Faced with a growing prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, hospitals in the United Kingdom are adopting traditional medicinal techniques to fight infection, such as maggots and honey.

Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other drug-resistant infections kill or hasten the death of 8,000 British patients per year, while MRSA now kills more people in the United States annually than AIDS.

At the Royal United Hospital in Bath, England, many wounds are now being disinfected with Manuka honey rather than pharmaceutical antibiotics.

"Honey has been used in healing for centuries, but now new products have overcome the problems associated with using conventional honey and bring it into a modern healthcare setting," said the hospital's Kate Purser.

According to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), the Ginkgo biloba (G. biloba) is one of the oldest types of trees in the world. Ginkgo herbal treatments have been used in traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years to treat a host of ills including asthma, bronchitis, fatigue, and tinnitus (ringing or roaring sounds in the ears). Now 21st century scientists may have discovered yet another Ginkgo-based therapy.

According to a study just published in the International Journal of Low Radiation, antioxidant extracts of the leaves of the G. biloba tree may protect cells in the human body from radiation damage. The discovery could offer a way to protect cancer patients from side effects produced by radiotherapy. G. biloba might also offer protection from medical tests that involve radiation, such as X-rays.

Chang-Mo Kang of the Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Sciences in Taegu and colleagues have been investigating well-known herbal remedies to see what actual medicinal effects they may have. They specifically decided to study extracts made from G. biloba leaves because these substances are known to contain several antioxidant compounds, called ginkgolides and bilobalides, that are thought to protect cells in the body from damage caused by free radicals and other reactive oxidizing species. Free radicals are generated by the body's normal metabolism and are also produced in excess as a result of certain diseases and from exposure to pollution or radiation. If left unchecked, they can damage proteins and DNA and even kill cells.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn't change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.

Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.

"If the city requires this, we can't do it," Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Wednesday. "The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that's really a problem."

Children don't like school because they love freedom.

Someone recently referred me to a book that they thought I'd like. It's a 2009 book, aimed toward teachers of grades K through 12, titled Why Don't Students Like School? It's by a cognitive scientist named Daniel T. Willingham, and it has received rave reviews by countless people involved in the school system. Google the title and author and you'll find pages and pages of doting reviews and nobody pointing out that the book totally and utterly fails to answer the question posed by its title.

Willingham's thesis is that students don't like school because their teachers don't have a full understanding of certain cognitive principles and therefore don't teach as well as they could. They don't present material in ways that appeal best to students' minds. Presumably, if teachers followed Willingham's advice and used the latest information cognitive science has to offer about how the mind works, students would love school.

Talk about avoiding the elephant in the room!

Workers exposed to very high levels of the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) were four to seven times more likely to report sexual function problems than were workers with no occupational exposure to the chemical, a new study shows.

Earlier research has linked BPA exposure to reproduction problems in animals, but the five-year study is the first to do so in humans.

Researchers with Kaiser Permanente compared self-reported sexual function scores among male factory workers in China who were and were not exposed to BPA on the job.

BPA levels among the occupationally exposed men were about 50 times higher than average levels among American men and Chinese men with no occupational exposure to the chemical, the researchers say.

Lower Sex Drive, Less Satisfaction

Compared to the unexposed factory workers in the study, BPA-exposed workers were four times more likely to report erectile dysfunction, low sexual desire, and less than optimal satisfaction with their sex lives. They were seven times more likely to report problems with ejaculation.

The findings must be replicated to prove the link between high levels of exposure to BPA and sexual dysfunction in men, Kaiser Permanente reproductive epidemiologist De-Kun Li, MD, PhD, tells WebMD.

"We also need to study lower levels of exposure closer to those consumers get," he says. "But up until this point the critics have dismissed the idea that BPA has health effects at any level because most of the research has been in animals. They can no longer do this."

BPA has been used for more than three decades to make plastic bottles and other products shatter resistant and clear. It is also used in the lining of many canned foods and a wide range of other commercial goods.

For nearly a decade, scientists have debated whether exposure to BPA through commercial products poses a health threat to humans.

The new study, published in the journal Human Reproduction, does not address this issue because BPA levels among the occupationally exposed men were so much higher than in the community at large.

A study at Örebro University in Sweden indicates that mobile phones and other cordless telephones have a biological effect on the brain. It is still too early to say if any health risks are involved, but medical researcher Fredrik Söderqvist recommends caution in the use of these phones, above all among children and adolescents. Few children who regularly use mobile phones use a headset often or always, even though the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority recommends this.

"Children may be more sensitive than adults to radiation from wireless phones," says Fredrik Söderqvist, who is presenting his research findings in a new doctoral thesis at Örebro University.

Do you speak English as a second language well, but still have trouble understanding movies with unfamiliar accents, such as Brad Pitt's southern accent in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds? In a new study, published in the open-access journal PLoS One, Holger Mitterer (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics) and James McQueen (MPI and Radboud University Nijmegen) show how you can improve your second-language listening ability by watching the movie with subtitles -- as long as these subtitles are in the same language as the film. Subtitles in one's native language, the default in some European countries, may actually be counter-productive to learning to understand foreign speech.

Mitterer and McQueen show that listeners can tune in to an unfamiliar regional accent in a foreign language. Dutch students showed improvements in their ability to recognise Scottish or Australian English after only 25 minutes of exposure to video material. English subtitling during exposure enhanced this learning effect; Dutch subtitling reduced it.

In the study, Dutch students who were unfamiliar with Scottish and Australian English watched either an episode of the Australian sitcom Kath & Kim or a shortened version of Trainspotting, which depicts a Scottish drug addict, Renton, and his friends -- with English subtitles, Dutch subtitles or no subtitles. After this exposure, participants were asked to repeat back as many words as they could from 80 audio excerpts taken from each source spoken by the main characters (Kath from Kath & Kim; Renton from Trainspotting), half of which had already been heard by the participants in the extracts and half were new to the participants (from a different Kath & Kim episode or from a part of Trainspotting that was edited out).

The "chocolate cure" for emotional stress is getting new support from a clinical trial published online in ACS' Journal of Proteome Research. It found that eating about an ounce and a half of dark chocolate a day for two weeks reduced levels of stress hormones in the bodies of people feeling highly stressed. Everyone's favorite treat also partially corrected other stress-related biochemical imbalances.

Sunil Kochhar and colleagues note growing scientific evidence that antioxidants and other beneficial substances in dark chocolate may reduce risk factors for heart disease and other physical conditions. Studies also suggest that chocolate may ease emotional stress. Until now, however, there was little evidence from research in humans on exactly how chocolate might have those stress-busting effects.

In the study, scientists identified reductions in stress hormones and other stress-related biochemical changes in volunteers who rated themselves as highly stressed and ate dark chocolate for two weeks. "The study provides strong evidence that a daily consumption of 40 grams [1.4 ounces] during a period of 2 weeks is sufficient to modify the metabolism of healthy human volunteers," the scientists say.

The industrial chemical, bisphenol A - BPA - has been making news in recent months over its connection to a wide variety of adverse health events, a worrisome issue given the chemical's overwhelming ubiquity.

We have long noted that BPA has been connected to increased risks of brain, reproductive, cardiac, and immune system diseases and disorders; problems with liver function testing; interruptions in chemotherapy treatment; and links with serious health problems. Studies have overwhelmingly found BPA to have negative effects at doses lower than current FDA standards; retention in the body longer than was previously believed; leeching into liquids being held in containers regardless of the containers' temperature; and longer lasting damage, which some feel can be passed to future generations.

Now, the Washington Post is reporting that high levels of exposure to BPA seems to be linked to erectile dysfunction and other sexual problems in males, citing a study published today. The government-funded study appears in the journal Human Reproduction and is, said the Washington Post, the first of its kind to look at the connection between BPA and the human male reproductive system; prior studies looked at rodent reactions to the chemical.

Probiotics are good for much more than simply enhancing intestinal health and improving digestion; they're also very effective at preventing candida albicans (as you'll see below).

Here you'll find a healthy collection of explanations, supporting quotes and testimonials about the use of probiotics to help prevent or reverse candida. These are compiled from some of the top health authors in the world. Enjoy this knowledge and feel free to share this link with others who may benefit from this information.

Eliminating Candida with Probiotics

Allison Tannis, author of Probiotic Rescue: How You can use Probiotics to Fight Cholesterol, Cancer, Superbugs, Digestive Complaints and More:

Everyone's body is host to Candida (Candida albicans). Candida is a type of yeast. Candida is normally kept under control by good health and probiotics. However, Candida overgrowth can occur when the system is challenged or altered. The use of antibiotics can reduce the ability of probiotics to keep Candida at bay. Also, the overconsumption of yeast-feeding foods such as simple carbohydrates, sugars, peanuts, alcohol and milk products can encourage Candida growth.

In other words, probiotic bacteria are effective in controlling Candida in the mouth, a problem of particular concern for the elderly. The exact mechanism by which probiotics inhibit Candida growth is not fully understood to date. Some suggest the ability of probiotics to produce hydrogen peroxide plays a role; however, in vivo studies suggest that probiotics might prevent Candida growth through multiple mechanisms.

There are few women who have never had a yeast infection, which is an overgrowth of Candida albicans that is found in the mouth, the intestines, and the vagina. A Candida overgrowth causes vaginal itching, redness, white cottage-cheese-like vaginal discharge, and may cause painful intercourse. Normal beneficial bacteria in the gut and vagina (also called probiotics) inhibit Candida. A Candida over-growth is primarily caused by taking antibiotics that kill both beneficial and harmful bacteria and by pH imbalances in the vagina.

Antibiotic use changes the bacteria in the vagina and thus promotes the growth of Candida. Antibiotic use reduces the presence of all bacteria, including the beneficial probiotics in the vagina such as Lactobacillus. Antibiotic use causes the vaginal probiotic population to shrink. Then the pH of the vagina increases, due to no lactic acid coming from Lactobacilli to keep it low, and Candida is no longer restricted. Candida can colonize and flourish in such an environment.