Author Archives: Makeda A Drew

2050

2050National geographic writer, Lise Funderburg decibels how by 2050, the average person will not be strictly white or black, but more multiracial. The expectation of more multiracial people comes from data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau, which has collected detailed data on multiracial people only since 2000, when it first allowed respondents to check off more than one race, which applied to 6.8 million people. Within the past ten years, that number has increased by 32%. Funderburg describes giving the option for people to check more than one race as “ a step toward fixing a categorization system that, paradoxically, is both erroneous (since geneticists have demonstrated that race is biologically not a reality) and essential (since living with race and racism is). The tracking of race is used both to enforce antidiscrimination laws and to identify health issues specific to certain populations”.

The Census Burea is aware that racial categories are flawed instruments, disavowing any intention “to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically.” And indeed, for most multiple-race Americans, including the people pictured here, identity is a “highly nuanced concept, influenced by politics, religion, history, and geography, as well as by how the person believes the answer will be used”. Whatever ethnicity provides a situational advantage most people tend to respond with that race and loyalties figure in too, especially when one’s heritage doesn’t show up in phenotypical facial features, hair, or skin. Even though in the past years the number of multiracial people have increased, race is still a major issue in America. People are becoming more open to interracial marriages, but there will still be barriers, such as poverty that hold back the minority races. In 2050 it is expected that the non- Hispanic white race will no longer make up the majority of the world’s population and this could lead to many changes in society that benefit other races. Barriers that have been placed on the minority races could possibly be broken and problems that have arisen in 20215 could possibly co
me to an end. Here is the rate of interracial marriages in the United States overtime:

1959 – 4 percent

1971 – 29 percent

1982 – 43 percent

1995 – 48 percent

2008 – 77 percent

2013 – 87 percent

 

As of 2015, 2050 is in 35 years, and I do not believe the average in the United States will look like this. From the statistics, the rate at which interracial marriage are occurring is increasing, as well as the births of interracial children, but I do not find it justifiable that this will be the representation of an average citizen.

 

Chapstick: Friend or Foe

chapLip balms work by sealing moisture into the lip tissue and preventing evaporation into the dry winter air, allowing for healing of chapped lips, but also preventing chapped lips .Many people believe that Chapstick heals and protects their lips however, it is know that the more you apply, the more you need it. Said by Dr. Oz, “people can actually become addicted to Chapstick” in the sense that they use a lip balm and eventually develop a sensitivity to its components, thus the sensitivity leads to a reaction that causes the chapped feeling, making people apply more lip balm. America News Now spoke to dermatologist, Gary Slaughter, who found camphor, phenol and menthol were the ingredients in bad lip balm. Also, OL,which indicates alcohol, and salicylic acid are two more ingredients that may cause some people irritation. Look for these ingredients before buying. If you don’t see them, your lip balm should work as it is intended to. Dermatitis, cracking and soreness and irritation of the skin around the lips may occur when lips are not protected on the other hand. If the lip balm seems to fix your problem initially but after continued use you find you have to keep using more and more, there is a problem and you are using too much. The best options are to stick to plain petroleum, such as Vaseline, or more natural homemade ingredients. Sun blocks is a positive ingredient that is added to lip balms, which is great if you are going to be skiing, playing golf or tennis or hanging out at the beach. ring around mouthHowever, even this is not recommend for daily use to avoid getting sensitized to the chemicals when you do not need the block, unless you have a history of significant lip sun. Overusing can lead to clogged pores along the lip line, which is why moderation is key. Some of the topped ranked lip balms are:

  1. Burts Bees
  2. Nivea
  3. Eos
  4. Chapstick
  5. Carmax

Here’s also a link to a YouTube video, to make your own all natural homemade lip balm.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/can-you-actually-become-addicted-to-chapstick#.tczjoR5Ld

Fascinating Frogs

 What and How

frogUnlike many frogs that hibernate under water where their body temperature never falls below freezing, the Alaskan wood frog freezes two-thirds of their body. Occupying the region from Southern Appalachians to Eastern North Carolina, they hibernate by nestling down into the leafy forest floors and the overlaying snow gives them some insulation from extreme cold. Ice fills up their abdominal cavity and encases their internal organs while ice crystals form in between layers of skin and muscle.  Their blood stops flowing, their hearts stop beating, and glucose levels increase greatly. Researchers say that these frog are dead on the organismal level because their cells are functioning, but have no way to communicate with each other. Wood frogs don’t freeze once and stay frozen, but they spend about two weeks freezing at night and thawing during the day until the temperature permanently drops below freezing. This process of freezing and thawing is thought to help the frogs convert more of the glycogen stored in their liver into glucose. The extremely high levels of glucose help keep the frogs alive throughout the winter. The main function of the glucose is to keep water inside the cells, which is done by making the cells super sweet so that it doesn’t transfer out of the cells to a higher concentration.  When spring comes, the frog thaws, first the heart starts beating and then the brain activates, and they turn as much of the glucose as they can back into glycogen.  This freezing process allows frogs to be active very quickly in the spring since the land thaws and warms faster than the ice covered lakes, allowing these frogs to mate before those that hibernate under water.

Why

Understanding how these frogs can tolerate such high blood sugar levels can be valuable knowledge for researchers to help in the management of high sugar in people with diabetes. Also, these frogs’ can help other researchers discover how human organs used for transplants frog2could be frozen and thawed without damage. This research could lead to making more transplants possible because it would increase the allowable time between removing an organ from a donor and implanting it into the recipient. Understanding the mechanism which allows blood circulation to stop and start again a few months later without blood clots or damage could be valuable for treating people after their blood flow is temporarily halted by heart attacks or stroke.

This reminds me of some futuristic idea of being able to freeze your body and waking up in the future. Finding animals like this, can create breakthroughs for science. Scientists have already started thinking of ways to turn this frog’s natural selection features into something that could possible be an innovative way to save life and extend life expectancy. Interesting stories like this, shows how fascinating the world is, and there is so much more to discover. Here is a mating call:

 

 

 

Dying due to dye

food dye Without even thinking, you encounter dye on a day to day basis. From the foods you eat, to the soap you wash your hands with to the detergent you use to wash your clothes… it is everywhere. There are different types of dye that I will analyze that people have linked to various cancers, one is food dyes and the other is hair dye.

Food dye

Vibrant colors have been come the norm to food, especially candy. Sweets like fruit roll ups and kid cuisine frozen foods are just two examples of foods with artificial coloring. It has been found that food coloring has not only been linked to cancer, but it develop ADHD in children. Many tests have been done on animals, such as mice and rats, which caused cancer among them, an idea that resonated with me in a article was “A chemicals ability to cause mutations or damage to chromosomes in bacterial or eukaryotic cells is an indication that the chemical might cause cancer in humans”. A lot of people say that because studies were done to animals, that it does not pertain to humans, but that is not always true as testing on animals is a way to figure out and solve humans, without unethically experimenting on humans. The different types of colors and its effect on the animals follows:

Blue 1: kidney tumors in mice and a possible effect on nerve cells

Blue 2: tumors and brain gliomas

Citrus red 2: toxic to rodents and tumors in urinary bladder

Green 3: increases bladder cancer and testes tumor in rats

Red 3: thyroid carcinogen in animals

Red 40: (most popular) tumors in mice

Yellow 5: cancer-causing chemicals

Yellow 6: adrenal tumors, cancer-causing chemicals

foodPeople want all food dyes to be banned, as Red 40, yellow 5 and yellow 6 make up 90% of all dyes used and a mixture of dyes is a drastic combination as it has been linked to organ damage, cancer, and birth defects. Even with people constantly writing to the FDA, they still have not addressed the issue. Some studies have been done to prove the relationship between dye and cancer, but most of the studies were done by dye manufactures introducing bias conclusions and possibly falsification of the information. People want to ban the food dye for these reasons:

  1. The Delaney Amendment (1960 law) – bans use of coloring that cause cancer in animals/humans
  2. FDA runs experiments on 1990 dye usage
  3. They don’t identify the risk for children
  4. Canadian government shows proof carcinogen contaminant in yellow 5 and yellow 6
  5. Food dyes like Red 2 and Red 32 have already been banned for ill effect on health

While people are trying to get America to ban food coloring and shift to natural food coloring, places likes Britain have already taken that initiative. The British government forced businesses to stop using food dyes because they feared the health risks. For orange soda Britain uses pumpkin and carrot extract versus Red 40 and Yellow 6. For McDonald strawberry sundae, Britain uses strawberries versus Red 40. Other natural food coloring that can be used is beet juice, paprika, turmeric, and beta-carotene. While most of America is behind in the innovative thinking, companies like Starbucks are ahead of the game as they eliminated all artificial dyes in their products.

The side effects for children have been linked to developing ADHD. Many doctors link food dye to hyperactivity, but the studies very between showing significant differences that would ultimately prove that the dye causes ADHD. Some doctors also believe it could be genetic because when some kids have candy they are fine and other are not, and genetics can play as a third variable of figuring out the relationship between the two.

This dilemma not only can contain fraud, but it can obtain the texas sharp shooter problem because scientists could have given the animals the food dye and looked at everything and connect the food dye to that. Though that quote resonated with me, I will continue to take the risk of eating foods with dye in it because they fail discuss how dangerous it is despite the drastic consequences, and if this problem has never been closely looked at in humans as it was in the humans then I do not see it as a problem to continue to eat food with dye in it as everything we encounter has some amount of food dye in it.

Hair dye

Along with food dye, many people grew an interest into whether or not hair dye causes cancer. Not only for the people who regularly dye their hair, but also for the people that are exposed and do the dying. 1/3 of women over 18 dye their hair and 1/10 of men over 40 dye theirs. Hair hair dyedye is regulated by the FDA, but some ingredients are excluding from the FDA access since those ingredients were there before the FDA was created. With over 5,000 different chemicals used in the dyes some have carcinogenic effects in animals. When dyes were first created aromatic amines causes cancer in animals, but many ingredients in the product have been changed, but it is not known if any of those products removed or the new ingredients and the absolute cause for the link to cancer. Many studies were done, but since the studies were too small they failed to accurately detect the relationship. To reduce risk:

  1. Wear gloves
  2. Follow directions
  3. Read caution
  4. Patch test
  5. Do not mix dyes
  6. Do not use on eyelashes or eyebrows

 

 

 

Deadly Depo

Depot Medroxyprogesterone Acetate manufactured by Pfizer, also known as Depo, is a contraceptive for women to prevent pregnancies. Depo is one of the many options that women can choose from to prevent pregnancy. In many scenarios, Depo is advocated as a safe, effective form of birth control, but there’s a different side to that story that it may be the deadliest form of birth control. It has been linked to increased sterilization, breast cancer and HIV/AIDS and the most recommended birth control to women of color and low income women. Previously before women advocate groups, such as Committee on Women, Population, and the Environment (CWPE), came along to draw awareness to this issue, experiments were being done on black women involving Depo. From 1967 to 1978, 14,000 low income women, black depo shotwomen, in Atlanta in the Grady clinic, experimented on those women with  Depo and most women died in the process or developed cancer after. What makes this so important is the person in charge of the experiment refused to release what they reported from the experiment. In 1994 to 2006, the same incident occurred in Ghana with over 9,000 black women.  A recent experiment in 2011, by Renee Hamilton, involved 3,000 participants, black women, concluded women are twice as likely to contract HIV/AIDS. In the 1960 to 19800’s, the Food and Drug Administrative (FDA) withheld the Depo from being administered three times until it was approved in 1992. Clearly being an issue of the file drawer problem, there has also been problems with fraud. Margaret Sanger, a population control advocate, opened the first birth control center in 1916, American Birth Control League, now renamed as Planned Parenthood. Starting with a statement Sanger made saying “we do not want word getting out that we want to exterminate the Negro population”, the whole business behind the Depo shot has up roared in fraud and a proven example of population control, which is identified as The New World Order (NWO) to intentionally reduce population through genocide. With Pfizer they have been caught illegally promoting saying things like the Depo shot prevents cancer, even though the FDA never approved it, and administering the drug as they failed to disclose the harmful side effects called Black Box. As a company they have been exposed of silencing journalists, Health experts, such as Stephen Minkin, and medical professionals, such as Dr. Betsy Hartmann, Dr. Jael Silliman. Prior to 2005, Pfizer paid 9 billion dollars in fines to the United States for fraudulent illegal business practices. Melinda Gates, who is a population control advocate, also promotes advocating this drug to low income women, mostly black women. In 2012, she created a billion dollar Depo media campaign to promote the contraception to combat all the accusations, which ended up being proven for fraud as she minimized the risks of HIV and eventually proven to be discredited as it did not seem valid to pay people of your side to do experiments, as it has a high chance of false conclusions.

Analysis

African American women make up 14% of the population, while also making up 84% of the pop controlpeople that get Depo.  They have 583,079 births a year, which dropped substantially by 30%, while white women have 2,150,926 births a year with a drop of only 5%. African American women have a shorter life span than white women due to heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, which has all been linked to Depo, thus resulting that Depo shortens life spans. In many other countries, especially the United States Middle East allies, they have all banned Depo as well as Ghana, Sweden, and India. Some of the serious side effects are:

1.Bone density loss

2.Blood clots

3.Stroke

4.Bleeding irregularities

5.Weight gain

6. Ectopic pregnancy

7.Lack of fertility

8.Breast cancer (2x likely)

9.Increased HIV/AIDS risk

The conspiracy theory of people trying to get rid of African Americans is a radical idea, but at the same time the idea that a contraception that is heavily advocated positively in poor communities, when it has fatal and dangerous side effects. Even on the Planned Parenthood website when they give you information of the Depo shot they use wording such as “undesirable side effects”, to mask the truth. Though the FDA might not ever really ban the contraception, it would make a difference if people would know the real truth of what they are injecting in their body, but just the effort these companies are taking to prove the public is wrong and constantly backfires in fraud shows that something is wrong and they are hiding it. For low income communities  the exposure is high, and the risk is high as well, as it can lead to infertility, cancer and HIV. If I was to choose a contraception the Depo shot would not be it.  Despite that i do not know how likely it is to get those side effects, but just knowing the side effects alone, along with the shaky business that accompanies the reason the Depo shot is so heavily advocated for, I’d rather pass on that opportunity. For other contraceptions, I could not find other contraceptions that posed a heath threat like this one as most of the research that I found about other contraception was mainly beliefs of why contraception is bad overall. What do you think?

 

 

Genetics Predict Lifespan

101

Have you ever wondered how someone could live to be over 100 and wanted to know their secret? Well, according to science the secret to longevity is not always being a health and exercise freak but you are born with it. Scientists study the DNA threads of humans as the DNA contains your genes that makes up who you are. Some studies show how at the end of a chromosome is a telomere that protects the chromosome. Scientists have connected the size of the telomere to the longevity because every time a cell divides the telomere gets shorter and they found a connection that the longer the telomere the longer you are expected to live. telomere

Other scientists looked at the marker in the genes in people older than 90 and found genetic markers being similar amongst them. They had had a theory that people tend to live longer because within their genes they have less markers associated with diseases but that has not been proven. Looking at genetics to determine longevity seems more logical because longevity is not something you can predict from your parents or grandparents traits. Do not get me wrong, exercise and how you eat play a role in your life as well, because negative connotations in your life like stress, smoking, excessively drinking, and violence can definitely make your life span significantly shorter. Little things like eating right, exercising, medical care, and the environment you live in could also influence your body to live longer. Even if you are not born with it, taking care of your body and mind in the long run will surely pay off in living longer than someone that excessively drinks, smokes, and does not eat healthy. As of right now, some of these things may not be on you mind because I know for myself eating healthy is the last thing on my list, but as you get older these things become a priority as these little changes in your life can be the road to living until your 100 or until your 60.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/can-your-genes-predict-when-you-will-die-164511528/?no-ist

http://www.livescience.com/6665-longevity-genes-predict-ll-live-100.html

 

Heels = Shoe-icide: You’ll Thank Me Later

"Shoes: An Illustrated History" for Sunday PostScript. Only to be used for book feature running Jan. 25, 2015. Photo from Northampton Museums and Art Gallery

“Shoes: An Illustrated History” for Sunday PostScript. Only to be used for book feature running Jan. 25, 2015. Photo from Northampton Museums and Art Gallery

High heeled footwear, also known as high heels or heels. The formal definition of heels is a footwear that raises the heel of the wearer’s foot significantly higher than the toes. Heels date back to the 1400’s where platform shoes known as chopines at the time originated from prostitutes in Venice, thus traveling to Italy and The Ottoman Empire symbolizing wealth. Queen Elizabeth 1 was the first documented person to wear heels in 1590 and she has a
painting with them on. Evolving on century’s heels became a fashion icon that never left women’s sight.

Men

Men once wore heels but not for the same reasons as women. They wore heels as a form of
riding footwear. Soon more women despite the social class began to wear heels as it showed masculinity. Unlike women, men’s fashion became more practical and the way they dressed blurred the lines of social class and by the 1790 they stopped wearing heels.

Pros

  • Tall look
  • Compliments clothes
  • Stylish
  • Creates confidence

heels
Cons

  • Morton’s neuroma
    • A thickening tissue between the third and fourth toes causing pain and numbness in the feet
  • Knee problems
    • Causes excessive force on the knee causing osteoarthritis among women
  • Bunions
    • A painful growth on the big toe, pushing t
      he big toe inward to the other toes
  • Pump bump
    • Irritation of the heel creating a bony enlargement on the back of the heel
  • Ankle Injuries
    • More risk of falling and spraining and/or breaking ankle
  • Metatarsalgia
    • Joint pain in the ball of the foot
  • Hammertoes
    • Pushes toes to the front causes them to bend in a un-natural position permanently
  • Pushes spine and hips out of alignment
  • Ingrown Toenails
  • Shortens and tightens muscles

BE SMART: Solutions 

  • Cosmetic Foot Surgery
  • Choose sensible shoes
  • Wear smaller heels that are 2 inches and under
  • Choose right size
  • Wear heels on less walking days
  • Alternate shoes to more comfortable shoes throughout the day
  • Stretch/Foot Exercises
  • Foot bath soaks

Risk Statistics

  • 1/10 women wear heels three times a week
  • 1/3 women fall wearing heels per day
  • High heels is leading foot problem
  • 1/3 have permanent damage from heels

Advice from an osteopathic physician from Hollywood, Natalie A Nevins, says “High heels are linked to overworked or injured leg muscles, osteoarthritis in the knee, and lower back pain. As you can see the cons outweigh the pros but them again the pros do not even compare on the same scale as the cons. Wearing heels is a risk woman take every time they put them on. Something people do not think about it the long term affects and a saying goes “beauty is pain”,Ruthie-Davis-Jolie-platform-sandal-bootie but does beauty have to equal a distorted posture, permanently damaged feet, and great health problems later in life just to gain confidence. Sometimes people aspire to be the like celebrities who seem to have mastered walking in heels like a runway model, they wear heels whether it is for a formal event or just seen walking down the street. They even seem to walk in heels more perfectly when they are pregnant, and people aspire to that standard. But that standard is unrealistic as it causes great harm to your body overtime. It is unrealistic to wear every day, but wearing heels is a part of life. Events like parties, prom, work, weddings, and church are occasions where people wear heels and it is totally acceptable. Next time you sleep on a pair of heels, remind yourself to burden your life with long term problems for short term Kodak moments.
24. Prom landing Page Homecoming Dresses Rectangle Image Sherri_Hill_4300_black_4300_s14_3.jpg

Purrr-fect Healing: Maybe those crazy cat ladies may be up to something

Cats date back to the ancient Egyptian era of 9000 B.C. They were depicted in hieroglyphics and even buried with their owners in tombs. Cats were like Gods, as people worshiped to them and even killing these physic felines by accident was a death sentence among that ancient-egypt-catperson. They were believed to bring justice and kill of vermin that would attack their food supply, able to tell the weather by the twitch of their whiskers and internationally believed they could see past visible light and read different frequencies. Even today, cats treat their body as a temple and they spend hours grooming themselves. They make a great household pet not only for their independence and their low maintenance requirement of just food and water, but they still seem to have that notion of having special powers attached to them. Instead of predicting the weather, cats are able to cure humans mentally.

 

Cats are linked to:

  • Lowering stress
  • Decrease the likeliness of dyspnea, which is having difficulty breathing
  • Less likely to have heart attacks by 40%
  • Strengthen bones
  • Longer life span than those of non-pet owners
  • Produce more oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin
  • Speedy injury recovery
  • Pain reducer
  • Boosts immune system

2Cat’s purrs is power. Currently used widely as a way of mediation and healing for those mentally and physically ill, a cat’s purrs ranges from 20-140 Hertz. Studies found a cat purr frequency of 25-50 Hertz helps bone strength, 50-150 Hertz helps relieve pain in 82% of people, and 18-35 Hertz is used for muscle relaxation in Russian sport’s therapy. In society “cat ladies” are frowned upon for their anti-socialness, but cats are your answer to every stress and depression related illness and well as physical attributes of healing fast.  Some logical reasons other than their purrs to why cats are healers is that just their existence fulfills the basic human need to touch. No matter the severity and the conditions, such as depression or anxiety, this is the go to in any psychiatric hospitals. This does not mean because you have a cat that previous people that used to go to therapy do not have to go anymore, it just implies that though formal therapy is still needed, cats can aid in that therapy process. Just like dogs, cats are used as emotional and/or comfort animals, which are usually given to kids with developmental disorders like autism or to elderly people with Alzheimers or dementia.

Study

A study by Karen Allen, a social psychologist, studied 48 women and men who were stockbrokers, with high salaries and high stress. Each was given high blood pressure medicine but a random selection was used to determine who got a pet. The study concluded the stockbroker’s blood pressure without pets rose higher than those with pets, thus concluding that from the study they were rejecting the null hypothesis because they found an association between cats and high blood pressure.

 

Even if the study is a false positive and cats do not really have an association with humans mental and physical healing, something about their presence that make humans brains re
acts by releases such critical mood areas in the brain is key. The brain produces dopamine and serotonin, which associated with the cats creates happiness, but if not functioning properly can cause great depression. The
re is not a lot of studies that discuss purr therapy, but the increasing number of sales in cats that make them the most popular pet over dogs, shows people cannot get enough of cats. Since cats help you live longer due to the less stress and high immune system and etc., it is ironic how out of 463 cat owners, 80% are women and women tend to live 5 years longer than men. This could be another study in itself that since women are more likely to own cats, does this create the disparity in longevity between men and women.

Pondering  Questions

From the lack of studies, there are so many questions I have that I could not find answers for. So since some studies believe cats bring healing, what if you are allergic to cats? Should you settle for, some might say less attractive, creepy, hairless cat, or should you invest in a purring machine. A purring machine is just a machine that sounds like a cat and emits the same sound frequencies as a cat. If so, would that machine work as well as the real life cat? Also, since the average number of cats per household in the U.S. is approximately 2, for the people that have multiple cats does that equal more healing and/or faster healing than just having one? Finally, since cats are known for their supernatural powers, can they help heal other animals?
funny

Not Milk?

Since we were little, slogans like “Got Milk” and “Milk: it does body good” encouraged us that it was the source to help our bodies “grow big and strong” as our parents would say. But what if I told you that there have been studies that counteract that milk is good for us, studies that show milk can lead to horrific outcomes such as ovarian cancer, acne, prostate cancer, bone loss and etc.  Editors of medical news today describe the original goodness that we believed about milk of how it contains calcium, choline, and potassium, which is all needed to live a healthy lifestyle as these three components in milk can help regulate your body and when your older to help preserve these from slowing quickly as we age.

Calcium

 Calcium has many functions in the body, but its primary job is the development and maintenance of healthy bones and teeth. It is also important for blood clotting and wound healing, maintaining normal blood pressure and muscle contractions including heartbeat.


Choline

Choline is an important nutrient that helps with sleep, muscle movement, learning and memory. Choline helps to maintain the structure of cellular membranes, aids in the transmission of nerve impulses, gotmilkassists in the absorption of fat and reduces chronic inflammation.

Potassium

 High potassium, also known as Vitamin D, intakes are associated with a reduced risk of stroke, heart disease, high blood pressure, protection against loss of muscle mass, preservation of bone mineral density and reduction in the formation of kidney stones. A high potassium diet is associated with a 20% decreased risk of dying from all causes.3 It is important for the formation, growth, repair of bones also plays a role in calcium absorption and immune function.

Studies

From this notion, it is hard to believe that studies are finding out that milk isn’t as good for you as they say. A study done by a British Medical Journal did an observational study that lasted 20-30 years to conclude that milk drinkers are more likely to die from heart disease and cancer among women and also suffered more fractions, ironically, than those of non-milk drinkers. Based off another study by Karl Michaelsson, a professor in the department of surgical sciences at Uppsala University in Sweden, of cow milk negatively gotzitsaffecting humans found that women who drink 3 or more glasses a day doubled their risk of death and increased their exposure to fractures by 60% and for men the risk of death increased by 10%. Some of the most prestigious college, such as Harvard dipped into the conversation siding on the notion that milk is not essential to a healthy diet. Walter Willet,MD at Harvard School of Public Health concluded “there is little evidence associated with reduced fractures” when more milk is consumed, he also noted that Asian countries who do not drink a lot of milk have lower fracture rates and “more data is linked to higher risk of prostate cancer”. A different viewpoint of milk by one of the most read articles by teenagers, Vogue, has also been linked to causes acne, referencing Dr. Frank Lipman, the medical physician at Eleven Eleven Wellness Center. Acne is every teenager’s worst nightmare. He says “casein is found in cow’s milk that is hard for our human body’s to digest so the blood and immune system reacts causing acne.” Also linking the cause of acne due to cow’s to the hormones cows are giving, which clogs the pores in our face.  For the male readers, who I have not forgotten about, prostate cancer has been linked to milk by the Harvard Physician Health study. By studying about 20,000 men for 11 years, they concluded 2.5 servings of milk per day boosted the likeliness of cancer by 34% compared to men who only drink .5 serving of milk. gotprostatecancer

Study Conclusions

In conclusion, more and more studies are being done to show that milk may be a bigger hazard that what we were thought to believe. But what does that mean for all the milk lovers? … Nothing really. Just like most studies done around the world all these studies of accusing milk to cause cancer and etc., is just association and has not been legitimately linked to this horrid outcomes. For Karl Michaelsson’s study they talk a lot about risk doubling which shows the relative risk of milk, but the actual risk of milk is probably so minuscule that doubling the risk is still basically nothing. As a non-milk lover, that is not lactose intolerant, I still am able to live a healthy life and not have my bones break if the wind blows just like other people, mostly lactose intolerant people. Milk is just one way to get those very nutrients that your body needs to grow properly. Eating more vegetables is another alternative to getting those very same nutrients offered by milk. But with any food, your body can handle certain amounts, taking 50 calcium pills a day won’t make your bones unbreakable, but will to the very opposite calcium is meant to do. This should not stop all the milk drinkers from continuing to drink their milk but it does make you wonder if the risk of milk is worth possible cancer in the end.  For Vogue influencing so many young teens to not drink milk can be misleading. Though it states in the article it is not officially linked, the exposure in a magazine whose target population is teenagers is very eye opening. Will you join the bandwagon of anti-milk users and contribute the public is helping decline milk sales by drinking more water? How much do you trust these FDA approved products…

 

Want more? This man is devoted to stop people from drinking milk. Watch!

Initial Blog Post

Hi, my name is Makeda. I am from Pittsburgh. I am doing this course because I registered for my classes late and this sounded interesting and was available. I am not planning to be a science major because I hated science all my life and wanted to do something different as my family all have careers in the science field. Here’s a picture of my city and If you ever happen to visit Pittsburgh for any reason here’s our website that tells you places to do like shopping, dining and etc. http://www.visitpittsburgh.mobi

Pittsburgh at sunset
Pittsburgh at sunset