The Secrets How To Do Cinnamon Challenge Safely!

Doctors warn teens about taking the 'cinnamon challenge' in new report

CHICAGO –  Don't take the cinnamon challenge. That's the advice from doctors in a new report about a dangerous prank depicted in popular YouTube videos but which has led to hospitalizations and a surge in calls to U.S. poison centers.

The fad involves daring someone to swallow a spoonful of ground cinnamon in 60 seconds without water. But the spice is caustic, and trying to gulp it down can cause choking, throat irritation, breathing trouble and even collapsed lungs, the report said.

Published online Monday in Pediatrics, the report said at least 30 teens nationwide needed medical attention after taking the challenge last year.

'Orange burst of dragon breath'

The number of poison control center calls about teens doing the prank "has increased dramatically," from 51 in 2011 to 222 last year, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers.

"People with asthma or other respiratory conditions are at greater risk of having this result in shortness of breath and trouble breathing," according to an alert posted on the association's website.

Thousands of YouTube videos depict kids attempting the challenge, resulting in an "orange burst of dragon breath" spewing out of their mouths and sometimes hysterical laughter from friends watching the stunt, said report co-author Dr. Steven E. Lipshultz, a pediatrics professor at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

Cinnamon is made from tree bark and contains cellulose fibers that don't easily break down. Animal research suggests that when cinnamon gets into the lungs, it can cause scarring, Lipshultz said.

'It's not cool, and it's dangerous'

Dr. Stephen Pont, a spokesman for the American Academy of Pediatrics and an Austin, Texas pediatrician, said the report is "a call to arms to parents and doctors to be aware of things like the cinnamon challenge" and to pay attention to what their kids are viewing online.

Related: Michigan teen hospitalized after attempting 'cinnamon challenge'

An Ypsilanti, Mich., teen who was hospitalized for a collapsed lung after trying the cinnamon challenge heartily supports the new advice and started her own website -- http://nocinnamonchallenge.com -- telling teens to "just say no" to the fad.

Dejah Reed, 16, said she took the challenge four times -- the final time was in February last year with a friend who didn't want to try it alone.

"I was laughing very hard, and I coughed it out, and I inhaled it into my lungs," she said. "I couldn't breathe."

Her father, Fred Reed, said he arrived home soon after to find Dejah "a pale bluish color. It was very terrifying. I threw her over my shoulder" and drove to a nearby emergency room.

Dejah was hospitalized for four days and went home with an inhaler and said she still has to use it when she gets short of breath from running or talking too fast. Her dad said she'd never had asthma or breathing problems before.

Dejah said she'd read about the challenge on Facebook and other social networking sites and "thought it would be cool" to try.

Now she knows "it's not cool and it's dangerous."

By: Unknown On 00.22

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The Top Secrets How To Slim Down Forever

Dead student's family call for clampdown on slimming drug

Sarah Houston, 23, died after taking banned dinitrophenol (DNP), which she ordered online, alongside antidepressants

Sarah Houston was studying medicine at the University of Leeds at the time of her death last September. Photograph: Christopher Thomond

A coroner and the family of a medical student suffering from bulimia who died after taking a banned weight-loss drug bought online have called for a change in the law to further tighten the distribution of the substance, which has been blamed for other deaths.

Dr Graham Mould, a forensic toxicologist, told an inquest into the death of Sarah Houston, 23, that a combination of dinitrophenol (DNP), which is banned from human consumption but is used as a chemical pesticide, and antidepressants may have been fatal.

DNP, which was first used to treat obesity in the 1930s but was banned as a food substance due to its dangerous side effects, continues to be used as a slimming aid by bodybuilders around the world. It was linked to 62 deaths in a study published last year in the Journal of Medical Toxicity.

The University of Leeds medical student, who comes from a family of doctors, is believed to have been taking the drug secretly alongside a prescribed antidepressant Fluoxetine. Houston was found dead in her bedroom by a flatmate.

The inquest in Wakefield heard she had complained of feeling hot and unwell and had been breathing heavily on the evening before she died in September last year.

Mould said there was no evidence of an overdose. "We don't know how long Sarah had been taking DNP but it may have accumulated in her system," he said. "It increases the body's metabolic rate. The side effects can be overheating and breathlessness caused by an increased heart rate and this seems to be consistent with how Sarah was feeling that evening.

"The side effects of DNP were clearly present and it's possible that Fluoxetine may have exacerbated the affect of DNP. At a very high dose, Fluoxetine can have a similar affect to DNP and so one can speculate that the two drugs together might have speeded up the affect."

Mould pointed out that the Food Standards Agency had previously issued a report warning the public not to take DNP.

Coroner David Hinchliff said: "The only way to combat the use of DNP is to bring to the attention of the public how dangerous a substance it is.

"This is not a one-off case and it needs bringing to the public's attention."

Outside court, Houston's family said she was not depressed at the time she died and her health had improved leading up to her death. In a statement, they said that it was incomprehensible that DNP could be purchased over the internet and called on the government to take steps to ensure that no other family suffered in the same way in future.

"It's going to be a slow process, but hopefully approaching the Home Office to begin with will be the right step and hopefully it will be made illegal," said Sarah's father, Geoff Houston. "For those who are selling it, if you have any ounce of decency you must stop."

The coroner recorded a verdict of death by misadventure.

By: Unknown On 00.16

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Jesus Has A Wife

‘Jesus wife’ Coptic papyrus is a fake, declares Vatican newspaper

 Photo released by Harvard University, divinity professor Karen L. King holds a fourth century fragment of papyrus that she says is the only existing ancient text that quotes Jesus explicitly referring to having a wife.

Citing concerns about fragment’s authenticity and its origin, the paper also criticized Harvard, a Vatican newspaper declared the so-called “Jesus wife” papyrus a fake.

Nine days after early Christianity scholar Karen King announced the discovery of an ancient text suggesting that some Christians believed Jesus was married, the debate has been seemingly nonstop about the Coptic fragment’s authenticity and its role in understanding Jesus’ life.

“The newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, published an article Thursday by leading Coptic scholar Alberto Camplani and an accompanying editorial by the newspaper’s editor, Giovanni Maria Vian, an expert in early Christianity. They both cited concerns expressed by other scholars about the fragment’s authenticity and the fact that it was purchased on the market without a known archaeological provenance,” the Associated Press reported Thursday.

Last week, Harvard Divinity School professor Karen King cited the ancient text during a presentation at a conference for Coptic scholars in Rome. The text while not declaring that he was married, suggests some early Christians believed he had a wife.

Camplani, a professor at Rome’s La Sapienza university who helped organize Tenth International Congress of Coptic Studies, said he and other attendees questioned King’s understanding of the text.

Some religion blogs recently reported that the Harvard Theological Review declined to publish her paper. The academic journal plans to feasture her research in the January edition pending testing of the fragment.

“Dr. King’s ‘marriage fragment’ paper, which Harvard Theological Review is planning to publish in its January, 2013, edition – if testing of the ink and other aspects of the fragment are completed in time - will include her responses to the vigorous and appropriate academic debate engendered by discovery of the fragment, as well as her report on the ink analysis, and further examination of the fragment,” according to a statement released Wednesday by the Harvard Divinity School.

On Sept. 18, the Harvard Divinity School professor announced her findings at a conference of Coptic scholars held in Rome.

“Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was not married, even though no reliable historical evidence exists to support that claim,” King said in a divinity school news release. “This new gospel doesn't prove that Jesus was married, but it tells us that the whole question only came up as part of vociferous debates about sexuality and marriage. From the very beginning, Christians disagreed about whether it was better not to marry, but it was over a century after Jesus's death before they began appealing to Jesus's marital status to support their positions.”

King posted a draft of the paper as well as a question-and-answer and pictures of the fragment on a page on the Harvard Divinity School Web site.

Smithsonian Channel, which planned to chronicle the story behind King’s discovery in a documentary on Sunday, postponed the program. The channel delayed the broadcast “until the text undergoes further tests,” a spokesman said Thursday. A new premiere date won’t be announced until it’s determined when the tests take place.

Since the headline-grabbing announcement, scholars have weighed in on the discovery.

“Several top Coptic specialists dismissed the fragment as a probable forgery almost immediately after King’s presentation at a major gathering of scholars in Rome,” the Boston Globe reported. “And a British New Testament scholar, Francis Watson, posted several short papers online during the last week arguing — persuasively, to some in the field — that the fragment’s text is probably a modern forger’s pastiche of words and phrases taken from the single surviving copy of the Gospel of Thomas.”

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The World's Best Portable Hard Drive

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High School Nude Teen Girls

 Photos of nude teen girls linked to Cypress Bay High School

The anonymous online posting of nude student pictures has sparked a criminal investigation, and caused turmoil at Weston’s Cypress Bay High School.

An anonymous Web page filled with nude photos is highlighting the dangers of teenage “sexting” and may ultimately lead to criminal charges.

Students at Weston’s Cypress Bay High School believe one or more of their classmates to be responsible for the lurid website, which features more than a dozen sexually explicit photos of teenage girls. The site identifies them as Cypress Bay students — and in some cases, lists their names.

“That’s playing with people’s lives,” said Cypress Bay senior Matthew Gio, 17.

The Broward’s Sheriff’s Office is investigating the website as possible child pornography. It was taken offline late Monday.

The Internet photos went viral, with the link shared rapidly via Twitter. Many of Cypress Bay’s roughly 4,300 students pulled up the images on their smartphones — while still in the building.

It all amounted to a very public humiliation for this group of girls, who are primarily freshmen.

One of the photographed girls was spotted openly weeping at school; another abruptly walked out of class after an onslaught of stares and whispers.

“Oh gosh, it’s so horrible,” said Cherie Benjoseph, co-founder of the KidSafe Foundation, a South Florida-based nonprofit that works to protect children from exploitation and abuse.

Benjoseph said parents and schools can do a better job of teaching children and teens how to protect themselves online. For example, the importance of self-respect and personal boundaries could be incorporated into schools’ sex education classes, and parents can make it a point to scroll through their child’s smartphone.

The Broward School District referred all calls about the incident to BSO.

To be sure, the 21st-century phenomenon of “sexting,” sending explicit photos via text, isn’t limited to teens. Celebrities such as actress Vanessa Hudgens have watched in horror as leaked naked photos go viral on the Internet. Hudgens recently called her own photo scandal “by far the worst moment of my career.”

There’s always the chance that such pictures will leak out. In the case of minors, there’s the added complications of child pornography laws, and the fact that teenage brains are wired to be more reckless than adults.

At Cypress Bay, the photo fallout may linger for years. Benjoseph worries the affected teens “will want to hurt themselves. They will feel that this is not something that they can tolerate and live with … unless they have incredibly strong support. It’s very sad. It’s heartbreaking.”

On Twitter, where news of the photos traveled fast and furiously, comments ranged from sympathetic (“Wow. Feel bad for the girls,” one person wrote) to the you-brought-it-on-yourself variety.

“Exactly why I always say girls shouldn’t send nudes,” tweeted Kiki Estévez. “Once it’s SENT, they can do WHATEVER they want with it.”

Some Twitter users in fact forwarded the photos — apparently unaware that doing so could make them a target for criminal prosecution.

Janet Johnson, a Jacksonville criminal defense attorney, said adults who tweeted the photos or even forwarded the website link could wind up facing longer jail time than the teens who actually posted the pictures online. A key reason: Those teenagers, while still potentially facing the charge of disseminating child porn, would likely be tried in a more lenient juvenile court proceeding.

For adults convicted of spreading the images, a couple of years of prison time is a real possibility, Johnson said, even for first-time offenders. That conviction would also carry the label of being a registered sex offender.

“Once those images are on their phone or iPad or computer, even if they delete them, they’re in possession,” said Johnson, who handles numerous child porn cases. “They can’t wipe that off of their hard drive.”

Some Cypress Bay students were surprised that the photos remained online Friday.

BSO spokeswoman Veda Coleman-Wright said the agency was still working to identify the girls, and won’t request the website operator remove the page until it has confirmed that the girls are minors.

“It’s not that simple,” Coleman-Wright said. “You have to prove that a crime has been committed, that there is in fact illegal activity, before you can demand that a site be taken down.”

Cypress Bay students said at least some of the photos match the student names listed next to them, while others may not.

When it comes to academics, Cypress Bay has a stellar reputation, and the school enjoyed the rare honor of a commencement speech delivered by Vice President Joe Biden last year. But in only a decade or so of existence, Cypress Bay has had multiple sex scandals.

In 2009, police discovered a 17-year-old student using his smartphone to snap photos of girls while they were using the school restroom. Last year, police investigated a social studies teacher and wrestling coach who was accused of having an inappropriate sexual relationship with a student.

The student confirmed the romantic relationship, but said it was consensual, and she was 18 when it happened. Police did not file any criminal charges in that case.

 Tips for parents

Youth Crime Watch of Miami-Dade County offers these tips to help prevent your teen from becoming a sexting victim:

• Teach, don’t preach. Use recent news stories as “teachable moments’’ to talk to your teen about your guidelines for safe Internet, cellphone and social media behavior.

•  Encourage your teen to think before they send or post pictures and other personal information. Remember that every post from your teen is an electronic fingerprint that can damage their college careers, future employment opportunities, and their reputations.

•  Stay calm. If your teen confesses to sending or forwarding nude pictures of themselves, be supportive but take action. Tell them to stop immediately and delete any such files.

•  If an inappropriate photo is being forwarded without the subject’s permission, consider talking to the teen or the parents of the teen who is forwarding the photos.

•  Report the situation to local law enforcement or school administrators if necessary and be mindful of the potential criminal consequences.

•  Remind your teen that healthy relationships should be based on mutual respect as well as sexual attraction. Stress that boyfriends and girlfriends shouldn’t pressure them into sending explicit pictures. Get help if you suspect your teen has been a victim of sexting. Talk with your school counselor for guidance.

By: Unknown On 23.48

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