Investigations: Fatty Acids Cut Mental Illness Among At-Risk Youth

Fatty acids significantly reduced the risk of mental illness among young people with extremely high chances of developing psychosis, according to a new study in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry. What's more, the omega-3 fatty acids didn't have any side effects - unlike pharmaceutical drugs for the same conditions - and the effects lasted even after the study.

In the first study of its kind, young people aged 13 to 25 who were deemed to have up to 40 percent chance of developing psychosis were given a daily fish oil capsule. Only 4.9 percent went on to develop psychosis. In a placebo group, 27.5 percent developed psychosis. See this blog item for more details. Results were similar when at-risk youth were given polyunsaturated fatty acids.

TAGS: health

Tools: Free Books & Mags

Here's a great resource if you're looking for a book or magazine: Scribd.com. This searchable resource has massive numbers of free electronic material. I've just added it to my blogroll in the right-hand column.

Btw, your suggestions for sites to add to my links list are very welcome.

TAGS: tools

Investigations: Chemical-Doused Shrimp Escapes Regulators

Shrimp always seemed like a healthy food choice to me. Not so, according to this AlterNet report citing a book by Montreal's Taras Grescoe, Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood. The award-winning book (including a nod for best non-fiction book from the Writers' Trust of Canada) says shrimp - America's most popular seafood - are treated with a remarkable soup of chemicals like diesel, Borax, superphosphate, urea and sodium tripolyphosphate (the last being a suspected neurotoxin).

Few imported shrimp are inspected by food regulators. And "when researchers examined ready-to-eat shrimp, they found 162 separate species of bacteria with resistance to 10 different antibiotics," says the AlterNet story. Visit the Bottomfeeder Web site for more details.

TAGS: health, food