I’m baaaack!\u00a0I was AWOL all\u00a0week – the hubby and I drove to Salinas, CA to\u00a0attend my mother-in-law’s funeral. Obviously, it wasn’t much of a break, although\u00a0we did treat ourselves to a mood brightener… on the return trip, we stayed on the Delta King in Old Sacramento and spent a few hours roaming around our old stomping grounds (FYI: we lived in Sacto for 15+ years). That part, at least, was pretty cool.<\/p>\n
At any rate, I had a lot of catching up to do on my return…\u00a0which included\u00a0catching up with the news. And this post by obesity researcher Travis Saunders\u00a0contained some interesting – and disquieting –\u00a0news indeed. According to a new study published in PlosOne<\/a>, there may be prions –\u00a0not unlike the kind that\u00a0cause Mad Cow Disease – in HCG.<\/p>\n Here’s Travis’ description:<\/a><\/p>\n So when it comes to body weight, it seems pretty clear that hCG is nothing but a placebo. An expensive placebo that is obtained by misleading pregnant women into donating their urine, but a placebo nonetheless.\u00a0 It couldn\u2019t get any worse for proponents of hCG for weight loss, right?<\/p>\n Actually, it could.<\/p>\n It turns out that urine-derived fertility treatments like hCG could transmit prions<\/a>, the misfolded proteins responsible for brain-wasting diseases like mad cow disease, and it\u2019s human equivalent, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease<\/a>.<\/strong> <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n