, Love, News, Relationship | 2 Comments

“What is autism? Autism can appear strange to those who aren’t familiar with autism. Children sometimes wail and are overanxious, they don’t respond to parental orders.”

Well, some would say yes and some would say no. There’s all sorts of things to learn about the disorder. I happen to know one personally and there’s that famous high schooler who made a bunch of 3-pointers when he was inserted into his high school basketball game. So I hope you readers will check out my Web site, www.autismrising.com. I’ve even made an autism video there. Thanks for those of you who have checked it out. I know a mother of an autistic child and the sacrifice she makes for her son. It’s pretty life-changing and transforming, when your life revolves around caring for your child.

Other than that I think life is about ability. I think it’s about doing everything you can so that you can be needed and wanted wherever you are. Or, me, specifically. And I think Sean Avery and O.J. Simpson help tell the world how not to behave. So I think there is value to the media. Monkey doesn’t do as monkey sees. That’s just me.

Check out some Books about Autism

Autism

by winstonian on Friday, November 28th, 2008 | Health, Health, Knowledge, Life, News, Relationship | No Comments

Hi everyone,

A few of you have been commenting on the “Burma Man” entry I posted a while back. I just wanted to share that more information on the Burma Man can be at www.hrw.org I’d also like this audience to take a look at a Web site a friend and I have put together that is about Autism. It’s new and can be found at www.autismrising.com. I hope you guys can check it out and even tell me your thoughts. Some of you might even know children or adults who are autisti. I hope you can share. I hope you are all well and Happy Thanksgiving. I know personally I have a lot to be thankful for.

Tags: autism, burma man

Burma man

by winstonian on Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 | Health, Health, Inspiration, News, World | 4 Comments

I went to church this morning. And we had a forum, as we usually do. So I heard a testimony of a man from Burma. And they have it bad over there! The man who spoke to us fought for civil rights and was incarcerated for doing so. How long?

Three years!

In those three years he told us he learned how to improve his English, even though he wasn’t allowed to use a pen or a piece of paper. He used stones to carve out words. He was fortunate enough to have been “cell neighbors” with a scholarly man. He couldn’t be caught talking to that man, but he managed to make a deal with a guard to be so kind as to give him a page of a dictionary.

But the guard demanded one thing: that there be no evidence of that page in the cell. So….

He ate it. He ate every page of the dictionary the guard gave him. When his three years were over, he was asked to work with the Myanmar government, the same government that persecuted and killed his friends. So he said, and I’ll translate….

“HELL NO!”

So they gave him FIVE MORE YEARS!! Dang, dude. Dang. Dude. Dang. Some people have been in prison there since 1989.

The man was a good guy. Really bright. Now he’s fighting for justice for his friends and peace workers.

Tags: burma

It stinks out there.

by winstonian on Sunday, November 16th, 2008 | Health, Health, Inspiration, Knowledge, News | 1 Comment

It’s pretty smoky in the San Gabriel Valley, much like it probably is in all of Southern California. A softball game was cancelled. A football game was cancelled here. And the Pasadena marathon was also cancelled. I thought it would be good for me to play football and softball today, but when I heard it was cancelled, HOORAY! It kind of smells like I left the stove on and I didn’t know it, or if I left the iron or oven on too long with nothing inside. I don’t know what this does for my lungs, but it can’t be good. And yet it’s good to be home.

I guess watching the National Football League isn’t such a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon. But man it stinks out there! In more ways than one.

Tags: air quality, air quality los angeles

Blood Type Diet

by bintangkecil on Friday, November 14th, 2008 | Health, Knowledge | 5 Comments

Which diet is right for you?

Does your blood type represent a genetic marker that indicates which foods you can process best, and which might give you problems?

Does your blood type suggest predisposition to particular dysfunctions or vulnerability to certain diseases?

Can we identify a diet plan, determine appropriate vitamin and mineral supplements, and develop exercise regimens on the basis of blood type? Even sketch out basic personality traits?

The answers are YES, YES, YES, and YES.

Here’s an interesting facts from http://intraspec.ca/blood.php

[t]he essence of the blood type connection rests in these facts:

* Your blood type - O, A, B, AB - is a powerful genetic fingerprint that identifies you as surely as your DNA.

* When you use the individualized characteristics of your blood type as a guidepost for eating and living, you will be healthier, you will naturally reach your ideal weight, and you will slow the process of aging.

* Your blood type is a more reliable measure of your identity than race, culture, or geography. It is a genetic blueprint for who you are, a guide to how you can live most healthfully.

* The key to the significance of blood type can be found in the story of human evolution: Type O is the oldest; Type A evolved with agrarian society; Type B emerged as humans migrated north into colder, harsher territories; and Type AB was a thoroughly modern adaptation, a result of the intermingling of disparate groups. This evolutionary story relates directly to the dietary needs of each blood type today.

Fundamental to this theory is the idea that lectins, proteins found in many foods of high nutritional value, have glue-like properties that affect your blood. “Simply put,” writes D’Adamo, “when you eat a food containing protein lectins that are incompatible with your blood type antigen, the lectins target an organ or bodily system…and begin to agglutinate blood cells in that area” (p.23). Each of the four blood types is described in terms of an antigen. Type O is the simplest, comprised of a basic sugar called fucose. The Type A antigen consists of fucose and N-acetyl-galactosamine; Type B, of fucose and D-galactosamine; and Type AB, of fucose, N-galactosamine and D-galactosamine. Each of these antigens presents a “unique shape,” and lectins fitting that shape can interact. In my illustration below (adapted from p.26), food lectins interact with and agglutinate cells of one blood type at left; but not with those of another type at right, because its cells possess a different shape.