Mount Sinai School of Medicine

Study Confirms BPA Is Making You Fat, Fueling Obesity

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Natural Society | September 19 2012

If you  know about bisphenol-a (BPA), the estrogen-mimicking chemical found in plastics and other produce, then you probably know it isn’t safe. Well, a study out of NYU School of Medicine links BPA to obesity. The study involved analyzing surveys from 2,938 young people, and is another of a long list of studies coming to the same conclusions.

While taking important factors like the children’s race, age, gender, family income and education, activity level, and calorie intake into consideration, the researchers found that obese children made up 22 percent of individuals with the highest BPA levels in their urine. Of those with the lowest BPA levels, however, obese children represented only 10 percent.

Similar Results in Adults

“It’s a credible study and it has to be given some attention,” says Phil Landrigan, director of Children’s Environmental Health Center at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

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Study Finds Big Pharma Pushes Doctors To Overprescribe Drugs

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Natural News | September 15 2012

Know anyone taking prescription drugs? The odds are enormous you do. And it’s likely they are taking drugs they don’t need because their doctors are too quick to fall under the influence of Big Pharma’s aggressive drug sales reps.

Consider these statistics: almost half of all Americans are currently diagnosed with a chronic condition and 40 percent of those older than 60 taking five or more medications. Is it really possible that many people in the U.S. have illnesses that need to be treated with multiple drugs?

This question obviously raises issues about the nature of the relationship between the expanding definition of chronic illness and the explosion of prescription drug use in the U.S. — issues Michigan State University anthropologist Linda M. Hunt, PhD., decided to research.

Dr. Hunt looked into dramatic increases in the diagnosis of common, chronic conditions and the use of prescription drugs to treat these health woes . She specifically looked at two conditions which can often be relieved with lifestyle changes — type 2 diabetes and hypertension — that were treated in 44 primary care clinics.

Her research team interviewed 58 clinicians and 70 of their patients, and observed 107 clinical consultations in order to assess the doctors’ treatment strategies and the factors influencing their treatment decisions. They found that doctors usually prescribed at least two or more drugs per condition.

More than half of the patients studied were taking five or more drugs. Interviews with these people showed the cost of the drugs was often a hardship and the patients were often made sicker because of adverse side-effects.

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