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Starting May 15, all food imported from Japan will require 17 clearly stating their points of origin, and for products from certain regions, documents confirming radiation examinations will also be required, the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MHW) announced yesterday. Since the devastating earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster hit Japan on March 11, 2011, all food products from Fukushima, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Chiba and Gunma prefectures 18 banned from entry into Taiwan, as they were found to contain radioactive 19 that exceeded the level considered safe for human consumption. Earlier this March, however, food products from the five irradiated regions listed above were falsely labelled as having come from non-restricted origins. 20 the MHW, all relevant products have been pulled off the shelves. The MHW yesterday announced that starting May 15, while the current ban on food imports from irradiated regions remains, all products from any area in Japan will need government-issued statements clarifying their origin, and for certain types of food from certain regions, certification proving radiation examination results is also required.

Countless Nepalis face long battles with anxiety and depression after the country's 21 recurring earthquakes and hundreds of aftershocks, aid workers and mental health professionals warned. Delilah Borja, Save the Children's country director in Nepal, said the organization was "extremely concerned about the emotional well-being" of kids who were caught up 22 the two major quakes. "The second quake 23 particular has created a new level of terrifying uncertainty as those affected must now ask themselves if another deadly earthquake is coming," she said in a statement released on Wednesday. A major 7.8-magnitude quake struck on April 25, killing at least 8,150 people and injuring more than 17,860 as well as destroying 600,000 homes. Tuesday's 7.3-magnitude quake came just as many were regaining 24 security.

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Until a century ago, bloodletting was used to treat many ailments. Dating back to before the time of Christ, the treatment involved letting a type of worm, called a leech, such blood from the patient.

 People believed that there were liquids called humors in the body and that these determined a person’s personality and health. Bloodletting, they thought, restored a balance to these humors. 

 At the time, little was known of the workings of the human body, but people did know that the same liquid, blood, flowed throughout everyone’s body. They knew it was a vital substance, for loss of any great amount of it meant certain death. Thus, they concluded that all diseases were carried in the bloodstream, and that if the body was relieved of bad blood, health would return. Bloodletting, however, came to be used as a cure-all. Women were bled to keep them from blushing, while members of the clergy were bled to prevent them from thinking sinful and worldly thoughts.

 From the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries, barbers were the people to go to if you needed to be bled. This custom explains the significance of the traditional barber’s pole: the white stripes stand for bandages and the red stripes for blood.

 Disaster movies often portray catastrophes that destroy, or at least threaten to destroy, Earth’s entire population. In fact, a virus emerged in the 1970s that could have been just that lethal. 

     Named after a river that traverses the Congo, the Ebola virus originally manifested itself in the interior of Africa in 1976. Two strains of the disease, with almost identical symptoms, affected humans: Ebola Zaire and Ebola Sudan. The Sudan version was deadly enough, killing 50 percent of those it infected; however, Zaire, with its 90 percent mortality rate, was even worse. 

   The origins -- though not the cause -- of Ebola Sudan can be traced back to a single individual in a Sudanese town. Ebola Zaire seemed to erupt in over 50 villages simultaneously. Both strains quickly invaded local hospitals, where needle sharing and other unsanitary practices ensured the rapid spreading of the infection by bringing people into contact with contaminated blood. If the virus had been capable of spreading through the air, or if one infected person had unknowingly entered a large population center, Ebola might have become a worldwide epidemic.

   However, soon after these fierce outbreaks the virus died out, at least temporarily. Ebola was so lethal and killed so quickly (in a matter of days) that within a short period of time there was no one around to infect. Hospital workers in at least one case deserted their workplace in panic, thus halting the administering of potentially unclean, disease-spreading injections. 

  But Ebola has not disappeared. With no known vaccination or cure in the offing, it seems only a matter of time until another epidemic erupts.

 The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Consensus Development Program was established in 1977 and is designed to assess health technology. The program organizes major conferences that produce consensus statements and technology assessment statements on controversial issues in medicine important to health care providers, patients, and the general public. The following statement is from the NIH Consensus Development Statement on Acupuncture on November 3-5, 1997. 

 Acupuncture as a therapeutic intervention is widely practiced in the United States. There have been many studies of its potential usefulness. However, many of these studies provide equivocal results because of design, sample size, and other factors. The issue is further complicated by inherent difficulties in the use of appropriate controls, such as placebo and sham acupuncture groups. 

However, promising results have emerged, for example, efficacy of acupuncture in adult post-operative and chemotherapy nausea and vomiting and in post-operative dental pain. There are other situations such as addition, stroke rehabilitation, headache, menstrual cramps, tennis elbow, fibromyalgia, myofascial pain, osteoarthritis, low back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and asthma where acupuncture may be useful as an adjunct treatment or an acceptable alternative or be included in a comprehensive management program. 

  Findings from basic research have begun to elucidate the mechanisms of action of acupuncture, including the release of opioids and other peptides in the central nervous system and the periphery and changes in neuroendocrine function. Although much needs to be accomplished, the emergence of plausible mechanisms for the therapeutic effects of acupuncture is encouraging. 

   The introduction of acupuncture into the choice of treatment modalities that are readily available to the public is in its early stages. Issues of training, licensure, and reimbursement remain to be clarified. There is sufficient evidence, however, of acupuncture's value to expand its use into conventional medicine and to encourage further studies of its physiology and clinical value. This statement is representative of the opinions of current standard medical practice.