Rolling Stone article plagiarizes Furious Seasons

Furious Seasons blog owner and investigative journalist Philip Dawdy writes,

"This news brought to you courtesy of the Zyprexa documents, which Rolling Stone apparently used in reporting its recent lengthy story on Zyprexa, but didn't attribute to the appropriate source. They are just referred to as "internal documents" in the article, completely ignoring the very substantial risks some folks went to to make those documents public.
Yes, the RS article is now online and I've read it. I want to re-read it before deciding whether to take out a plinging gun or a .50 caliber machine gun.
Despite giving the reporter loads of help for his story and going unmentioned and unattributed, one thing I'll tell you right now is that the article is entitled "Bitter Pill." Ironically enough, last year I wrote an article for Willamette Week on how negative anti-depressant clinical trials data had been suppressed for decades. The article's title was "Bitter Pill." While article titles are up for grabs, it just charms me beyond belief that RS chose, coincidentally I'm sure, a title I'd already used. Classic."

RS article is here

A fine shout-out to Dawdy's giant-killing work at Furious Seasons is
here. - Why doesn't Rolling Stone hire Philip Dawdy?

Is Caffeine Driving You Crazy?

Drinking copious cups of coffee isn’t just bad for your health, it’s also more likely to drive you crazy, or at least crazy enough to hear voices. According to a study published in the academic journal “Personal and Individual Differences,” people who consumed the equivalent of more than seven cups of coffee per day (330 mg) were more likely to have hallucinations than those who consumed less than one cup (10 mg).

The articles link, link claim that they have not quite worked out why this is so. However, caffeine, an alkaloid, was known as a psychoactive to the Cherokee in America before written history,
and caffeine psychosis was identified in Western medical literature at least as early as 1936. Go here to see Blogger StoneSoupStation's great collection of coffee craziness links.

For decades, orthomolecular physician and psychiatrist Dr. Abram Hoffer has recommended elimination of caffeine from the diets of his schizophrenic patients - and they get well:

'The majority of scientists and psychiatrists subscribe to the dopamine excess theory of schizophrenia--that too much dopamine is largely responsible for the symptoms of psychosis. However, since 1952, Dr. Abram Hoffer, the founding father of orthomolecular medicine, has researched, published, and expanded upon the adrenochrome theory of schizophrenia. (1,2) He and his colleagues, Drs. Osmond and Smythies, came to this theory by studying and researching the effects of substances such as mescaline, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and amphetamines--all of which can cause a clinical syndrome in normal individuals that would be clinically indistinguishable from schizophrenia.

Hoffer noticed that mescaline had a similar chemical structure to that of adrenaline, and since both can be converted to indoles in the body, the potential schizophrenic toxin might be an indole derivative of adrenaline with similar neurochemical properties to that of mescaline or LSD. He eventually deduced that the schizophrenic toxin was an oxidized derivative of adrenaline known as adrenochrome. Since the early 1950s, Hoffer's adrenochrome theory has been validated due to the following findings:

* that adrenochrome and its close relatives--dopaminochrome (from dopamine) and noradrenochrome (from noradrenaline)--are present in the human brain, (3-5)

* that these compounds probably induce a combination of neurotoxic and mind-mood-altering effect, and (3-5)

* that reducing adrenochrome and its close relatives is therapeutic for the treatment of schizophrenia. (6)

The majority of schizophrenic patients (about 90%) who receive mainstream treatments remain unwell and nonfunctional for the rest of their lives despite receiving the most advanced drugs and social services currently available. (7) Estimates of first episode schizophrenics are a little more optimistic, reporting that of five recently diagnosed patients, one will recover sufficiently to live an almost normal life without medication or with very low doses of medication. (8) The economic costs of schizophrenia to society are enormous, amounting to approximately two million dollars for each schizophrenic patient over a 40-year course of the illness. (9)

In a recent publication examining the economic burden of schizophrenia in Canada, the direct and non-direct heath care costs associated with this disease were estimated to be 2.02 billion Canadian dollars in 2004. (10) In addition, when these figures were added to the high unemployment rate with additional productivity, morbidity, and mortality losses, the estimate reached 4.83 billion Canadian dollars, for a total cost estimate of 6.85 billion Canadian dollars in 2004. The authors of this report arrived at the following conclusion: "Despite significant improvements in the past decade in pharmacotherapy, programs, and services available for patients with schizophrenia, the economic burden of schizophrenia in Canada remains high."

The purpose of the report is to highlight the problems with the standard medical treatment of schizophrenia and to demonstrate that the addition of orthomolecular medicine provides patients with the best opportunity of living a reasonable quality of life. Common orthomolecular treatments are reviewed, including summaries of relevant clinical studies and prescribing information. Four patient cases are described to show the reader the potential benefits of this approach, as well as the difficulties with this approach when certain essential treatment components are lacking.'
Source

You can read a short article on Hoffer's methodology here, and
see Dr. Hoffer's book on nutrition and mental health, PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER, here. Hoffer's work remains the gold standard in the field and he is a hero and savior to many.

Mitochondrial Damage: Can it be repaired?

Yes.

Drugs designed to target one aspect of aging also seem to help repair DNA damage and regulate gene activity, preventing them from going haywire with the stresses of time.

"In principle, we now could have a way of reversing the effects of aging," said David Sinclair, a Harvard University gerontologist and co-founder of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, a company best-known for its development of an experimental drug called resveratrol.
Resveratrol and similar compounds activate an enzyme called SIRT1. The enzyme rejuvenates mitochondria, the machines that power our cells. Mitochondrial breakdown has been associated with many age-related diseases, including heart disease, diabetes and dementia. Several labs in addition to Sirtris are researching compounds that target mitochondria.
The new findings suggest that SIRT1 fixes DNA in addition to mitochondria.

Sinclair's team found that unless SIRT1 enzymes gathered at sites where DNA had started to unravel, other DNA repair proteins failed to arrive. This allowed damage to progress, eventually causing dormant genes to come alive, a process called deregulation.
Some researchers think gene deregulation is a cause of aging: As cells get older, they produce less SIRT1, ostensibly becoming less able to repair faulty DNA and suppress the dormant genes.

But in mice either given resveratrol or genetically engineered to produce extra SIRT1 on their own, repairs went smoothly and quickly.
"One idea of why we age is that DNA becomes damaged or mutated," said Sinclair, lead author of the research published Wednesday in Cell. "But perhaps the main culprit is the effect of genes switching on and off, and that should be reversible."

Link


What to do? Detailed information for chronic fatigue patients but useful and informative for all to follow is in a pdf - here.
http://www.ijcem.com/files/IJCEM812001.pdf

Supplements of Alpha-lipoic acid, L-carnitine and Co-enzyme Q10 to restore mitrochondrial function http://articles.latimes.com/2008/aug/25/health/he-skeptic25

Scholarly articles on ALCAR treatment can be accessed at Mitochondrial.net, here.

One protocol in an individual with mitochondrial disease called for the following:
Alpha-lipoic Acid (ALA) 300 mg 2x/day
Co-Q-10 200 mg 2x/day
Creatine Monohydrate powder 2.5 gm 2x/day

Margot Kidder Battles Stigma

Natural Health article
Margot Kidder's
SEARCH FOR SANITY*

by Karen Dale Dustman

Margot Kidder made headlines as Lois Lane in the 1979 movie "Superman." In 1996, she hit the news again -- when she was discovered ragged and hungry in the backyard of a stranger's Glendale, Calif., home.

Convinced her former husband, writer Thomas McGuane, and the CIA were out to kill her, Kidder roamed the streets of Los Angeles for 1-1/2 weeks, eventually sharing food and a cardboard shack with a homeless man named Charlie. By the end of her delusional episode, the actress was almost unrecognizable. She had lost the caps on her front teeth, chopped off her long auburn hair, and swapped her Armani suit for a homeless man's dirty T-shirt and pants.

Kidder has bipolar disorder, a condition marked by alternating episodes of depression and mania. (The manic phase can produce psychotic symptoms as it did for Kidder.) Born in 1948 in Yellowknife, a mining town in Canada's Northwest Territory, she spent almost 20 years of her adult life seeking treatment. After her 1996 incident, Kidder realized the conventional therapies she was receiving weren't working.
Link

That article was written years ago.... Kidder has been well with orthomolecular medicine for FOURTEEN YEARS. Here is an article about Kidder from 2008.

The actor downplays the time in 1996 when she went missing for three days in Los Angeles and was taken to a psychiatric ward when found dishevelled, dazed and fearful in a stranger's backyard.
"If I were a cancer patient, I would today be considered cured," said Kidder, once diagnosed with bipolar disorder. "I haven't had an episode in 14 years."
Food allergies, the environment, air and water pollution, toxins, a vitamin deficiency, drugs, lack of sleep, low blood sugar and gastrointestinal damage can cause emotional problems, she said.
"The list goes on. Such things can cause mood swings, delusions and even people hearing voices.
"The reality is that you can have 10 people with manic depression and they can have 10 causes that cause their symptoms.
"Pharmaceutical companies make millions of dollars, but are only interested in producing drugs that dampen symptoms."
Link

Orthomolecular Nutrition to the Rescue!

Feeding Minds, Feeding Bodies
Written by Rosalie Moscoe
Monday, 29 December 2008


Orthomolecular Nutrition to the Rescue!

My husband and I waved goodbye as we watched our son John (not his real name) board the plane, happily joking with his buddies. The year was 1989. John was 19, and headed for what we expected to be a wonderful youth tour overseas; indeed, for the first few weeks he called home to say what a good time he was having. But after the fourth week, we received a shocking phone call. The trip organizers were sending him home. John had become paranoid and delusional; he had been taken to a hospital after fainting at the top of a mountain.
We left on the next plane and returned with a young man who not only looked physically ill and emaciated but also was totally psychotic. We were devastated.
John was hospitalized for a short time and was released with antipsychotic medication. The doctor told us it was “psychosis”. His personality changed. Our outgoing, friendly, affectionate boy and talented musician now spent hours in his room, asleep. Awake, he suffered Parkinson-like tremors and tardive dyskinesia, a side effect of his medication.
His progress was negligible and within a year, he was hospitalized with symptoms of schizophrenia. Upon his release, John was marginally better. Schizophrenia prognosis was dim. What was to become of him?
Frantically I searched for answers. Traditional texts left me feeling hopeless. By sheer luck, I came across a book by psychiatrist, Dr. Abram Hoffer, M.D. PhD., psychiatrist, and a scholar of bio-chemistry. The book (now renamed Healing Schizophrenia) discussed diets with healthy nutrients, free of allergens that could help his condition. (Hoffer is the author of 31 books and 500 research papers.)
Also emphasized were nutrition health benefits of nutrients in supplement form such as Vitamin B3 (niacin) and Vitamin C – both natural and essential to the human body for restoring health along with other nutrients.
Orthomolecular medicine is the practice of optimizing health and treating disease by providing correct amounts of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, enzymes, essential fatty acids and other substances which are natural to the body’s environment. In other words, find out what’s missing in the body and brain and give it what it needs and wants. Orthomolecular treatments are also safe to use along with medication.

Link

Antidepressants in the water? Don't try to make wine

Nowadays we hear a lot about antidepressants and other drug residues in water. Here's an unexpected side effect: Antidepressants kill yeast cell mitochondria. That's bad news for fans of wine and beer - or baking.

"Since the first mitochondrial dysfunction was described in the 1960s, the medicine has advanced in its understanding the role mitochondria play in health and disease. Damage to mitochondria is now understood to play a role in the pathogenesis of a wide range of seemingly unrelated disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disease, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, migraine headaches, strokes, neuropathic pain, Parkinson’s disease, ataxia, transient ischemic attack, cardiomyopathy, coronary artery disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, retinitis pigmentosa, diabetes, hepatitis C, and primary biliary cirrhosis. Medications have now emerged as a major cause of mitochondrial damage, which may explain many adverse effects. All classes of psychotropic drugs have been documented to damage mitochondria, as have stain medications, analgesics such as acetaminophen, and many others. While targeted nutrient therapies using antioxidants or their prescursors (e. g., N-acetylcysteine) hold promise for improving mitochondrial function, there are large gaps in our knowledge. The most rational approach is to understand the mechanisms underlying mitochondrial damage for specific medications and attempt to counteract their deleterious effects with nutritional therapies. This article reviews our basic understanding of how mitochondria function and how medications damage mitochondria to create their occasionally fatal adverse effects."
See this abstract.

What does your medication do to YOUR mitochondria?

Actual Cost of Making Popular Prescription Drugs

Actual Cost Of Making These Popular Prescription Drugs
Posted November 8, 2003 thepeoplesvoice.org

From Dr. Betty Martini
From JUDICIAL REFORM INVESTIGATIONS / justice@court.to

Did you ever wonder how much it costs a drug company for the Active ingredient in prescription medications? Some people think it must cost a lot, since many drugs sell for more than $2.00 per tablet. We did a search of offshore chemical synthesizers that supply the active ingredients found in drugs approved by the FDA. As we have revealed in past issues of Life Extension, a significant percentage of drugs sold in the United States contain active ingredients made in other countries.

In our independent investigation of how much profit drug companies really make, we obtained the actual price of active ingredients used in some of the most popular drugs sold in America. The chart
here speaks for itself.

Diagnosis: Greed

Sir William Osler

"About three decades ago, it became possible to make serious money as a university researcher. Not that the money was so bad before, of course. It was respectable. But it wasn’t Wall Street-type money.
That changed in the early 1980s with the passage of legislation that allowed universities to patent their publicly funded research results and then grant exclusive licenses to pharmaceutical companies. The public-private wall came down. The universities received royalties on the drugs, and the royalties were split between the researchers and the departments. Start-up companies were spun off and sold. University researchers became, essentially, partners to industry.

The change wasn’t just structural, however. There was a cultural shift, a kind of boundary melt.
“Greed became respectable,” Angell, a professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School and the former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, recalled. “There used to be a sort of tension between doing well and doing good for medical researchers. If they wanted to make a lot of money in a high-risk sort of job they could work for industry. If they wanted to do important, exciting research they stayed in academia and they had a comfortable life but not great wealth.

“Before 1980, they were aware of this tension,” she said. “Before 1980, those who went into industry were held in some disdain. With Reagan, all this changed. There was a strong feeling that the world divided into winners and losers. In medical research this just has had enormous implications.”

It’s had enormous implications for our world generally. On Wall Street, change had to come via catastrophe. Let’s hope it won’t take a disaster to bring sense back to medicine."

Article here.



Also see BLIND FAITH, a four-part series about Pharma blandishments in Academe, here.

Eli Lilly - Guilty!

Eli Lilly and Company Agrees to Pay $1.415 Billion to Resolve Allegations
of Off-label Promotion of Zyprexa
$515 Million Criminal Fine Is Largest Individual Corporate Criminal Fine in History; Civil
Settlement up to $800 Million
American pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company today agreed to plead guilty and pay $1.415 billion for
promoting its drug Zyprexa for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Department of
Justice announced today. This resolution includes a criminal fine of $515 million, the largest ever in a health care
case, and the largest criminal fine for an individual corporation ever imposed in a United States criminal
prosecution of any kind. Eli Lilly will also pay up to $800 million in a civil settlement with the federal government
and the states.
Eli Lilly agreed to enter a global resolution with the United States to resolve criminal and civil allegations that
it promoted its antipsychotic drug Zyprexa for uses not approved by the FDA, the Department said. Such
unapproved uses are also known as "off-label" uses because they are not included in the drug’s FDA approved
product label.
Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division Gregory G. Katsas and acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern
District of Pennsylvania Laurie Magid today announced the filing of a criminal information against Eli Lilly for
promoting Zyprexa for uses not approved by the FDA. Eli Lilly, headquartered in Indianapolis, is charged in the
information with promoting Zyprexa for such off-label or unapproved uses as treatment for dementia, including
Alzheimer’s dementia, in elderly people.
The company has signed a plea agreement admitting its guilt to a misdemeanor criminal charge. Eli Lilly also
signed a civil settlement to resolve civil claims that by marketing Zyprexa for unapproved uses, it caused false
claims for payment to be submitted to federal insurance programs such as Medicaid, TRICARE and the Federal
Employee Health Benefits Program, none of which provided coverage for such off-label uses.
Department of Justice document is here.

A deep bow of respect to investigative journalist Philip Dawdy, without whose dedication and personal sacrifices this result might never have been reached. Visit him at Furious Seasons.

Pharmer's Market: Bill Maher Talks About Big Pharma

Lancet, AHRP: Who Beguiled Doctors?

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION Promoting Openness, Full
Disclosure, and Accountability http://www.ahrp.org and
http://ahrp.blogspot.com
FYI
"The current issue of The Lancet, includes a meta-analysis comparing
the efficacy of old and new neuroleptics--a.k.a. first generation
antipsychotics and 'atypical' second generation antipsychotics. The
findings corroborate the fact that the new drugs are no better than
the old antipsychotics.
See:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(08)617...
A Commentary in the same issue, "The Spurious Advance of Antipsychotic
Drug Therapy," by Dr. Peter Tyrer, professor of community psychiatry,
Imperial College, London, and Tim Kendal, MD, co-director of the
Royal College of Psychiatrists' national collaborating centre for
mental health, leads one to conclude that doctors have been 'conned'
by drug manufacturers:
"The new generation of drugs, known as atypicals, were heralded as
safer and more effective than the earlier antipsychotics, and for
the past 20 years doctors have been bbeguiledb into thinking they
were superior."
'The spurious invention of the atypicals can now be regarded as
invention only, cleverly manipulated by the drug industry for
marketing purposes and only now being exposed.' (Source: Lancet,
2009; 373: 4-5; 31-41).
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(08)617...
We would beg to disagree: given the active (duplicitous) role of
prominent academic psychiatrists, as well the major professional
associations in psychiatrybthe American Psychiatric Association,
the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, the American Academy
of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, et al in promoting the second
generation antipsychotics, it is unfair to lay blame entirely on
the pharmaceutical industry...."
Continue reading here.

Lift Kids Out of Poverty, Protect Their Brains

Growing up in poverty can physically harm a child's brain development, suggests a new study co-conducted by a University of British Columbia researcher.

Add that to a growing stack of findings that child advocates are using to argue the B.C. government needs to do more to tackle child poverty in a province that trails the rest of Canada in that category.

UBC pediatrician Tom Boyce worked with colleagues at the University of California and Stanford to measure how differences in a child's family socioeconomic status determine differences in neurological functioning in the pre-frontal cortex -- the part of the brain associated with executive functions and reasoning.

Their resulting study, to be published in MIT's Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, found that poorer children's pre-frontal cortexes were more likely to exhibit signs of damage or "altered" functioning identified with shortened attention spans and other learning problems.

Child and youth advocates say the new research is consistent with other studies finding that poverty sickens kids and impairs their development.

A study recently released by the Canadian Institute for Health Information reveals that low income Canadians are at elevated risk for mental health hospitalization, diabetes and childhood asthma.

Article here.

BREAKDOWN: Seven-part series in the Globe&Mail

Interesting series, here.
But we at Pharmaceuticals Anonymous think they've got it wrong: mental illness can be prevented and corrected with nutrition. Why bemoan stigma and the high costs of mental health treatment ($1,000,000+ over the lifetime of a
person diagnosed with "schizophrenia") when the truth is that the individual may have a vitamin deficiency, an infection or an allergy?
Why don't the "mentally ill" receive proper
physical work-ups before the Dx/Rx is written? We wonder - could it have something to do with jobs?

Cancer Is A Fungus

You can stop cancer in its tracks simply by changing your body's pH. To do that, all you may need is a gentle, freely available ingredient: Baking soda or Bicarbonate soda. Isn't that wonderful?
Details here.
To learn more, please go to Dr. Simoncici's site.
Also see this article.
Listen to Dr. Simoncici on video here:

Hat tip and thanks for the suggestion to Mr. I.A.

Ignored: The mentally ill killed by drugs that are meant to help them

Article here

America to end era of mercury dental fillings

"The name 'Mad Hatter' was undoubtedly inspired by the phrase "as mad as a hatter". There is some confusion as to the origins of this phrase. Mercury was used in the process of curing felt used in some hats. It was impossible for hatters to avoid inhaling the mercury fumes given off during the hat making process. Hatters and mill workers often suffered mercury poisoning as residual mercury vapor caused neurological damage including confused speech and distorted vision. It was not unusual then for hatters to appear disturbed or mentally confused, many died early as a result of mercury poisoning. However, the Mad Hatter does not exhibit the symptoms of mercury poisoning. Principal symptoms of mercury poisoning are “excessive timidity, diffidence, increasing shyness, loss of self-confidence, anxiety, and a desire to remain unobserved and unobtrusive” -
- From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Hatter

End era of mercury fillings
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
BY CHARLES G. BROWN
The biggest change in the history of American dentistry is about to occur. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is on the verge of limiting the use of dentistry's 19th-century foundation-stone, amalgam fillings. Though promoted as "silver fillings," this material is 50 percent mercury and only 25 percent silver.

Mercury is, of course, highly toxic; it can cause permanent harm to a fetus, to a child's developing brain or an adult's kidneys. The World Health Organization says no safe level of mercury exists. Unlike lead, whose risk becomes acute when the child licks it, mercury is notoriously volatile (it is the only metal in liquid form at room temperature), so its vapors alone can cause neurological or fetal damage. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control warns that mercury from amalgam is "a major source" of mercury exposure to our bodies.

Article here.

How many of us have been given mood-altering drugs when in fact we may have been suffering from mercury poisoning?

What REALLY kills Americans?

Link

Risperdal for Man Boobs

This one's for Philip Dawdy, of
Furious Seasons. Go read him!
Congratulations on Philip's highly ranked article BITTER PILL here.

Evelyn Pringle: SSRI Pushers Under Fire

Brueghel: Blind leading the blind

"Throughout the 1990's, most doctors who attended conferences, medical seminars and other events were not aware that the so-called "key opinion leaders" encouraging them to prescribe the new generation of antidepressants for everything under the sun, including to children as young as infants, were nothing more than highly paid drug pushers for Big Pharma.

For years, the research that showed SSRI antidepressants (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) were dangerous and practically useless was kept hidden, while the studies published and presented to potential prescribers painted a glowing picture of success. These days, a person would be hard pressed to find someone who does not have a family member or friend labeled mentally ill and taking drugs like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Lexapro and Celexa, or their chemical cousins Effexor, Cymbalta and Wellbutrin.

About once a year, a new round of headlines about all the money made by the SSRI pushers comes and goes; but nothing really ever seemed to stick, until now.

The Senate Finance Committee, with the ranking Republican, Senator Charles Grassley, leading the charge, is investigating GlaxoSmithKline regarding new revelations in a report filed in litigation showing that the company manipulated the numbers on adverse events related to suicidality in clinical trials back in 1989, to make it appear that Paxil did not increase the risk of patients experiencing suicidal behavior when, in fact, trial subjects on Paxil were eight times more likely to attempt or commit suicide than patients taking placebos.

Quite a few of the top pushers are also under investigation by the Committee due to revelations that millions of dollars has changed hands between the SSRI makers and the academics who signed off on some of the most fraudulently reported research in the history of modern medicine. A full list of names is easy to compile by scanning the literature on SSRI studies conducted on children. The same names appear repeatedly.

In alphabetical order, the Fortune 500 team of pushers, at a minimum, includes Drs Joseph Biederman, David Brent, Jeffrey Bridge, Daniel Casey, David Dunner, Graham Emslie, Daniel Geller, Robert Gibbons, Frederick Goodwin, Martin Keller, Andrew Leon, John Mann, John March, Charles Nemeroff, John Rush, Neal Ryan, David Shaffer, and Karen Wagner."
Article here

Are our children being poisoned by their sweets?

From UK's MAIL ONLINE:
What I've discovered about chemical food colourings and preservatives terrifies me, as it should the most happy-go-lucky parent. British sweet manufacturers, I've had to conclude, no longer deserve our trust.

Six commonly used colourings in sweets, soft drinks and even children's medicines have now been proven to cause attention disorder and hyperactivity in children - not just those already prone to such problems, but all children.

What that means is that the notorious 'sugar rush' that we've all seen in children on a sweetie or pop binge may not be caused by sugar at all, but by obscure colourings and preservatives.

And there are added dangers from these completely unnecessary chemicals. My daughter, like nearly one in 20 British children, is prone to allergies: in her case, severe asthma that means a trip to A & E once a month during winter.

During my investigation, I found dangerous colourings and preservatives in famous names such as Cadbury Roses chocolates, Maynards, Wrigley's gum, Jawbreakers, Jelly Babies, Kiddies Mix, Refreshers, Lovehearts, Hubba Bubba bubble gum and Fizz Bombs, as well as a huge range of corner-shop sweets sold as Nisha's or Family Favourites.

Novelty sweets branded on Bratz dolls and cartoon character Scooby-Doo had them too. A build-it-yourself gingerbread house from the John Lewis toy department had more bad dyes than any other item I found.

If it's cheaply made and highly coloured, it seems, it's more likely than not to have an 'azo-dye' (a synthetic nitrogen-based compound dye) in it - and that includes all the children's favourites: the snakes, marshmallows and bootlaces sold loose in corner shops.

The chief villains - the ones everyone agrees are dangerous - are mainly colours derived from coal tar. These are known as the 'Dirty Six' and go under the names sunset yellow (or E number 110), carmoisine (E122), tartrazine (E102), ponceau 4R (E124), quinoline yellow (E104) and allura red (E129).

They're reds and yellows, and commonly found in sweets, jellies, ice lollies, fizzy drinks and many obviously coloured foods, such as icing on cakes. Three of them have been linked with asthma and other allergies. Many of them are banned in medicines, or must carry warnings.

All of them, government scientists now agree, can cause or exacerbate hyperactivity or attention disorder.

Link