Also On Wellness
Health and Wellness News
Summer bummer: The season's half over and you still can't fit into that bikini. Some super-savvy marketers of weight-loss products hope they've got your number. Pills and diet plans promising to help shed pounds in days have made the weight-loss industry a more than $62-billion-a-year business, up from about $38 billion 10 years ago, estimates Market Data. But most diet pills haven't been approved...
July 27, 2012
Like many of the thousands of other doctors attending this week's international AIDS conference here, physician Ngindu Zola is a man of science. Yet Zola knows that science is not enough to save his patients. Zola treats people with HIV and AIDS in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where civil war has raged for more than a decade. Some 260,000 people have fled their homes because of new rebel attacks...
July 26, 2012
American kids are mostly doing a better job of protecting themselves from HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In particular, black high school students have dramatically reduced sexual behaviors that can lead to HIV infection over the past 20 years. "This is good news, but we still have more work to do," says Kevin Fenton, director...
July 25, 2012
Illinois Medicaid recipients have been limited to four prescription drugs as the state becomes the latest to cap how many medicines it will cover in the state-federal health insurance program for the poor. Doctors fear the state's cost-cutting move could harm patients, who have to get state permission to go beyond the limit. "We understand the state is trying to get its Medicaid budget under control,...
July 25, 2012
Thirteen states are moving to cut Medicaid by reducing benefits, paying health providers less or tightening eligibility, even as the U.S. government is set to expand the insurance program for the poor to as many as 17 million more people. States routinely trim the program as tough times drive up enrollment and costs. The latest reductions - which follow more extensive cuts last year - threaten to limit...
July 25, 2012
In the first six months of this year, more than 1 million seniors and people with disabilities saved $687 million on prescription drugs in the doughnut hole - the gap between traditional and catastrophic coverage in the Part D drug benefit - as part of the health care law, Health and Human Services plans to announce today. That's an average of $629 per patient. As part of the 2010 health care law,...
July 25, 2012
There are no scientific reasons the world can't chart a path, albeit a difficult one, toward the world's first AIDS-free generation, a top health official said Sunday. "There is no excuse scientifically to say we cannot do it," said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaking to the media at AIDS 2012, an international AIDS conference, which began...
July 23, 2012
Whooping cough could reach its highest level in more than 50 years. As of July, nearly 18,000 cases have been reported, more than twice as many as at this time last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. At this pace, the number of whooping cough cases will surpass every year since 1959. Public health officials are concerned that the surge might be due in part to a switch in...
July 20, 2012
Hospitals are ignoring state regulations that require them to report cases in which medical care harmed a patient, making it almost impossible for health care providers to identify and fix preventable problems, a report to be released today by the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general shows. Hospitals may avoid blame for errors when they don't report preventable problems, but they...
July 20, 2012
After 16 years of dtente, scientists are once again ready to go to war with the AIDS virus. Researchers who once thought a cure was impossible are again ready to try. At a meeting Thursday in Washington, D.C., just days before 25,000 people will attend the international AIDS 2012 conference, HIV researchers unveiled a "road map" to the cure. "The burden of treating millions of people for 40, 50, 60...
July 20, 2012
Moderate drinking and binge drinking by older people raise risk of cognitive decline and memory loss, find two studies presented Wednesday at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference 2012 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Adults 65 and older who reported binge-drinking twice a month were 2 times more likely to suffer cognitive and memory declines than similar-aged adults who don't binge-drink,...
July 19, 2012
President Barack Obama is steadfast in his aim to help stop the HIV/AIDS epidemic despite his decision not to attend the International AIDS Conference next week, a top health official said Wednesday. Answering critics who have slammed Obama for not attending the major world event, held for the first time in Washington in two decades, Ambassador Eric Goosby said Obama will host a private event for conference...
July 18, 2012
Thirty-one years after doctors saw their first cases of AIDS, scientists say they now have the knowledge to begin to end the epidemic. The only questions, says AIDS researcher Diane Havlir, are "Do we have the will to do it?" and "Who is going to pay for it?" Doctors can now prescribe drug cocktails that reduce the amount of AIDS virus in a patients' body to undetectable levels. Landmark research funded...
July 18, 2012
A new prescription diet drug approved Tuesday by the government is expected to help heavy patients drop about 10% of their weight - more than any other approved obesity drug. Qsymia (pronounced kyoo-sim-ee-uh), which suppresses appetite and increases the feeling of fullness, boosts patients' weight loss when used along with a diet and exercise plan. Some experts are concerned that the drug raised heart...
July 18, 2012
Although the Obama administration has stepped up efforts to process medical disability claims by U.S. veterans, a top Department of Veterans Affairs official will tell lawmakers today that the agency's backlog continues to grow. Allison Hickey, undersecretary for benefits at the VA, said in written testimony submitted in advance of a hearing before a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee...
July 18, 2012
The first long-term treatment shown to halt the progression of Alzheimer's disease is being hailed by experts at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference 2012 in Vancouver, Canada. The treatment, still in testing, is an immune therapy called IVIG/Gammagard that has been given intravenously for three years to a small group of participants. The findings, reported Tuesday, follow nine years...
July 18, 2012
The hormone-disrupting chemical BPA, or bisphenol-A, can no longer be used to make baby bottles and sippy cups, the federal government announced Tuesday. The move by the Food and Drug Administration will have limited impact, because manufacturers have already stopped using BPA in these beverage containers. About a dozen U.S. states, including California, have banned BPA from children's products. So,...
July 18, 2012
Movie marquee ads. Airplane banners. Radio commercials. Freedom-of-choice tweets. A public hearing on New York City's proposed ban on big sugary drinks is a week away, and soft-drink makers and sellers have deployed a PR and advertising assault to rally opposition. They have much at stake. There's the potential revenue drop if the 16-ounce cap on bottled drinks and fountain beverages sold at restaurants,...
July 18, 2012
There's a war going on, right under our noses, and we're just too blind to see it. Well, maybe not that blind. We can see these tiny combatants, all 100 trillion of them, just fine under a microscope. But they're not always under our nose. Some of them are in our nose. And in our mouths. And our intestines. Even in our breast milk and the birth canal. They're microbes, living on and in the human body,...
July 17, 2012
Subtle changes in the way a person walks can be an early warning sign of cognitive decline and a signal for advanced testing, researchers reported Sunday at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Vancouver, Canada. The findings are the first to link a physical symptom to the disease, which up until now required doctors to begin a diagnosis by focusing on cognition and administering...
July 16, 2012
Dieters take note: Women who keep a food journal, don't skip meals and don't eat lunch at restaurants very often lose more weight than dieters who don't follow these practices, a new study shows. Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center tracked the dieting habits of 123 overweight or obese post-menopausal women who followed a weight-loss program for a year. At the end, they lost an...
July 13, 2012
When a heat wave engulfed the nation's capital last week, athletes did whatever they could to stay hydrated. During the Washington Nationals' 4-1 victory against the Colorado Rockies in 101-degree heat Saturday, athletes such as pitcher Stephen Strasburg used intravenous hydration; others just drank a lot of water. But Gio Gonzalez, who won his fourth consecutive start Saturday, says he uses towels...
July 12, 2012
When Karen Frost got a call from her mother saying "I just want to keep you in the loop," she knew to pay attention. Her father got lost trying to find his wife in the hospital after a routine appointment and was missing for several hours before she found him. When Alita Aldridge got a call from her mother accusing her grandson of taking money and stealing her food, she, too, knew something was wrong....
July 12, 2012
It has been 10 years since researchers with the Women's Health Initiative, a large randomized, controlled trial on hormone therapy sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, announced its first findings: that the health risks outweighed the benefits of estrogen plus progestin hormone therapy (HT) in postmenopausal women. Since then, additional research has advanced the understanding of the benefits...
July 12, 2012
Pink gauze covered the stump where his arm hung a few hours earlier, but Kaleb "Fred" Langdale, managed a weak smile and asked his aunt to snap a photo before he underwent surgery to repair the damage. Fred's request to his aunt, LaDawn Hayes: Post the photo to Facebook so his friends can see he's OK. It appeared the 17-year-old was taking the trauma in stride. He lost the lower portion of his right...
July 11, 2012
Featured Posts
©2025 Wellness®.com is a registered trademark of Wellness.com, Inc. 