Health & WellnessS


Syringe

US: Long Island Officials Warn Of Rapidly Spreading Whooping Cough Virus

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© Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty ImagesA bottle of the pertussis vaccine against whooping cough and a syringe are show in a pharmacy in Pasadena, Calif. on Sept. 17, 2010.
At Least 40 People In Suffolk, Mostly Children, Diagnosed With Pertussis

A cluster of whooping cough is growing on Long Island, with dozens of people infected by the virus.

As CBS 2's Hazel Sanchez reports, a warning was sent out as children begin to head to summer camp - a certain breeding ground for the illness.

Parents in Smithtown are on high alert, as the highly contagious whooping cough is spreading through their community.

"It's one of those diseases you don't think you'll ever hear about again," parent Rick Vollkommer said.

Donna Wilson said she's not taking any chances with her daughter, Kayla.

"She has been coughing a little bit here and there, so I'm contemplating maybe taking her to the doctor tomorrow, just to do a quick test," she said.

Ambulance

Epidemic: Over 400,000 Traumatic Brain Injuries for Vets Coming from Iraq and Afghanistan

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© creativityinhealthcare.com
America faces a huge challenge in caring for the shocking number or traumatized war vets.
"We are facing a massive mental health problem as a result of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a country we have not responded adequately to the problem. Unless we act urgently and wisely, we will be dealing with an epidemic of service related psychological wounds for years to come." - Bobby Muller, President Veterans for America
"The multiple nature of it [multiple tours and longer deployments] is unprecedented. People just get blasted and blasted and blasted." - Maj. Connie Johnmeyer, 332nd Medical Group
According to official Defense Department (DOD) figures, 332,000 soldiers have suffered brain injuries since 2000, although most independent experts estimate that the number is over 400,000. Many of these are mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI), a term that is profoundly misleading.

Attention

Ten Year Old on Two Drugs Dies After Hanging Himself

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© cbsnews.com
Harry Hucknall, a ten-year-old boy, died after hanging himself with a belt from his bunk bed. His father blames the death on Ritalin and Prozac, two drugs that the boy had been prescribed by a psychiatrist to cure his boisterous behavior and low spirits.

At the time of his death, the child had more drugs in his body than the normal level for adults suffering from the same problems.

According to the Daily Mail:
"... 661,000 prescriptions are dished out annually in Britain to treat childhood ADHD - double the figure of five years ago. These medicines are being given to very young children - one aged just 15 months ... despite official guidelines from the manufacturer and the fact that the UK's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) prohibits their use for those under six."
In the New York Times article linked below, internist Danielle Ofri also talks about the effects of depression. Her childhood friend Michael killed himself during his sophomore year of college. And just two weeks before writing the article, she called one of her patients to reschedule an appointment, and was told that the patient had been found dead in his apartment, most likely a suicide.

Comment: To learn more about The Over-Prescribing of Psychoactive Drugs to Children: A Scourge of Our Times read the following articles:

UK: 3,000 children were given unlicensed anti-psychotic drugs despite safety fears
"I think in 10 years time we will ask ourselves what we were thinking giving these children amphetamines."
Prescriptions for teens and young adults on the rise
More Children on Drugs Than Ever: Chronic Prescriptions Increase Dramatically
Drugs for ADHD 'not the answer'
SSRI's Prescribed for Autistic Children Make them Worse


Health

Is your bread making you ill? 100 years after the Daily Mail campaigned to improve the British loaf, how today's version is just as bad

One hundred years ago, this newspaper was nearly the size of a bedsheet. The Daily Mail was a campaigning paper back then - just as it is today - and its campaign, in 1911, to improve the standards of British bread was one of the most important and influential the Mail has ever mounted.

In 2011, this story should be no more than newspaper history. Shockingly, though, the fight for better bread as being key to better health continues to this day.

Back then, standards of nutrition in Britain were of major concern to the government. During the 19th century, as the industrial revolution pushed millions of Britons from the countryside into the cities, the nation's diet got rapidly worse - and many health problems seemed linked to that.

Pills

Over-Prescribed: How Taking Too Many Pills is Hurting Americans

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© blogs.wsj.com
Aggressive marketing pushes drugs on patients well beyond clinical usefulness, and it's thinning their wallets and threatening their health.

"If all the drugs were thrown in the ocean, everyone would be better-off...except for the fish." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

That maxim of 19th-century American physician and author Oliver Wendell Holmes is an overstatement today, but still contains a grain of wisdom. For generations of physicians, the prevailing teaching was not to prescribe too many drugs in order to avoid unwanted side-effects and drug interactions. No longer.

Even considering remarkable technological advances - organ transplants, robotic surgeries, lasers, electronic medical records - the greatest difference in American medicine since the 1970's is the increase in the number of medications prescribed to patients today. To treat chronic diseases and control symptoms, the average American takes about 12 medications annually, compared to seven, 20 years ago. Patients who once came into the office carrying their medications in a purse, or pocket, now need a shopping bag.

Comment: To learn more about how American's are over-prescribed while Big Pharma gets rich read the following articles:

100,000 Americans Die Each Year from Prescription Drugs, While Pharma Companies Get Rich

The Silent Epidemic - Legal Prescription Drug Abuse

Prescription Drugs Kill 300 Percent More Americans than Illegal Drugs

Prescription drug deaths skyrocket 68 percent over five years as Americans swallow more pills

The Other Drug Cartel...
Many legislators in Congress still do not get it! The largest contributing factor in the outrageous cost of prescription drugs is advertising and promotion, estimated to be about 37% of the price we pay for those drugs. More money is spent on lobbying, advertising and promotion by the pharmaceutical industry than is spent on research and development.



Bell

Low-calorie diet offers hope of cure for type 2 diabetes

food,salas
© GettyScientists at Newcastle University claim a low calorie diet can cure type 2 diabetes
British study finds two-month extreme diet can cure type 2 diabetes and overturns assumptions about 'lifelong' condition

People who have had obesity-related type 2 diabetes for years have been cured, at least temporarily, by keeping to an extreme, low-calorie, diet for two months, scientists report today.

The discovery, reported by scientists at Newcastle University, overturns previous assumptions about type 2 diabetes, which was thought to be a lifelong illness.

In the UK about two and a half million people have been diagnosed with diabetes, the large majority with type 2, and numbers are rising across much of the world. The condition has to be controlled with drugs and eventually insulin injections. It can cause blindness and end in foot amputation, as well as shortening life.

The results of the Newcastle investigation, though the study was small, demonstrated that full recovery was possible, not through drugs but through diet.

Health

The "Cancer-Causing Convenience" All Women Should Avoid

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© iStockphoto/Thinkstock
Human and animal studies show that a group of genes called the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) can influence odor. In general, females prefer the odor of mates with a dissimilar MHC -- but this effect is reversed in women on oral contraceptive pills.

A study found that that single women preferred the odor of MHC-similar men, but women in relationships preferred the opposite. This means that that the use of contraceptive pills could influence mate preference.

According to FYI Living:
"The women on pills preferred men with similar MHC genes. Studies indicate that, 'women consider the olfactory domain to be an important factor in their assessment of potential partners.' Thus, due to serious alterations in odor preference, the use of oral pills could influence partner choice."

Nuke

Japan: Fukushima residents' urine now radioactive

More than 3 millisieverts of radiation has been measured in the urine of 15 Fukushima residents of the village of Iitate and the town of Kawamata, confirming internal radiation exposure, it was learned Sunday.

Both are about 30 to 40 km from the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, which has been releasing radioactive material into the environment since the week of March 11, when the quake and tsunami caused core meltdowns.

"This won't be a problem if they don't eat vegetables or other products that are contaminated," said Nanao Kamada, professor emeritus of radiation biology at Hiroshima University. "But it will be difficult for people to continue living in these areas."

Sherlock

Study Says: Tot Can't Sleep? Turn Off Nighttime TV

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© ronjoewhite.blogspot.com
If your preschooler can't sleep - turn off the violence and nighttime TV.

That's the message in a new study that found sleep problems are more common in 3- to 5-year-olds who watch television after 7 p.m. Watching shows with violence - including kids' cartoons - also was tied to sleeping difficulties.

Watching nonviolent shows during the day didn't seem to have any connection with sleep problems in the 617 youngsters studied.

The study builds on previous research linking media use with kids' sleep problems, and also bolsters arguments for limiting children's screen time.

Bacon

SOTT Focus: Everything About Fat

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Probably More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Fat and Thought You Already Knew, But Didn't

Ideas seem to have a way of ingraining themselves in mass consciousness such that it is difficult, if not impossible, to uproot them. Get enough people behind an idea and the idea becomes "truth", even if it has no basis in objective reality. Like some kind of weed that grows in the gardens of people's imaginations, ideas, even if they're wrong, can be quite persistent. Gardeners of truth may work hard in the garden of the mind to remove these weeds, yet their deep roots may often evade the well-intentioned gardener. Tireless efforts often seem successful, only for the same tired idea to poke its head up through the undergrowth once more. This brings the stark realization that the weed was never gone at all, but its roots were merely hidden from view, growing ever more expansive beneath the surface.

After nearly a century of the 'fat is evil' weed, gardeners of truth may finally be making some headway in the garden of the collective mind. Since the inception of the 'lipid hypothesis', researchers, nutritionists and journalists alike have been pulling up this weed, exposing the logical inconsistencies of tying natural fats to disease.