Happy Nirvana

image: Maplecroft New analysis shows Afghanistan as well as several sub-Saharan African nations as having the greatest food security risk in the world, classified as ‘extreme risk’ (red in the image above). Furthermore, 36 of the 50 most at-risk nations in the world are found in Africa…. Read the full story on TreeHugger Credits to:TreeHugger

People with an elevated resting heart rate, meaning a high pulse rate when resting, which persists over the long term is linked to a significant risk of death, caused by either heart disease or something else, say scientists from the Ronald O. Perelman Heart Institute at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell, after completing a study involving 9,193 [...]

Chemical flame retardants have made their way into a very long list of mundane everyday household objects. This was no doubt originally intended to help save lives, which it has done. Unfortunately a string of studies published over the past few decades have shown that flame retardants may also be putting our health at risk [...]

A new study by researchers in Germany has found that waist circumference gives a better prediction of diabetes risk than does BMI. Click here to download the article. Currently, doctors use Body Mass Index, or BMI (a calculated weight-to height relationship — click here for the ND online BMI Calculator) as a tool to assess [...]

The World Health Organisation reports that half of the world’s population is at risk of Malaria, and an estimated 243 million cases led to nearly 863 000 deaths in 2008. The renewed effort to control malaria worldwide and move towards elimination in some countries is founded on the latest generation of effective tools and methods [...]

Patients with heart disease who also suffer from an anxiety disorder have a significantly higher risk of having a heart attack, heart failure, stroke and death, compared to other heart disease patients, according to Dutch scientists. You can read about this study in the peer-reviewed medical journal Archives of General Psychiatry. Researchers from Tilburg University, [...]

A large US study found that compared to normal weight children, obese children have a higher risk of developing gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), a condition where stomach fluid flows up into the food pipe or esophagus, damaging the lining and possibly also raising the incidence of inflammation, asthma and coughs. You can read about how [...]

A recent study showed that low levels of vitamin D can lead to poor blood sugar control in those with diabetes and increase the risk of metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a group of risk factors that may include: abdominal obesity, elevated blood pressure and insulin resistance. People with metabolic syndrome are at increased risk [...]

Staying in shape may bolster the metabolic profiles of college students, even in those with higher than desirable body fat percentages. In an epidemiological study, researchers at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University found an association between physical fitness, body fat percentage and certain metabolic risk factors that are precursors [...]

Researchers from Brighton (England), Cambridge (England) and Kuwait have demonstrated that thyroid cancer risk increases as the number of dental x-rays taken grows. The researchers report that the incidence rates of thyroid cancer have doubled from 1.4 per 100,000 in 1975 to 2.9 per 100,000 in 2006 in the UK. They stress that several factors [...]