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Have you thought about food lately? I am not talking about what you are planning for lunch. I am talking about food in general - what's healthiest, where it's grown, how it's produced, how to cook it, and how so many lack affordable access to it. Chances are the answer is yes, thanks to a remarkable convergence of momentum and awareness in food and nutrition today. That momentum is coming from the...
October 17, 2012
Cholesterol levels in the USA have improved significantly over the past 20 years, possibly because of a decreased intake of trans fats in people's diets and the increased use of cholesterol-lowering drugs, says a government study out Tuesday. "This is a favorable trend and a continuation of what we have seen in the past," says Brian Kit, one of the study's authors and a medical epidemiologist with...
October 17, 2012
Preteen girls who received the HPV vaccine were no more likely than unvaccinated girls to become pregnant, develop sexually transmitted infections or seek birth control counseling, according to the latest study to discount concerns that vaccination against the human papillomavirus encourages promiscuity. Other studies, including a report on British teens out last week, also have dismissed the notion....
October 15, 2012
There would seem no more damning and scathing indictment of NASCAR's concussion policy. In announcing Thursday that he would skip the next two Sprint Cup races after suffering a concussion, Dale Earnhardt Jr. acknowledged he raced for roughly five weeks at less than peak mental acuity, gambling his reflexes would be sharp enough to withstand the inherently perilous conditions of driving a car at 200...
October 12, 2012
Specialized, drug-producing pharmacies like the one implicated in the nation's ongoing meningitis outbreak have been tied to a string of fatal infections and overdoses stretching back more than a decade, a USA TODAY examination of public records shows. The cases have prompted repeated calls since at least 2001 for better oversight of "compounding" pharmacies, which are not subject to the same stringent...
October 12, 2012
The number of people infected with meningitis has risen for the fifth consecutive day since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began releasing figures about the deadly outbreak. On Thursday, the CDC announced that 14 people have died in 170 cases of meningitis. The newest victims died in Florida and Indiana, states that had already been listed as affected by the controversy. Victims have...
October 12, 2012
Alex Bogusky might be the modern-day Mad Man. He created a legacy on Madison Avenue by junking the rules of advertising and drumming up ground-breaking ads for Burger King and Mini Cooper. Under Bogusky, the agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky became the go-to, hipper-than-hip agency. But Bogusky left two years ago as co-chairman and has since sought out socially relevant causes. He made headlines this...
October 12, 2012
Younger people are getting strokes at a faster rate, and people under age 55 make up a greater percentage of all strokes, according to a study out Wednesday in the journal Neurology. The increase is an alarming trend because strokes in younger people translate to "greater lifetime disability," says lead author Brett Kissela, a physician at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and a fellow...
October 11, 2012
The growing outbreak of fungal meningitis has led some people to question the widespread use of epidural steroid injections for pain. Steroids contaminated with a fungus are suspected of transmitting the infection. By Wednesday, the outbreak had grown to 137 patients in 10 states, with 12 deaths. That number could grow, given that 13,000 patients were treated with three recalled lots of steroids, CDC...
October 11, 2012
For the second time in a week, researchers say they have new findings on hormone therapy that might reassure women who take the medications in the early years of menopause. The new study, published Tuesday in the British medical journal BMJ, found some evidence that the hearts of women who take estrogen, with or without progestin, stay at least as healthy as the hearts of women who don't take hormones...
October 10, 2012
Being alert to early signs of a migraine is the key to preventing it from becoming debilitating and long-lasting, a researcher said Tuesday at the American Neurological Association annual conference here. A migraine evolves in most patients and becomes a "moving target," says Rami Burstein of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. The process begins when neurons begin to respond to pain in...
October 10, 2012
Carlos Beltran put on an impressive display of power Monday in the St. Louis Cardinals' 12-4 victory in Game2 of the National League Division Series, hitting two home runs to continue a surge in which he's hit four homers in his last six games. Across the diamond, Washington Nationals third baseman Ryan Zimmerman continued his own, more sustained pattern, crushing a home run among his two hits as he...
October 9, 2012
The fear that overtakes a parent when a child wanders away is easily compounded when that child has an autism-spectrum disorder. A new study shows that such behavior occurs more often than in other kids, and the hazards can be significant. In a sample of 1,200 children with autism, 49% had wandered, bolted or "eloped" at least once after age 4; 26% went missing long enough to cause concern. Only 13%...
October 8, 2012
Katie Biggs' students often know before she does that a migraine is about to strike. A high school English teacher and theater coach in Naperville, Ill., Biggs, 42, has had migraine headaches since she was 8 years old, and they've increased in intensity since then. New research on headache and pain management will be the focus of a symposium, workshop and posters presented by scientists at the annual...
October 4, 2012
Even as Colorado ranked once again as the skinniest of the nation's states, officials there are lamenting their increasing obesity rates, particularly among young people. Colorado's obesity rate among children is rising faster than all but one other state, and it's ranked at 23rd for obese children. "Great, we're the leading state, but we've doubled our obesity rate in the past 25 years," said Tracy...
October 4, 2012
I'm not quite sure what I was doing when I was 8. I do know I was not winning cooking contests using my great-grandmother's fudge recipe. I'm not sure my great-grandmother even had a fudge recipe. I don't think the Wilsons were fudge people. Fudge is a bit too decadent for Methodists, I suspect. But Grace LaFountain, an 8-year-old from New Hartford, N.Y., recently won the Loukoumi's Celebrity Cookbook...
October 3, 2012
At least 170,000 cases of skin cancer each year are linked to indoor tanning, according to an analysis pub-lished online Tuesday in the British medical journal BMJ. Those cancers include basal-cell carcinomas and squamous-cell carcinomas, two common types of non-melanoma skin cancers that aren't usually life-threatening, the study says. People who have ever used indoor tanning are 29% more likely to...
October 3, 2012
Jim Kiefert of Olympia, Wash., has been battling prostate cancer for 23 years. The retired school administrator, 74, has never been more optimistic about his prospects. For the first time, thanks to a handful of drug approvals over the past 2 years, there are now multiple options for treating advanced prostate cancer. The newest drug, enzalutamide (brand name Xtandi), came on the market in September...
October 3, 2012
Christina Miller had just finished her second chemotherapy treatment when her hair began to fall out. It was a Saturday morning, half an hour before she had to leave the house to take her son to a birthday party, when she realized, "I couldn't go any longer without doing something about my hair," says Miller, 39, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in January. So she handed her husband the hair clippers...
October 2, 2012
Thousands of U.S. children with dangerous amounts of lead in their blood may go unassisted this year because local health departments can't afford to monitor them, a survey of major cities by USA TODAY shows. In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cut in half the amount of lead that should trigger medical monitoring and other actions in children younger than 6. The CDC's action...
October 2, 2012
Concern about concussions and how these brain injuries affect children's health has never been higher, and rightly so, says neurosurgeon Robert Cantu, one of the nation's leading concussion experts. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, emergency department visits for sports and recreation-related traumatic brain injuries (TBIs), including concussions, increased by 60% among...
October 1, 2012
LONDON - Global health officials have alerted doctors to be on the lookout for new cases of a virus related to SARS but said there was no sign the disease was behaving like the killer respiratory syndrome that killed hundreds in 2003. Earlier this week, the World Health Organization announced the new coronavirus had been found in a critically ill Qatari man being treated in London as well as in a Saudi...
September 27, 2012
Jeni Bridges knows what it takes to get through college with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. After all, she had nine years to practice. Bridges says it took her that long to get her degree because she wasn't sure what she wanted to do when she grew up. She would impulsively switch majors, even schools, to indulge her latest passion. That's classic ADHD behavior, guidance counselors say. Nearly...
September 27, 2012
Home trampolines may look like fun, but they are "intrinsically dangerous" and should be strongly discouraged, says the co-author of an updated pediatricians' policy statement. Even safety features such as netting enclosures do not significantly decrease the risk of injury, says sports medicine specialist Michele LaBotz in the American Academy of Pediatrics' statement, published this week in the journal...
September 26, 2012
The line between being a caring and involved parent and a hovering "helicopter" parent is getting even murkier. New research says helicopter parenting isn't just part of the parenting vernacular, it's a distinct form of parenting that can have positive effects for adult children, but some negatives as well. So what's a parent to do? Are parents too pushy or their adult children just too needy? Research...
September 25, 2012
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