Salt, CO, & Jobs Harm While MJ Can Help
Live Longer -- Purify Food, Air, & Win Justice
| Here’s how to take care of yourself and of your society with geonomics. We trim, blend, and append three 2012 articles on health from the BBC: (1) Jly 22, on salt; (2) Aug 5, on CO2 by J. Gallagher; (3) Jly 23, on retirement by R. Knight and C. McDonald; and (4) from ASAs on marijuana. |
by BBC, by James Gallagher, by Richard Knight & Charlotte McDonald, and by Americans for Safe Access
- Reducing Salt Would Cut Cancer'
Cutting back on salty foods such as bacon, bread, and breakfast cereals may reduce people's risk of developing stomach cancer, according to the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF). It wants people to eat less salt and for the content of food to be labeled more clearly.
In the UK, the WCRF said one-in-seven stomach cancers would be prevented if people kept to daily guidelines.
Cancer Research UK said this figure could be even higher.
Too much salt is bad for blood pressure and can lead to heart disease and stroke, but it can also cause cancer.
The recommended daily limit is 6g, about a level teaspoonful, but the World Cancer Research Fund said people were eating 8.6g a day.
Eating too much salt is not all about sprinkling it over food, the vast majority is already inside food.
It is why the WCRF has called for a "traffic-light" system for food labelling - red for high, amber for medium and green for low.
JJS: Salt that you did not put in your food and CO that you did not put in your air are both killing you. Salt you can more easily avoid. For the disruption from the CO, you need a drug that affects your heart’s sodium channel (sodium being half of salt).
Carbon Monoxide's Damaging Role In Heart Rhythm
Even low levels of carbon monoxide can be fatal, by disrupting the heart's rhythm. Levels common in heavy traffic could affect the way the heart resets itself after every beat. The study in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine showed a common angina drug may reverse the effect.
Carbon monoxide is produced by faulty boilers, cigarettes, and car exhausts. It is deadly at high levels as it "shoulder-barges" oxygen out of the blood, meaning less is transported around the body. Carbon monoxide poisoning kills more than 50 people in the UK each year and many more around the world.
Symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning
Headaches
Breathlessness
Nausea
Dizziness
Collapse
Loss of consciousness
Tiredness
Vomiting
The University of Leeds research team found that the gas kept sodium channels, which are important for controlling the heartbeat, open for longer. Disrupting the sodium channels can disrupt the heart's rhythm, leading to cardiac arrhythmia, which can be fatal.
An angina drug which affects the sodium channels on rats reversed heart problems. Of course it needs clinical trials on humans.
JJS: You can’t easily avoid CO unless you move to the country where jobs and startups are scarce and it’s even harder to avoid a lifetime of drudgery which leaves little time to enjoy this miracle of life when we’re too old to much enjoy it.
Do Those Who Retire Early Live Longer?
There's the suggestion that 93% of communication is non-verbal (not true) or the oft-repeated suggestion that there are more people alive today than have ever lived (not true either). Here's another -- the later you retire, the earlier you will die.
Aircraft-maker Boeing showed that employees who retire at 55 live to, on average, 83. But those who retire at 65 only last, on average, another 18 months. The "Boeing study" has been quoted by newspapers, magazines and pundits. It's circulated on the internet for years. The problem with it is that Boeing itself says it's simply not true.
Epidemiologists at the oil firm Shell carried out a study of past employees in the US, which found that mortality was slightly earlier -- on average -- for staff who retired at 55, than for those who continued working to 65.
However, some people retire early because they are seriously ill. And no-one who retires at 65 will have died before they reached that age. Both distort the data.
Workers in some professions do die earlier than others. Lawyers, accountants, and higher managerial have life expectancy of nearly 19 years for males at age 65, for laborers and cleaners it’s nearer 15 years. Rather than to the nature of the work itself, laborers and cleaners are more likely to come from poorer backgrounds.
JJS: Some people in poor health need medicine that other people criminalize -- as if the disease weren’t pain enough.
US Rep Barbara Lee’s Medical Marijuana Property Rights Protection Act
US Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) has introduced HR 6335, the ‘‘States’ Medical Marijuana Property Rights Protection Act,’’ a bill that will protect property owners who rent to medical cannabis tenants from losing their property. Under current law, the Department of Justice can confiscate property that is used to grow or provide medical cannabis -- even if it is legal under the state law. The ‘‘States’ Medical Marijuana Property Rights Protection Act” will stop the federal government from intimidating and prosecuting responsible, law-abiding property owners.
JJS: Personally, I don’t enjoy mood alterants so I don’t bother with them; I’m not morally superior, I’m just not interested (I got a stack of books yay big to read!). But I don’t criminalize other people’s choices. And I greatly admire the courage of those few who take controversial stands (thank her, if you feel up to it). Courageous people are the ones our movement needs if ever we’re to win acceptance for a new definition of property.
Also, much traffic comes from wasteful human settlement patterns in metro regions. That problem is easily addressed by instituting land dues. When owners must pay the dues or a land tax, they use their land efficiently. Presto: compact cities, barely polluting at all. But it takes courageous advocates to get there.
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Editor Jeffery J. Smith runs the Forum on Geonomics and helped prepare a course for the UN on geonomics. To take the “Land Rights” course, click here .
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Also see: Uncounted food and energy inflation hurts retirees
Bonus Balls
Coal Costs up to a Half Trillion Dollars Annually |
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