Recent testing of mercury concentrations in three national brands of canned tuna found that:

“55% of all tuna examined was above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s safety level for human consumption.”

And the problem appears to be getting worse. Previous studies on canned tuna, in 1993 and 2004, showed concerning levels of mercury contamination, but not as bad as it is now. See my profile of the paper in my 2-min. video Which brand of tuna has the most mercury?

Given the average level of mercury pollution found in canned tuna, researchers suggest that your average 9 year old would exceed the EPA limit even if they only ate a can of tuna every 6 weeks! They conclude: “These results indicate that stricter regulation of the canned tuna industry is necessary to ensure the safety of sensitive populations such as pregnant women, infants, and children.”

Some question whether the federal safety limits are even sufficiently protective. A recent review from researchers at Harvard and elsewhere on the adverse effects of mercury in fish proposed that the exposure limits set in the United States should be cut in half. Already, current regulations in the United States allow up to 10 times as much mercury in fish as the EPA limit allows, and so our fish is allowed to have 20 times more mercury than may be considered safe. Read more…

I have volunteered in nursing homes for years. Over 43 years ago I put my mother in a nursing home. After she died I felt such a loss, since I had been visiting her once a day, that I started volunteering. There is one thing that hasn’t changed over the last 43 years: all residents say, “I want to go home.”

Some residents talk about getting dressed and waiting to be picked up to go home. Others cry to go home to their parents’ house, a home that they haven’t seen in decades. Some talk about going home tomorrow, but its always they want to go home. Most residents don’t realize where they are. They are just stating a fact, they miss their home. Something in their minds, Alzheimer’s, dementia—whatever they are diagnosed—it’s the same, they want to go home.

My daughter and I took some of my clothes to a nursing home today. As we were leaving an old man said, “Wait, can you take me home?” I had Missy push my wheelchair back to him, I told him no, I could not take him, he said, “Well maybe someone will come get me. I’m late, and have to go home.”

In the car I told Missy, my daughter,

Isn’t it something that of all the places in the world that people could wish to go, and over all the years I have volunteered, it has always been I want to go home—not Disneyland, not the Bahamas, not to work—all want to go home.

Read more…

She kept calling out repeatedly for help, with a loud, shrill, shaky voice. “HELP, HELP, HELP, HELP….” I could not comfort her or reassure her that she was okay, nor could I get her to stop yelling for help. The staff was getting weary and the other patients thought we were killing her…that fragile little 98 year old women with dementia in room 8.

She came to our ER from a nursing home with the complaint of, “she won’t stop yelling for help and this is not her normal behavior.” We worked her up for altered mental status—and none of the tests revealed a reason for her behavior change.

I tried everything to calm her; I dimmed the lights, I sat and held her hand, I turned the TV on and then off, I repositioned her repeatedly and called her
daughter (who was in Florida). The morning rolled on and she kept yelling. The ER traffic flow subsided somewhat and an opportunity arose for me to have 15 uninterrupted moments with this woman. I turned off the lights, closed the door, turned on some music and performed Reiki on her. I started from her head and went to her feet. At first she didn’t appear to even realize I was there, let alone gently laying my hands on her head. Read more…

New study shows,  “resistance training can indeed improve both your cognitive performance and your brain function. What is key is that the training will improve two processes that are highly sensitive to the effects of aging and neurodegeneration — executive function and associative memory — functions which are often impaired in early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.” according to Teresa Liu-Ambrose, principal investigator with the Centre for Hip Health and Mobility and the Brain Research Centre at VCH and UBC.

Learn more at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120423162403.htm Read more…