Let's talk about those whooping cough outbreaks, shall we?

And while we're at it, can we talk about DTaP? The Diptheria,Tetanus and acellular Pertussis vaccine? We have to. Because that's what's causing the outbreaks. I'm betting at this point 98% of those on the pro-vaccine side have stopped reading. It astounds me how many people have made up their minds, and they seem to think they "know" everything there is to know about the whooping cough outbreaks and DTaP/TDaP vaccines. I could be wrong about this, but it appears that many listen to Paul Offit as if he is a "prophet," and they don't feel the need to think for themselves or look further. When we are talking about science, and the human body, I just don't see how we can ever say there is nothing left to learn. The fact that we never know everything there is to know is the basis of scientific inquiry - and that includes science that influences the medical decision-making process. For those who are still with me, thanks for sticking around and for being brave enough to use your own intellect and the discernment God gave you. Here we go...

Looking for a silver lining in the cold that's gripping much of the country? The next time an icy blast of wind cuts through your flesh, remind yourself that it is also stimulating the growth and activity of brown fat, the so-called good fat that burns calories and produces heat.

Located in your chest and back, brown fat's job is to protect your vital organs which, in winter, means giving you a way to generate additional heat for them. It's more prevalent in newborns and hibernating animals, whose need for warmth is greater, but researchers discovered about five years ago that adults have some, too.

In contrast to white, or "bad," fat, which stores energy as those bulges you're trying to eliminate at the gym, brown fat is full of mitochondria, the glucose-burning power plants of cells, which give brown fat its color. People with more brown fat tend to be leaner and have lower blood sugar levels.

It takes a little time in the cold to crank up the brown fat, but temperatures don't have to be down at the Polar Plunge level. When researchers exposed people to temperatures of 59 to 60 degrees for two to six hours over 10 consecutive days, they found immediate increases in brown fat activity. In another study, men who slept in rooms for a month at 66 degrees increased their brown fat and its activity by 30 percent to 40 percent. When the night-time temperature was raised to 80 degrees for another month, their brown fat stores declined below baseline levels.

The federal Food and Drug Administration has quietly reaffirmed its position that Americans are not being harmed by bisphenol A, a synthetic estrogen that is an essential ingredient of the epoxy coating that lines the insides of most food cans made in the U.S.

American can makers' trade groups trumpeted the FDA's stance, posted on the agency website December 5, 2014. No wonder. Without the agency's green light, canners would be forced to re-engineer the assembly lines that turned out some $126.3 billion aluminum and steel cans last year, according to the Can Manufacturers Institute. The financial stakes were not enumerated but are surely enormous.

Some companies have spent money to change to non-BPA materials in order to assure the public that their products are safe. In 2009, under pressure from health advocates and action by state officials, baby products manufacturers stopped using BPA to make plastic baby bottles. They found substitutes for BPA in infant formula packaging. Sports water bottle makers such as Nalgene switched from polycarbonate, which contains BPA, to other plastics.

For 37 years - since 1977 - breaded and fried white mushrooms have been a favorite in the food court at the Pennsylvania Farm Show.

Between that and other mushroom goodies, including cream of mushroom soup and marinated mushroom salad, visitors annually eat 3.5 tons of mushrooms at the show, which will run Jan. 10 to 17 at the Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg.

This year, things will be a little different.

The cooks in the mushroom area will be using a new oil that proponents say tastes better than other oils, lasts longer (meaning fewer cooking stoppages for clean-outs), and is more healthful.

Nearby, the state potato growers will be cooking French fries in the new oil. The Dairymen's Association will fry its cheese cubes in it. Also in the oil: deep-fried veggies, chicken breasts, nuggets, and wings.

Flu is now widespread in 46 states and has killed 26 children, health officials said today.

"This year is shaping up to be a bad one, particularly for people 65 and older," says Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Children younger than 5 are also at high risk of hospitalization, particularly babies under 6 months, who are too young to be vaccinated.

Flu is hitting the USA especially hard this year for two reasons.

First, the dominant flu strain in circulation is H3N2, a type that tends to cause twice as many hospitalizations and deaths as other strains of flu, Frieden says. Hospitalization rates have risen to 92 per 100,000 people, compared with 52 hospitalizations per 100,000 in a typical year.

"H3N2 is a nastier flu virus than other flu viruses," Frieden says. "Hospitalization rates in the over-65 age group are rising."

Second, the H3N2 viruses used to make this year's influenza vaccines aren't a good match to those spreading throughout the country, the CDC says. That's because about two-thirds of the H3N2 viruses in circulation have mutated significantly since vaccine production began last spring. Drugmakers tend to start making flu vaccines in the spring, in order to produce enough for the fall flu season.

"Even in a good year, the flu vaccine is not as effective as our other vaccines," Frieden says, noting that flu efficacy rates are about 60% to 65%.

Frieden says there are several ways for people to protect themselves.

Colorado is being hit with a rise in cases of upper respiratory illness this year, and doctors are warning that without treatment, patients could suffer for weeks once they've contracted the virus.

Dr. John Torres, Medical contributor for KUSA in Denver, says that hospitals in Colorado are seeing a higher than normal number of cases of a virulent flu that starts out like a common cold but lingers for weeks once taking hold.

"After a few weeks, in some people, it can turn into more of a bacterial infection because their immune system has been suppressed a little bit, which is when we will move in with some antibiotics," Torres told Channel 9 News. "But for the most part, it's just the common cold virus that floats around this time of year, but it lingers for a long time."

Doctors say that if the flu continues for longer than a week, sufferers should get to a doctor because a round of antibiotics may be necessary.

To avoid the flu, doctors suggest that people keep their hands clean, avoid touching their faces after being around others, and keep workspaces sanitized.

Colorado isn't alone. The Centers for Disease Control already reported that this flu season has become "severe" and has exceeded the national baseline, hitting the epidemic threshold of 6.8 percent.

"Though we cannot predict what will happen the rest of this flu season, it's possible we may have a season that's more severe than most," director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Dr. Tom Frieden said during a press conference in December.

City health officials are warning New Yorkers about an increase in cases of Legionnaire's disease, a potentially deadly form of pneumonia, in the Bronx.

Eleven cases of the disease were reported in the Bronx in December, compared with two in December 2013 and three in December 2012. The 11 cases reported last month represent nearly 20 percent of the total of 61 cases the borough had in all of 2014. Most cases were in the northeast Bronx.

Legionnaire's disease is caused by exposure to the bacteria Legionella, an aquatic organism that grow in warm environments. People are exposed to it by inhaling contaminated aerosols from cooling towers, whirlpool spas, showers and faucets or drinking water contaminated with the bacteria.

The Health Department is looking into whether the cases are due to a common source.

Sometimes you may feel helpless when facing Crohn's disease. But changes in your diet and lifestyle may help control your symptoms and lengthen the time between flare-ups.

There's no firm evidence that what you eat actually causes inflammatory bowel disease. But certain foods and beverages can aggravate your signs and symptoms, especially during a flare-up.

It can be helpful to keep a food diary to keep track of what you're eating, as well as how you feel. If you discover some foods are causing your symptoms to flare, you can try eliminating them. Here are some suggestions that may help:

Foods to avoid

• Limit dairy products. Many people with inflammatory bowel disease find that problems such as diarrhea, abdominal pain and gas, improve by limiting or eliminating dairy products. You may be lactose intolerant - that is, your body can't digest the milk sugar (lactose) in dairy foods. Using an enzyme product such as Lactaid may help as well.
• Try low-fat foods. If you have Crohn's disease of the small intestine, you may not be able to digest or absorb fat normally. Instead, fat passes through your intestine, making your diarrhea worse. Try avoiding butter, margarine, cream sauces and fried foods.

Researchers may have found a new antibiotic that bacteria will not become resistant to for decades, according to a new study. The discovery came not in a lab, but in soil from Maine, using a little-known device that's "generating excitement."

Dr. Kim Lewis, director of Northeastern University's Antimicrobial Discovery Center, sought to find a new source of antibiotics other than synthesizing them in a lab. So he and Slava Epstein, a biology professor at the same Boston, Massachusetts school, headed into "a grassy field in Maine," Lewis told reporters during a Tuesday conference call. They took a soil sample, which yielded teixobactin, the previously undiscovered antibiotic. The journal Nature published their research on Wednesday.

Lewis then tested the compound for resistance development and did not find mutant MSRA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) or Mycobacterium tuberculosis resistant to teixobactin, which was found to block several different targets in the cell wall synthesis pathway. The antibiotic was effective against the deadly ‒ and difficult to treat ‒ staph infection in mice as well.

Teixobactin is thought to attack microbes by binding to fatty lipids that make up the bacterial cell wall, and it is difficult for a bacterium to alter such fundamental building blocks of the cell, Nature reported. By comparison, most antibiotics target proteins and it can be relatively easy for a microbe to become resistant to those drugs by accumulating mutations that alter the target protein's shape.

"Our impression is that nature produced a compound that evolved to be free of resistance," Lewis said to news@Northeastern. "This challenges the dogma that we've operated under that bacteria will always develop resistance. Well, maybe not in this case."

The antibiotic could be a huge weapon in the fight against drug resistance, a "serious threat" to world health. In the United States alone, at least two million people become infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics each year, and at least 23,000 people die annually as a direct result of these infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).