Webinar: Env Threats to Healthy Aging, Monday 12/8, 830pmEST

[Lauren Zajac]

SPSR/Med Alliance Webinar: ENVIRONMENTAL THREATS TO HEALTHY AGING

Speaker: Dr. Jill Stein, Greater Boston Physicians for Social
Reponsibility

Monday, December 8, 2008
830pm EST

The webinar will be hosted by http://www.vyew.com/ through a
Powerpoint and VOIP connection. Please familiarize yourself with this
service before the call to avoid any confusion.

Topic:
This call will provide an overview of an important new report
Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging, released in October 2008, in
addition to an interactive discussion on using this information in
environmental health education and advocacy. The report can be found
at: www.agehealthy.org

The report offers the most comprehensive review of the currently
available research on the lifetime influences of environmental factors
on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, two of the most common
degenerative diseases of the brain. These influences include common
dietary patterns, toxic chemical exposures, inadequate exercise, socio-
economic stress and other factors. These influences can begin in the
womb and continue throughout life, setting the stage for the later
development of neurodegenerative as well as other chronic diseases. In
addition, the report describes the substantial emerging evidence that,
collectively, these environmental factors alter biochemical
pathways at the cellular and subcellular levels. These alterations
fuel Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, as well as other chronic
illnesses referred to in the report as the "Western disease cluster" -
diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome. Each
of these diseases in turn increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease.
This collection of diseases is being driven by dramatic alterations
over the past 50 to 100 years in the U.S. food supply, an increasingly
sedentary lifestyle, and exposure to toxic chemicals....