Flu season is approaching, and it’s been a tradition of sorts to prepare with a flu shot. It’s almost ingrained in American culture that the answer to preempt disease is with a ‘harmless’ immunization.

With the option to vaccinate at your local pharmacy now, there’s a high chance that many citizens are going to roll up their sleeves, shell out the cash, and take the shot.

It’s interesting to consider, however, that flu shots, while being pushed on the public harder than ever, are shockingly ineffective. There is a noticeable lack of validation for just how effective the flu shot really is at creating a successful immunization.

The science behind vaccines is that they trigger your immune system into responding to a threat. By doing this, the immune system assimilates the capacity to deal with said threat. This makes the effectiveness of a vaccine relative to how it stimulates your immune system. If your immune system is weak, your body will likely skip any immunization process, and you may even end up contracting the virus that you were trying to prevent.

In many cases, the body may not be able to generate a response. If the strain of virus changes, then the immunization you received prior to this becomes useless. Or your immune system may be too burdened to properly respond to stimulus.

It’s noteworthy that flu shots are totally ineffective against new strains of the flu, and they are only partially effective against existing flu strains. Essentially, manufacturers have to play a guessing game in order to produce an effective shot, and if any of the variables change, then the relevance of the flu shot is compromised. This guessing game in creating a flu shot could take 12-18 months, leaving an incredible time lapse in between flu strains and thereby making the guessing game even more difficult to win.

So why take a risk, when we know that vaccines are dangerous and untested? The flu shot has been determined to be 1% effective – odds just about no one would go against if they were told upfront by their doctor. When there are natural alternatives that have proven success in bolstering your immune system’s strength, there is no reason to take this kind of risk in order to lower your flu risk by 1%.

If you take a shot filled with toxic chemicals and an irrelevant strain of a virus, you are actually increasing your risk for illness by weakening your immune system. In contrast, using natural supplements like vitamin D is proven to be much more effective in disease prevention and building up the immune system.

In order to achieve health and wellness, the paradigm of the medical establishment must be eschewed in favor of an individual and personal pursuit of health. The average person is given a halfway response to his health concerns and illnesses. He is given something that may appear good or helpful when in reality it is causing him to become sicker, and depend on the established healthcare system in America.

As the playing field changes, many people are now taking their health into their own hands, empowering them to live stronger, better, and more fully than if they were to blindly trust the answers that are given to them.

In 2009, a study found that almost half of commercial high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contained mercury — a carcinogenic chemical element that is toxic in all its forms to the human body. Even more troubling, nearly a third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products that listed HFCS as the first or second ingredient were found to contain mercury as a whole. It is clear that mercury is highly present in the HFCS-laced food supply, so why is it still on our shelves?

The Washington Times reports on the 2009 study:

HFCS has replaced sugar as the sweetener in many beverages and foods such as breads, cereals, breakfast bars, lunch meats, yogurts, soups and condiments. On average, Americans consume about 12 teaspoons per day of HFCS, but teens and other high consumers can take in 80 percent more HFCS than average.

“Mercury is toxic in all its forms. Given how much high-fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply,” the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy’s Dr. David Wallinga, a co-author of both studies, said in a prepared statement.

In the first study, published in current issue of Environmental Health, researchers found detectable levels of mercury in nine of 20 samples of commercial HFCS.

And in the second study, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), a non-profit watchdog group, found that nearly one in three of 55 brand-name foods contained mercury. The chemical was found most commonly in HFCS-containing dairy products, dressings and condiments.

A new study reveals a simple tip to avoiding diabetes: choose purified water over sugar-sweetened fizzy drinks. Researchers from Harvard University have tied consumption of carbonated beverages such as soda to diabetes. The key is fructose consumption. While pure fructose is naturally occurring in fruit, there are also a number of potent vitamins and nutrients that go along with it. Soda, on the other hand, is essentially liquid fructose — and oftentimes it contains high fructose corn syrup, which is a genetically modified form of fructose that contains mercury.

The Mail Online reports:

More than 2.8 million people in the UK have the chronic condition of diabetes, while another one million have it without realising, according to NHS figures.

People who develop the Type 2 condition lose the ability to break down glucose into energy, which causes blood-sugar levels to rise.

The immediate symptoms of hyperglycaemia include feeling thirsty and drowsy. It can lead to diabetic ketoacidosis, which can eventually cause unconsciousness and even death.

Diabetes raises the risk of heart disease by up to five times. Over time it can cause sight problems and nerve damage leading to foot ulcers.

Patients are encouraged to exercise more and eat a healthier diet to help control the condition.

Diabetes UK says 10 per cent of total NHS spending goes towards treating the condition and its complications.

Generally considered to be an indicator of poor heart health, mainstream medical science suggests that increased cholesterol levels are a sign of poor health — particularly heart health. A new study unveils an interesting finding surrounding cholesterol levels, with researchers finding that higher cholesterol levels dramatically lower cancer mortality rates. In fact, the study reportedly managed to “confirm the significant association between low cholesterol and cancer mortality.”

GreenMedInfo reports on the study’s abstract:

The beneficial effect of lipid-lowering drugs (LLD) on cardiovascular risk is established, but long term safety data remain scarce. Our aim was to assess 10-year risk of cancer mortality according to blood lipoprotein levels and LLD exposure, in a general population.

Methods: Our analysis was based on the Third French MONICA survey on cardiovascular risk factors (1994-1997). Participants were randomly recruited from the general population of three French areas and were aged 35-64 years. Subjects with a history of cancer at baseline were excluded from the analysis. Vital status and cause of mortality were obtained 10 years after inclusion.

Results: There were 3262 participants and 177 deaths were recorded over the 10-year period (78 due to a cancer). The sample comprised 64% of normolipidaemic, 25% of untreated dyslipidaemic and 11% of dyslipidaemic subjects treated with LLD (4% statins, 6% fibrates and 1% other hypolipidaemic drugs). After adjustment for centre, age, gender, smoking, gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase and mean corpuscular volume, the hazard ratios (HR) for cancer mortality in subjects with non-HDL cholesterol<3.5 mmol/L (135 mg/dL) and in those with HDL cholesterol<0.90 mmol/L (35 mg/dL) were 2.74 (95% confidence interval: 1.66-4.52, p < 0.001) and 2.83 (1.62-4.96, p < 0.001), respectively. The adjusted HR for cancer mortality was 0.31 (0.11-0.86, p = 0.025) in people on LLD compared to untreated subjects.

As the cost of living increases, the number of uninsured United States citizens has increased by 80% between 2003 and 2010, according to a new Commonwealth Fund study published in the September issue of Health Affairs. Nearly half (44%) of U.S. adults — 81 million people — were either underinsured or uninsured in 2010, up from 75 million in 2007 and 61 million in 2003.

ScienceDaily reports:

The study finds that in addition to covering the uninsured, Affordable Care Act (ACA) reforms will also provide significant relief for those who are underinsured, potentially reducing their numbers by as much as 70 percent once the law is fully implemented.

“Underinsured families are at nearly as high risk as the uninsured because, while they have health insurance, holes or limits in their plans expose them to often unaffordable medical costs,” said lead study author and Commonwealth Fund Senior Vice President Cathy Schoen. “To reduce the number of underinsured, it will be critical for the plans offered under the Affordable Care Act reforms to keep deductibles and out-of-pocket costs low for essential, effective health care.”

Although insured all year, underinsured adults reported high rates of access concerns and financial stress. The study finds that the underinsured go without needed health care and struggle to pay medical bills or medical debt at rates at times similar to those without health insurance. Nearly half (46%) of underinsured and 63 percent of uninsured adults didn’t fill a prescription, see a doctor when sick, or went without a recommended medical test or treatment, compared with 28 percent of people who had more adequate health insurance. Half (52%) of underinsured and 58 percent of uninsured adults had trouble paying medical bills, were contacted by a collections agency over unpaid bills, had to change their way of life to pay medical bills, or were paying off medical debt over time. In contrast, about one fourth (27%) of adults with adequate health insurance reported such medical bill stress and debt.

According to the results of a new Gallup poll, 25% of people respect a person less when he or she smokes. In the 1990s, the percentage was as low as 14%. Even among current smokers, 5% have less respect for their fellow tobacco users.

USA Today reports:

Despite this social marginalization — layered atop a barrage of anti-smoking ads, restrictive legislation, soaring per-pack prices, heightened pressure from employers, doctors and insurers, and the ban of smoking on 500 college campuses — 19.3% of the U.S. population still smokes.

The good news: A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week says that, among daily smokers, the percentage who smoke 30 or more cigarettes a day dropped to 8% in 2010 (down from 13% in 2005). And today there are more tools, free advice and greater understanding of how tough it is to quit.

“Just because someone has already failed once, twice or more doesn’t mean they can’t be successful the next time. We know that now,” says Patrick Reynolds, who in 1989 started the non-profit Foundation for a Smokefree America (tobaccofree.org). “Failed attempts are part of the normal journey toward becoming a non-smoker.” Reynolds is the grandson of cigarette company founder R.J Reynolds and a former smoker who’s spent more than two decades taking the tobacco companies to task, amassing information about the ill effects of smoking, connecting with the best scientific experts, speaking to audiences worldwide — especially school kids — and sharing much of his accumulated knowledge.

USC researchers have begun examining the link between pesticide exposure and the development of prostate cancer, with scientists documenting an increased prevalence of prostate cancer among older men exposed to certain pesticides. While this news is alarming on its own, it is only one of the many dangers associated with pesticide exposure.

The Link Between Prostate Cancer and Pesticides

The Los Angeles Times reports:

The authors used the state cancer registry to recruit 173 white and Latino seniors in Tulare, Fresno and Kern counties who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer between August 2005 and July 2006. They compared them with 162 men without prostate cancer, found through Medicare and tax records.

Researchers then traced where the men lived and worked from 1974 to 1999 and compared those locations with state records of pesticide application. Those who lived within 500 meters of places where methyl bromide, captan and eight other organochlorine pesticides had been applied, they found, were more likely to have developed prostate cancer.

“This is some evidence that we’re doing a very bad job of controlling how you apply pesticides,” said Myles Cockburn, an associate professor of preventive medicine at USC’s Keck School of Medicine who was among the authors of the study published this spring in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Marriage may help the heart, according to a new study. Those who had a coronary bypass surgery were 3 times more likely to be alive 15 years later if they were married than those who were not.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

A big part of this effect could be due to the positive influence of a supportive spouse, the authors say — in getting the patient to live better, take meds, get to doctor appointments, etc. Plus marriage could give someone heightened reason and feeling of responsibility to look after themselves.

But there could be more to it than that, as the authors also acknowledge. Mood – stress, anger, happiness, sadness — can affect the heart more directly, according to a growing body of research. If people in marriages are happier and less stressed out on balance (even if they find plenty to crab about) then their heart may be reaping benefits.

Vitamin D is effective in treating colon cancer, finds another study on the subject. Previously it has been found that vitamin D is even better than pharmaceuticals. The vitamin slows the actions of a key carcinogenic protein that causes colon cancer.

Study Identifies Natural Colon Cancer Treatment

UPI reports:

Researchers at the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology in Barcelona, Spain, and colleagues say the protein, known as beta-catenin, is normally found in intestinal epithelial cells where cancer tumor transformation begins.

The protein is retained in the cell nucleus, where it facilitates the carcinogenic process, and this is the point the vitamin D receptor intervenes

“Our study has confirmed the pivotal role of the vitamin D receptor in controlling the anomalous signal that sparks off the growth and uncontrolled proliferation of colon cells which, in the final instance, ends up causing a tumor to emerge,” Hector Palmer, the coordinator of the study, says in a statement.

In light of these findings, chronic vitamin D deficiency represents a risk factor in the development of more aggressive colon tumors, Palmer says.

The study, published in the journal PLoS One, says patients in the initial stages of colon cancer, when the vitamin D receptor still has a substantial presence in the cells, could benefit from vitamin D3, but this would not be useful in the advanced stages when the presence of the vitamin D receptor is very much reduced.

Women who stay at home raising children are more likely than those who work to develop symptoms of depression, according to a new study. Working moms can also suffer from similar problems, however, with working women attempting to fulfill bot their working and family lives at once setting themselves up for disappointment, the study goes on to say.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

The research was presented Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Assn. in Las Vegas.

“Women who expect it’s going to be hard and are employed nevertheless have better mental health outcomes,” said the study’s author, Katrina Leupp, a University of Washington sociology graduate student. “Work-family conflict is much more likely to bring about feelings of guilt for women as compared to men — guilt for the things you can’t do.”

Leupp analyzed data from 1,600 women who participated in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth as young adults and answered questions about their beliefs and expectations of work-family life. When the women were 40, Leupp measured their levels of depression.

The findings on stay-at-home mothers support other research that shows working outside the home is good for a woman’s mental health. Stay-at-home moms may have higher levels of depression because they want to be employed but find the cost of childcare too high to make a job worthwhile.

Conversely, working mothers with a supermom attitude may have depressive feelings because they anticipated their spouses or partners would do more household and childcare chores than they actually do, Leupp said in an interview.

“There may be a sense of injustice,” she said.

Since the 1970s, more women have joined the workforce, Leupp noted, and more young women today can look to their own mothers as role models for balancing work and family life.

That could help women have more realistic attitudes about the need to let some things slide instead of trying to “have it all,” she said.

“For women, the message is ‘be gentle with yourself,’ ” she said. “Accept that if the balance between work and family feels hard, it’s because it is. It’s not because you’re not successful.”

Employers and governments could help with the work-family balance by offering more accommodating policies, Leupp said.