Positive Health Online

Yoga and Breathing Exercises for Asthma

Listed in asthma

Much emphasis is placed upon environmental factors in asthma prevention and treatment, but the profound role of breathing is not sufficiently acknowledged as a therapeutic option. R...

Organic Food and Cancer Risk

Listed in organic food

Can we reduce our risk of cancer by eating organic food? For many people, it is common sense that organic food is healthier than conventionally grown food. But a review of the scien...

Cancer and Organic Meat

Listed in organic food

Since the 1970s, red meat has been suspected of increasing the risk of cancer. Recently the World Cancer Research Fund published its monumental review of the evidence on nutrition, ...

Dialogue

Listed in organic food

This column is the last I will write for the foreseeable future. I have written fifteen columns with topics ranging from arsenic to xeno-oestrogens. But I have kept coming back to o...

Arsenic; Natural but Nasty

Listed in environmental

In 1900, beer drinkers in northern England died of arsenic poisoning when sulphuric acid contaminated with arsenic was used in the processing of the beer. Murderers prefer arsenic a...

Physical Activity and Cancer

Listed in cancer

When weighing up the risk of cancer from food, it is not only what you put into your body that matters, although the type and quantity of food certainly contribute to cancer risk. H...

Physical Activity and Health

Listed in exercise and fitness

The lack of physical activity is one of the less desirable consequences of our transport system. The dominance of the motor vehicle is not the only cause of our increasing lack of p...

Cycling for Health

Listed in exercise and fitness

Of all the ways the environment affects health, the one that matters most to me is transport. Not only is our health at risk from air pollution, traffic accidents and noise but the ...

Headlice control - unnecessary chemical warfare

Listed in environmental

Headlice are a frequent nuisance but cause no hazard to health beyond an itchy scalp. Yet they are treated with toxic pesticides, potentially capable of causing greater hazards to h...

The Weight of Evidence

Listed in cancer

During the last year, I have been looking closely at the evidence behind the theory that food produced by intensive agriculture increases the risk of cancer and that people can redu...

Nitrates and Greens

Listed in environmental

Nitrate levels are often so high in British lettuce and spinach that our government recently negotiated a relaxation of the EC limits. The EC set limits in order to protect public h...

Pesticides - an holistic view

Listed in environmental

Eating an organic apple every day is 100,000 times more likely to give you cancer than eating food contaminated with residues of the pesticide lindane. This statement is meaningless...

The Rat and the White Loaf

Listed in environmental

Many years ago, I had a housemate who, given a free choice, inevitably made the non-nutritious one. The only bread he would eat was junk white. I argued in vain that such bread was ...

Pesticides and Breast Cancer

Listed in environmental

Past and current use of organochlorine pesticides has led to the pollution of the entire globe, with detectable levels in the body fat of nearly everyone in the world. Could pestici...

Nutritional Value of Organic Food

Listed in organic food

Of all the claims made for the benefits of organically grown food, the most controversial is the claim that it is healthier than food grown conventionally. To proponents, the vitali...

Asthma and Air Pollution

Listed in asthma

There is no doubt that air pollution contributes to asthma and other respiratory problems but contrary to popular belief, there is doubt that air pollution directly causes asthma.

Cancer and the Environment - Perception in Perspective

Listed in environmental

How do we assess the risks of cancer from the various hazards we are exposed to in our environment? Estimates of 75 to 90% of all cancers are believed to be caused by agents in the ...