Kids can spend hours with play dough when they make it themselves. Make several batches of this and color each one a different color. This variation feels nice and silky, and, if properly stored, stays soft for a very long time. 

Makes about 1 cup of play dough 

1 cup flour (gluten FREE)
1/2 cup salt 
2 teaspoons cream of tartar 
2 tablespoons organic coconut oil 
1 cup water 
A few drops of organic food coloring.  

Put all the ingredients, including the food coloring, in a saucepan and cook, stirring constantly, over medium heat until mixture thickens and holds together in a mass. Remove pan from heat and let the dough cool. Turn out onto a work surface and knead several times until soft, pliable and smooth. Use immediately or store in an airtight plastic container.

In its never-ending attempt to fabricate “mental disorders” out of every human activity, the psychiatric industry is now pushing the most ridiculous disease they’ve invented yet: Healthy eating disorder.

This is no joke: If you focus on eating healthy foods, you’re “mentally diseased” and probably need some sort of chemical treatment involving powerful psychotropic drugs. The Guardian newspaper reports, “Fixation with healthy eating can be sign of serious psychological disorder” and goes on to claim this “disease” is called orthorexia nervosa — which is basically just Latin for “nervous about correct eating.”

But they can’t just called it “nervous healthy eating disorder” because that doesn’t sound like they know what they’re talking about. So they translate it into Latin where it sounds smart (even though it isn’t). That’s where most disease names come from: Doctors just describe the symptoms they see with a name like osteoporosis (which means “bones with holes in them”).

Getting back to this fabricated “orthorexia” disease, the Guardian goes on to report, “Orthorexics commonly have rigid rules around eating. Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out.”

Wait a second. So attempting to avoid chemicals, dairy, soy and sugar now makes you a mental health patient? Yep. According to these experts. If you actually take special care to avoid pesticides, herbicides and genetically modified ingredients like soy and sugar, there’s something wrong with you.

But did you notice that eating junk food is assumed to be “normal?” If you eat processed junk foods laced with synthetic chemicals, that’s okay with them. The mental patients are the ones who choose organic, natural foods, apparently.

What is “normal” when it comes to foods?
I told you this was coming. Years ago, I warned NaturalNews readers that an attempt might soon be under way to outlaw broccoli because of its anti-cancer phytonutrients. This mental health assault on health-conscious consumers is part of that agenda. It’s an effort to marginalize healthy eaters by declaring them to be mentally unstable and therefore justify carting them off to mental institutions where they will be injected with psychiatric drugs and fed institutional food that’s all processed, dead and full of toxic chemicals.

The Guardian even goes to the ridiculous extreme of saying, “The obsession about which foods are “good” and which are “bad” means orthorexics can end up malnourished.”

December 9, 2009 — Young adults with higher blood lead levels are more likely to have major depressive disorder (MDD) or panic disorder, even if they have exposure to lead levels generally considered safe, new research suggests.

Maryse F. Bouchard, PhD, Universite de Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues found individuals with lead levels of 2.11 μg/dL or more had 2.3 times the odds of having MDD and nearly 5 times the odds of panic disorder compared with those with lead levels of 0.7 μg/dL or less.

“What is most surprising is the finding that lead can be associated with adverse mental health status at such low levels of exposure,” Dr. Bouchard told Medscape Psychiatry. The mean blood level in study subjects was 1.61 μg/dL.

The study is published in the December issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.

The investigators analyzed data from 1987 adults aged 20 to 39 years who were participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 1999 and 2004. Participants underwent medical examinations that included collection of a blood sample and also completed a diagnostic interview to identify MDD, panic disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder.

The number of individuals who met diagnostic criteria for MDD was 134 (6.7%), 44 (2.2%) had panic disorder, and 47 (2.4%) had generalized anxiety disorder.

Because smoking is related to blood lead levels, the researchers conducted additional analyses excluding the 628 smokers. Among nonsmokers, the elevation in risk between the highest and lowest blood lead levels was increased to 2.5-fold for MDD and 8.2-fold for panic disorder.

Need to Reduce Environmental Exposure

Previous studies conducted in highly exposed employees from foundries, smelters, and battery plants show that these workers (who had blood lead levels averaging 40 μg/dL) have reported elevated symptoms of depression, hostility, and anxiety, said Dr. Bouchard.

A study conducted in nonoccupationally exposed older men showed that those with higher blood lead levels (averaging 6.3 μg/dL) also had a higher prevalence of self-reported anxiety, phobic anxiety, and depression. “In my study group, the mean blood lead level was only 1.6 μg/dL, which is representative of the exposure level in the general population,” Dr. Bouchard said.

Eliminating lead from gasoline has decreased average blood lead levels in the general population, but remaining sources of exposure include paint, industrial processes, pottery, and contaminated water.

However, Dr. Bouchard pointed out that blood lead levels reflect not only current exposure but also past exposures because lead is sequestered in bones and is slowly released into the blood.

“These findings suggest that lead neurotoxicity may contribute to adverse mental health outcomes, even at levels generally considered to pose low, or no, risk,” the researchers conclude. “These findings, combined with recent reports of adverse behavioral outcomes in children with similarly low blood lead levels, should underscore the need for considering ways to further reduce environmental lead exposures,” they write.

Dose-Response Relationship Questioned

Edwin van Wijngaarden, PhD, interim chief of the Division of Epidemiology, Community & Preventive Medicine at the University of Rochester in New York, reviewed the study for Medscape.

“Although the data reported by Bouchard et al are certainly suggestive of an association between blood lead levels and major depressive disorder, the nature of the dose-response relationship is somewhat uncertain, with no clear pattern until the upper quintile.

“The authors emphasize the statistically significant trend statistics, which are appropriate if there is a true linear trend — not sure if that is the case here. The results for panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder suffer from limited statistical power and consequently statistically imprecise risk estimates, and I would be cautious interpreting the dose-response patterns reported for these outcomes,” he said.

Dr. van Wijngaarden also noted that the mental health outcomes studied were only available for adults aged 20 to 39 years and might differ for older adults with higher levels of cumulative lead exposure.

Dr. van Wijngaarden and colleagues recently examined population-based data on blood lead levels in relation to depression in the United States in a study that will be published in the near future.

This study was supported by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Dr. Bouchard and Dr. van Wijngaarden have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2009;66:1313-1319.