Health & WellnessS


Pills

Roche's Tamiflu Not Proven to Cut Flu Complications

The effectiveness of Roche Holding AG's Tamiflu in treating flu complications in healthy adults can't be determined because the Swiss drugmaker wouldn't supply data from eight studies, an independent research group said.

The exclusion led the Cochrane Collaboration to reverse its previous finding that the pill warded off pneumonia and other deadly conditions linked to influenza. Tamiflu has been the mainstay of treatment for swine flu, which has killed almost 9,000 people since April, according to the World Health Organization. Roche said the drug is effective.

Cheeseburger

Fast Food Safer Than School Lunch?

Image

Meat Served to U.S. Students Doesn't Meet Safety Standards of Fast Food Chains, Report Claims

Schoolchildren around the U.S. are eating meat that falls short of the safety standards of many fast food restaurants, the USA Today reported Wednesday.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture maintains the meat it buys for the National School Lunch Program "meets or exceeds standards in commercial products."

But the paper's investigation revealed fast food chains including McDonald's, Burger King, Jack in the Box and KFC have much more stringent quality requirements for the food they serve, with some of them testing meat for dangerous pathogens up to 10 times more a day than the USDA.

Attention

11 Dangerous Ingredients You Should Avoid at All Costs

Image
Headaches, birth defects, allergies and even cancer can be caused by ingredients in common cosmetics. You don't need that junk to look good.

The greener we become, the more we have to scrutinize. I for one have cleaned up my home, my diet, my cleaning products and of utmost importance the products I put on my skin. I'm an avid ingredient reader and do the research -- after all, my skin is the largest organ in my body! Here's a list of some common skin and hair care chemicals we all need to avoid.

Cell Phone

Texting a Pain in the Neck, Study Suggests

Image
Texting long messages can be a pain in the neck - literally.

The repetitive action of working your fingers across the number pad of your cell phone can cause some of the same chronic pain problems previously confined to those who'd spent a lifetime typing, a new study suggests.

The possible connection is particularly worrying given how much teens and young adults - and increasingly those in professional settings - are texting nowadays, said Judith Gold of Temple University in Philadelphia, who carried out one of the first studies on the potential connection.

Arrow Up

Top 12 Foods for Healthy Immune Response

Image
The 2009 flu season is upon us.

Staying well while those around you sniffle and sneeze requires that you extract as much nutrition from your diet as you can, loading up on the foods that pack the biggest nutritional punch.

Avoiding processed foods, grains and sugar will go a long way toward strengthening your immune system. However, you can do even more by selecting foods that are loaded with specific immune boosting nutrients.

Eating a diet rich in the following foods will be far better for your health than loading up on handfuls of supplements, or worse yet, falling victim to vaccines that expose you to health risks far worse than influenza.

Family

PTSD in Children Linked with Poor Memory Function

Image
© Jacob Langvad/Getty
In children, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may inhibit the function of a brain region associated with memory, according to a new study published online today in the Journal of Pediatric Psychiatry. In an effort to better understand how trauma may impact brain function in children, researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital recruited 27 children and adolescents, 16 of which had previously been diagnosed with PTSD, and 11 who were in the control group. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers took brain scans of the study subjects while they were asked to complete simple memory tasks. As the trial progressed, they discovered that children with PTSD fared far worse on the memory tasks, and showed correspondingly less activity in the hippocampus, the region of the brain involved with creating, storing and processing memories.

Magnify

L-carnitine might not be the boost for you

Image
Boost?: L-carnitine is often put in energy drinks.
Claims stem from studies of vascular and heart disease. But it's unclear if it helps lift the healthy at all.

Read the ingredient label on any energy drink and odds are fairly good that, among other arcane items, you'll come across something called L-carnitine.

Also sold in supplement form, L-carnitine is often touted as a miracle molecule that boosts energy and helps burn fat naturally.

The claims appear to stem largely from studies showing that the molecule may improve endurance and energy in people with heart or vascular disease. But to conclude that it would do the same in healthy people is a big leap, says Dr. Ziv Haskal, professor of radiology and surgery at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.

Magnify

Fluoride Causes Premature Births, Brain Degradation, Bone Loss, Cancer and Hormone Disruption

A recent study conducted by researchers from the State University of New York (SUNY) found that fluoride ingestion may be responsible for causing premature births. Presented to the American Public Health Association at its annual meeting, these findings ratchet up yet another detrimental consequence of ingesting this toxic poison that is added to most American municipal water supplies.

Sodium fluoride, a waste byproduct of the aluminum industry, is touted by most mainstream health bureaucracies as one of the greatest public health achievements ever discovered. The American Dental Association praises the medication of the public through fluoridated municipal water supplies, claiming that it has done wonders to prevent tooth decay. A simple investigation beyond the glaringly false rhetoric, however, reveals the dirty reality behind fluoride and the incredible harm it inflicts upon those who ingest it.

Contrary to popular belief, fluoride is not a natural substance; it is the byproduct of the aluminum and nuclear industries' use of fluorine gas. The Merck Index lists fluoride's primary use as rat and cockroach poison and it is a known carcinogen. It wasn't until the 1950s that the FDA was somehow convinced that the poison allegedly helped protect teeth.

Magnify

Nearly One Third of Human Genome Is Involved in Gingivitis, Study Shows

Gingivitis, which may affect more than one-half of the U.S. adult population, is a condition commonly attributed to lapses in simple oral hygiene habits. However, a new study shows that development and reversal of gingivitis at the molecular level is apparently much more complicated than its causes might indicate.

Research conducted jointly by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Procter & Gamble (P&G) Oral Care has found that more than 9,000 genes -- nearly 30 percent of the genes found in the human body -- are expressed differently during the onset and healing process associated with gingivitis. Biological pathways associated with activation of the immune system were found to be the major pathways being activated and critical to controlling the body's reaction to plaque build-up on the teeth. Additionally, other gene expression pathways activated during plaque overgrowth include those involved in wound healing, neural processes and skin turnover.

Results of the study are published today in the December 2009 edition of the Journal of Periodontology. This study is the first to successfully identify gene expression and biological pathways involved with the onset and healing process of gingivitis.

Magnify

Bacteria Offer Insights into Human Decision Making

Image
© Eshel Ben Jacob and Herbert Levine Colonies of billions of Bacillus subtilis bacteria exhibit the complex structures that sometimes form under environmental stress.
Scientists studying how bacteria under stress collectively weigh and initiate different survival strategies say they have gained new insights into how humans make strategic decisions that affect their health, wealth and the fate of others in society.

Their study, published this week in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was accomplished when the scientists applied the mathematical techniques used in physics to describe the complex interplay of genes and proteins that colonies of bacteria rely upon to initiate different survival strategies during times of environmental stress. Using the mathematical tools of theoretical physics and chemistry to describe complex biological systems is becoming more commonplace in the emerging field of theoretical biological physics.

The authors of the new study are theoretical physicists and chemists at the University of California, San Diego's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, the nation's center for this activity funded by the National Science Foundation, and Tel Aviv University in Israel. They say that how genes are turned on and off in bacteria living under conditions of stress not only shed light on how complex biological systems interact, but provide insights for economists and political scientists applying mathematical models to describe complex human decision making.