Dark Chocolate May Help You Avoid Cardiovascular Disease

By Dr. Mercola
A recent meta-analysis sought to evaluate the association between chocolate consumption and the risk of developing cardiometabolic disorders. "Cardiometabolic disorders" is a term that represents a cluster of interrelated risk factors that promote the development of coronary heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.

These risk factors include:

 Hypertension 
Elevated fasting glucose 
High cholesterol levels 
Abdominal obesity 
Elevated triglycerides

In the featured analysis, researchers pooled the results of seven studies that collectively included more than 114,000 participants. Five of the seven studies reported a beneficial association between chocolate consumption and reduced risk of developing cardiometabolic disorders.

Bear in mind that not all chocolate is created equal. I'll review that in more detail below. As a general rule, any time "chocolate" is evaluated for its health benefits, we're dealing with dark unprocessed chocolate and/or raw cacao-not your average processed milk chocolate candy bar. That said, the featured analysis found that the highest levels of chocolate consumption were associated with:

37 percent reduction in cardiovascular disease, and  29 percent reduction in stroke

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UK Officials Believe 15,000 Britons Are Incubating Human Mad Cow Disease (CJD)

By Frank Dobson
The government's expert advisers assume that as many as 15,000 people in this country are infected with the prion infection agents that cause the lethal brain disease, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob (vCJD), the human form of BSE or "mad cow disease". The experts don't know if this is the right figure. It could be a lot higher but ministers are refusing to fund trials of a new test to find out.

So far just 200 of our fellow citizens have developed the disease. But the prions that cause the disease can lie dormant for decades and people who are infected pose a risk to others if they are blood or organ donors, or if surgical instruments used on them are then reused on other patients.

The Medical Research Council Prion Unit at the UCL Institute of Neurology, led by Professor John Collinge, was set up at my behest to come up with ways to treat vCJD and, better still, prevent it. They were also asked to devise a test to identify vCJD in the general population. They recently announced a new blood test that does just that. This is a great breakthrough. It should enable our doctors and scientists, for the first time, to assess accurately the incidence of vCJD infection so policy decisions on how best to protect patients can be based on evidence, not guesswork.

As health secretary, the day I became aware in 1998 that it might be possible to transmit vCJD by blood and blood products, I got the experts together. Their advice was that infection through blood and blood products was likely but not certain and that the infection, if any, would probably be carried in the white blood cells.

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Mad Cow Disease 'Can Be Spread Through Air'

By David Derbyshire

Mad cow disease can be spread by airborne particles, researchers warn.

And they fear that those who work in abattoirs, slaughterhouses and laboratories could be at risk.

Their study shows prions, the infectious agents which cause BSE and its human form, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, can be dangerous if carried through the air.

In tests, mice who breathed them in developed the brain disease with 'frightening' speed and died.

The discovery could also explain why some of the victims in the 1990s were vegetarians.

Since the link between BSE-infected meat and vCJD was confirmed in 1996, 170 have died. Deaths peaked in 2000 when 28 died. Last year, there were three victims.

Prions, a type of protein, can spread on surgical instruments and in blood transfusions. It had been assumed they were not transmitted by air.

But Swiss researcher Dr Adriano Aguzzi at University Hospital Zurich and colleagues exposed laboratory mice to aerosols containing prions in a specially designed chamber.

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