A group of elite long-distance runners had less body fat, better cholesterol and blood lipid profiles, and better heart rates than people being tested for cardiac disease. Paradoxically, however, the runners had more calcified plaque in their heart arteries, according to a study reported this week. . . .

Researchers looked for the amount of calcium plaque on the inside of the subjects’ arteries. Past research has suggested that the more calcium plaque inthe arteries, the higher the risk of heart attacks and death from heart disease.

In the non-runners, the calcium plaque volume was 169 cubic millimeters, compared with 274 cubic millimeters for the elite runners, the researchers reported at the American College of Cardiology meeting.

You mean routinely beating up your body with huge amounts of catabolic, muscle-wasting, inflammation-causing endurance running isn’t as healthy as people, for some mysterious reason, believe? Shocking.

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Some interesting stories in the comments, too.

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The 56-year-old Fort Lauderdale stockbroker will put his name among the greats when he sets a world record tomorrow for weed consumption while lighting up his 115,000th joint.

The best part is that it’s all legal.

“Yep, provided by Uncle Sam,” Rosenfeld told NBCMiami.com. “They grow it for me, I find that quite ironic.”

Rosenfeld’s pot has been provided by the government since 1982, when he became a patient in the Federal Drug Administration’s Investigational New Drug Program. Grown on a farm on the campus of the University of Mississippi, the weed is delivered to a local pharmacy where Rosenfeld gets it by the bushel.

Rosenfeld suffers from a rare bone disorder called multiple congenital cartilaginous exostoses, which causes severe pain, alleviated by a healthy dose of ganja.

He’s been getting 300 joints every 25 days for the past 27 years, and said he smokes between 10 and 12 per day.

“The first thing I do every morning is smoke two joints as I watch my business shows,” Rosenfeld said. “Then another on my drive to work.”

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Born without sight, 7-year-old Lucas Murray used to be so afraid of walking he wouldn’t take a step without his parents by his side.

“He would walk, but he would hold our hands. Always,” said his mother, Sarah Murray of Dorset, England. “When he was younger, he wouldn’t even walk on a bumpy surface.”

But now Lucas has become more mobile than his parents ever imagined, running with friends, playing basketball and jumping on a trampoline — all on his own.

The incredible change, his mother said, is owed to a technique called echolocation, similar to the method used by dolphins and bats, that allows Lucas to paint a picture of his surroundings using sound he creates himself.

To “see” the world around him, he clicks his tongue on the roof of his mouth and listens to the echo that bounces back. From the sound, he can make out the location, depth and shape of objects around him, allowing him to navigate even unfamiliar areas.

Interesting discussion of echolocation for the blind in the story.

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Scientists have previously focused on how to prevent tumours from forming, but the new research has found key molecules called microRNAs which the cancer manipulates to spread around the body.

Breast cancer cells ’switch off’ these molecules, allowing the cancer to spread unchecked to other parts of the body.

This spread is responsible for 90 per cent of deaths from breast cancer and the team which made the breakthrough is working on a drug to stop this fatal process.

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Chinese authorities have put a whole town in quarantine after an outbreak of horrifying pneumonic plague.

Two people have died from the highly contagious disease, an even more powerful brother of The Black Death – the bubonic plague believed to have wiped out a quarter of the population of Europe in the 14th Century.

Pneumonic plague is one of the most virulent and deadly diseases on earth, usually fatal within 24 hours.

It attacks the lungs and kills nearly everyone who catches it unless they get rapid treatment with antibiotics.

A dozen people in the stricken town of Ziketan have so far been infected. The disease spreads fast and is passed from person to person by coughing.

Authorities in northwest China have sealed off the remote town of 10,000 people and begun a treatment and quarantine programme.

Residents are terrified, shops have been shuttered, homes disinfected, face masks distributed, there has been panic buying and streets are deserted, witnesses reported.

The World Health Organisation said it was in close contact with Chinese health authorities and that measures taken so far were appropriate.

It looks serious, but the Chinese regime isn’t limited by anything in its choice of means to keep the disease from spreading. People are just worker ants for them.

UPDATE: According to a reader, the report of plague is a cover-up for the real events – a political uprising in the sealed-off town and the government’s crackdown, and the two reported plague victims are the leaders of the uprising killed by government forces. Well, dissent is like plague for China’s Communist rulers.

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We still need vitamin D, though, so any sensational claims must not scare people into hiding from the sun at all times.

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The boy obviously has some health condition that makes him unable to stop eating, like Halle Berry’s son in Monster’s Ball.

It’s also clear from the story that he got this way by eating several lunches a day at school. Wouldn’t this fact place at least some of the responsibility for the boy’s obesity on the school?

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BISMARCK, N.D. – Police responding to a domestic disturbance arrived at Stacey Anvarinia’s home to find the mother breast-feeding her 6-week-old baby in front of them. And she was drunk, they said.

Officers arrested the woman, who later pleaded guilty to child neglect and faces up to five years in prison. Now her case has touched off a debate among moms about breast-feeding, alcohol — and privacy.

It’s difficult to scientifically establish what (if any) harm drunken breast-feeding does to a child. You can’t really get a group of women drunk every day for a few months, have them feed their babies and see how they develop.

Still, I wouldn’t call the woman a good mother. I’d call her trailer trash.

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Drinking two strong cups of coffee a day could keep Alzheimer’s disease at bay  -  and may even reverse some of its symptoms, a study suggests.

Researchers have uncovered evidence that caffeine not only helps to stave off dementia, but can also treat it.

Although the findings come from animal research, the scientists say they are some of the most promising experiments of their kind ever done.

Let’s hope tests on humans bear it out.

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Scientists in Brazil found large numbers of ‘mesenchymal’ stem cells in fallopian tubes taken from women of reproductive age.

Grown in the laboratory, they were able to differentiate into muscle, fat, cartilage and bone cells.

The finding unveils a new way to create the promising cells, hoped to replenish tissues lost to disease, without using embryos.

Mesenchymal stem cells are a particular family of ‘mother’ cell described as ‘pluripotent’ – meaning they have the potential to develop into a range of different tissues.

They have also been obtained from umbilical cords, the inner pulp of teeth, and fat tissue.

Scientists hope that one day stem cells will be used to treat a huge range of disorders in which parts of the body become damaged or lost. Examples include heart disease, brain diseases such as Parkinson’s and insulin-dependent diabetes, in which insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas are destroyed.

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Maybe now they will do something to save the 36,000 Americans that regular seasonal flu kills every year.

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Vials of innocuous swine flu virus have exploded on an intercity train, prompting police to stop passengers before they arrived in Lausanne.

A laboratory technician from a Geneva hospital had been transporting the vials on Monday evening from a veterinary institute in Zurich. The Federal Health Office had called for the development of a diagnostic test for the illness that has killed as many as 150 people worldwide.

Near Fribourg the technician heard a muffled pop. Built-up gas from dry ice surrounding the vials had caused the package to explode.

The carriage in which the technician was travelling held 61 passengers at the time. The Federal Railways did not learn of the incident until 40 minutes later after the train had already passed through Fribourg. Police then stopped the train near Lausanne, inspected passengers and wrote down their names as a precaution.

“This virus is not dangerous to humans,” said Laurent Kaiser, head of the Geneva lab. “It is the same stock as the H1N1 virus but it has nothing in common with the strain spreading around the world.”

The technician and one passenger suffered slight wounds, the only injuries, but some travellers were angry that they had not been informed of the incident sooner.

“Why did they leave us enclosed in a contaminated car for an hour?” asked one passenger. “There was a pregnant woman who panicked. They only informed us sparingly. And why didn’t they stop the train in Fribourg?”

Viruses and other infectious specimens are often transported by train or even post. Kaiser said this particular shipment had been packaged according to regulations.

(Via Gang Stalking World.)

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“We could have a billion people dying worldwide,” warns the US National Centre for Disaster Preparedness.

Oops, I misread my notes. That claim is actually from the great bird flu scare of 2005, which in the end killed just 257 people.

“Apocalypse bug!” cries CNN. “Killer virus,” howls a Newsweek cover.

Oops again. Those headlines are actually from the great Ebola scare of 1995, which actually killed just 800 people, all in Africa.

No, the killer virus stalking us this time is swine flu.

So here’s the swine flu warning from the US Health, Education and Welfare Department: “The projections are that the virus will kill one million Americans.”

Damn. Wrong again. 

That headline is, in fact, from the great swine flu scare of 1976, during which just one American died from the virus, but another 33 from the vaccinations the US Government ordered in its Do Something panic.

It’s so often the same scary story now, isn’t it? Remember the great bird flu scare of 1997, with headlines such as “Race to prevent world epidemic”? Just six dead.

Remember the great SARS scare of 2003, which the BBC warned “could have a similar impact to the 1918 flu epidemic that killed 50 million”? Fewer than 1000 dead, most in poorer Asian countries with even poorer health care.

Now here we go again, once more frightening ourselves half to death – sicker from the scare than the disease.

Just eight people are confirmed dead from the latest outbreak of swine flu – seven in Mexico and a toddler in the US, who now seems to have had other medical conditions as well.

Andrew also has a good point as to the reasons of all these apocalyptic predictions:

Is it that with God dead, we realise there’s absolutely nothing between us and doom but our giddy selves?

Or is our real problem that we’ve built so many institutions that rely on fear for their power, funds and prestige?

Think of the media, selling scares. Think of governments, hyping scares from which they’ll “save” us. Of drug companies, selling scare-cures. Of activists, scaring up members. Of the United Nations, demanding world governance to fight scares it’s done most to whip up.

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Source.

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I don’t know, though, why the article talks about shutting off all international air travel when it’s one particular country that’s spreading swine flu around – Mexico. Keeping Mexicans out of other countries still looks like a winning idea to me.

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