Genetically Modified Crops Triggering A Dangerous Situation

As I’ve discussed before, genetically modified crops can cause dangerous, unintended consequences. A new one has recently popped up. GMO corn crops have had a gene put into them that creates a poison called Bt. Three-quarters of the US corn crop contains this gene. The design of the Bt gene is aimed at killing rootworms that destroy the corn.
 

While the Bt containing seeds initially caused the pest population to plummet, that’s been changing rapidly. Rootworms have been becoming resistant to the Bt poison. This means that not only do the rootworms not die, they will proliferate because they won’t be stopped by the Bt. As an example, farmers in northeast Iowa have been reporting extensive root damage in their Bt corn fields.
 

One of the ways of disrupting the rootworm population would be to return to the old method of crop rotation. These research reports are coming from independent studies begun in 2010 after entomologists at major agricultural universities forced the seed companies like Monsanto to allow outside researchers to study the impact of Bt corn. So…thank you, Monsanto and the other GMO seed companies for creating this situation.

(Reported by Brandon Deim, Wired, March 20, 2014)

A Gene Toxic To Humans Found In GMO Crops

Since I’m on the subject of GMO Crops, there’s another oops that occurred. The European Food Safety Authority found a virus gene that is toxic to humans was missed in the international process to approve the use of the GMO in corn and soy crops around the world. People are now ingesting this virus from not only eating corn and soy, but by also consuming meat, milk and eggs from animals that are fed these GMO crops. This research was conducted by independent scientists. Independent Science News said that because the viral gene was not caught by the biotech companies and government regulators in the approval process that “this situation represents a complete and catastrophic system failure” of the process.

So…the only way to avoid GMO crops and foods as well as animals that were fed GMO crops is to only buy products that say Certified Organic on their labels.
(Reported by Mary West, Wake Up World, February  2013)

Facebook Posts Affect Attitudes

Researchers reported in PLOS ONE that people who post positive or negative posts on Facebook affect their friends attitudes and the attitudes of others that read or forward the post. The researchers analyzed more than a billion Facebook status updates. The authors found that emotionally positive posts resulted in more positive posts by friends and negative ones produced more negative posts by friends.
 

The researchers found this to have a very large effect. Every message you post causes your friends to post another one or two messages with the same emotional focus. What the researchers did was to look at rainy weather in cities and compared rainy-day and non-rainy-day posts. The rainy-day posts increased the negative posts. Friends in cities where the weather was dry also tended to post negative comments.

Finally, the researchers found that positive posts did prompt more positive additional posts than the number of negative posts. So… you need to pay attention to what you say in your posts because your attitude is affecting no only you but the people in your social network.

(Reported Monte Morin, Los Angeles Times 2014)

 
Should Supplements Be Studied As If They Were Drugs?

The US Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of non-federal experts in prevention and evidence-based medicine recently reported that we have been going in the wrong directions by wanting to study nutritional supplements as if they were drugs. The Task Force looked at dietary supplements and the prevention of heart disease and cancer. Their findings were that:

1. Dietary supplement studies should be designed differently than drug studies.
2. Current dietary supplements don’t look at sub-group differences (e.g. comparing a young Hispanic woman and an older Caucasian man)
3. Research should look at examining people who are deficient in the nutrient not people who are at optimal levels of a nutrient.

Finally, the Task Force recommended not relying on conventional medicine’s customary approach to validate the effectiveness of supplements which means randomly controlled double blind studies. This means that the gold standard research of conventional medicine needs to be rethought for supplements.

(Reported Alliance for Natural Health USA 2013)
 

  
Memories May Be Passing Through Our DNA To Our Heirs

What you do may really be affecting your current heirs and future generations. Researchers from Emory University have shown that mice can pass on learned information about traumatic and stressful events to offspring. In this study, the researchers connected the smell of cherry blossoms with fear in mice. Later, the mice gave birth. When the baby mice were exposed to the cherry blossom smell, they also reacted with fear. While the researchers are not sure how it is happening, they realized that the mother mouse’s memories were passed into the baby’s genome. Once it is in the genome, it can pass to future generations. The researchers want to explore whether a similar effect can be seen in the genes of humans.

Other research has reported that what happens externally does affect the growth and development of the fetus. Women who have had a stressful and difficult pregnancy gave birth to children that have a larger brain stem, which is the area of the brain associated with our survival mechanism of flight or fight. This meant that the children were hyper- wired to react to stress and danger (whether it was a real danger or not).  Mothers who have had a positive pregnancy delivered children with larger frontal lobes, which is the area of the brain associated with higher level decision making. .

So…when you are pregnant, stay as stress free as you can.

Creating A Happy Workplace

A Bank of America (BofA) call center was experiencing high burnout and turnover rates. They also found productivity often lagged. They were able to solve all these problems by making what sounds like an unimportant change. What BofA did was to allow co-workers to take breaks with other member of their work team. At BofA, you’ll see these teams of operators on break together sharing stories, telling jokes andgoing to lunch. This simple change resulted in a 15 to 20% rise in productivity and a substantial increase in customer satisfaction while employee turnover dropped from 40% to 12%.

How did the company figure this out? They actually hired a company, Sociometric Solutions, that used sensing technology that employees would wear to determine who was meeting with whom and for how long. This lead BofA to determine who was on a team. They then had the teams take breaks at the same time. The team members had more contact and more fun on the job. The researchers found that even the location of the coffee pot could create more internal cohesion so if you wanted two groups to work together, the company put the coffee pot between the two groups. So…coffee anyone while you have more fun and happiness at work?

Hmm…I wonder whether it will work with tea?                                     

Reducing The Impact of Exam Stress

Because of the law No Child Left Behind, standardized exams have grown in abundance and importance. Students with low scores can be held back, teachers can be fired and schools can be closed. Pretty dramatic results that can raise a student’s test taking anxiety. Other negative results for the kids from this stressor can be lower self-esteem, reduced motivation and disengagement from school. All this can affect the child’s entire life.

So, what’s a kid to do? Fortunately, there are a number of options. One option is to do expressive writing, which is to spend 10 minutes before the exam writing about their worries, thoughts and feelings. A study reported in Science found test scores significantly improved by doing this writing exercise.

Another approach that also worked was to have the kids write about something of value to them and why it matters to them.

Another group of researchers employed breathing and relaxation exercises to significantly reduce test anxiety. This last approach brings me back to when as a pioneer I started speaking in 1974 on How To Relax and Enjoy Passing Your Exams. I wound up speaking at over 400 colleges and universities in the US and Canada. To attract students to my program, I even made a relaxation guarantee. If you didn’t leave feeling more relaxed at the end of the program, I would pay you $4 for having come to the program. So…150,000 students later, I had only have 4 people ask me for the money.

(Reported Annie Murphy Paul, Time February 11, 2013)

Using Brain Gyms To Reduce Test Anxiety

There was a study published in 1996 that involved twenty-seven first-year nursing students, divided into three separate groups during a nine-week study. The study measured the effects of four Brain Gym® activities (which are movement exercises). The movements are simple and easy to do and take about six-minutes a day. the researchers looked at weekly assessments of self-reported anxiety and performance on fourteen technical-motor skill tests. The Brain Gym® group experienced a 69.5 percent reduction in self-reported anxiety and an 18.7 percent increase in performance on skill tests, as compared to the controls reporting continued high anxiety and a higher failure rate in the control groups, which was not using the Brain Gym® activities.

There are two books available that explain which Brain Gym movements to use to switch your brain on for doing things you have difficulty doing. One book is for students in school and the other is for adults working in a business environment. The one for students is called Brain Gym Teachers Edition and is regularly $30 plus shipping. There is a special offer available until April 20 of a price of $25.00 and free shipping.

The book for those in the business world is called Brain Gym for Business that I co-wrote with the founders of Brain Gym, Dr. Paul Dennison and Gail Dennison.  This book is regularly $18 plus shipping. There is also a special offer available until April 20 of a price of $15 and free shipping. To order click here.
 

(Both specials are good within the US and Canada only) -

OFFERS GOOD ONLY UNTIL APRIL 20th SO ORDER YOURS TODAY!

With these books, you will start to realize the positive benefits in minutes.

THANKS, THAT'S IT FOR THIS MONTH!