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Sleeping more may help you fight a genetic predisposition to gain weight, a new study says. "The less sleep you get, the more your genes contribute to how much you weigh. The more sleep you get, the less your genes determine how much you weigh," says lead author Nathaniel Watson, a neurologist and co-director of the University of Washington Medicine Sleep Center in Seattle. Research has shown the connection...
May 1, 2012
The number of babies born addicted to the class of drugs that includes prescription painkillers has nearly tripled in the past decade, according to the first national study of its kind. About 3.4 of every 1,000 infants born in a hospital in 2009 suffered from a type of drug withdrawal commonly seen in the babies of pregnant women who abuse narcotic pain medications, the study says. It's published today...
May 1, 2012
Government officials in several states and cities are expanding investigations or warning residents of health threats from forgotten factories that spewed toxic lead dust in neighborhoods decades ago. A U.S. senator on Monday called for a Senate hearing on what can be done. Actions are underway in at least 14 states in response to a USA TODAY investigation, published last month, that revealed government...
May 1, 2012
John Hoffman isn't a doctor. He doesn't even play one on TV. But come May 14, he'll unveil a diagnosis, of sorts, for dealing with obesity as executive producer of The Weight of the Nation, a new four-part HBO documentary. The production, done in conjunction with the Institute of Medicine, which provides independent advice on health, features dozens of top experts exploring the causes and solutions...
April 30, 2012
How natural are Kashi natural cereals? Kellogg is facing anger on social-media sites because of complaints that its popular Kashi brand of cold cereals doesn't live up to the company's "natural" billing on ads and boxes. The controversy went viral a week ago after a Rhode Island grocer tacked a note to one of his store shelves, telling customers he wouldn't sell the cereal because he found out the...
April 30, 2012
New restrictions on abortion are sweeping through legislatures from Virginia to Arizona, and voters in some states could see proposed constitutional amendments on November ballots that would define life as beginning at conception. The 2012 anti-abortion push is not as heavy as last year, when legislators in 24 states, many elected in the 2010 Republican tide, passed a record 92 laws restricting abortions,...
April 26, 2012
In what looks like a medical first, doctors reported Wednesday that a kidney transplanted into one patient, which then started to fail, was successfully removed and transplanted into a second patient, who is doing well. Lorenzo Gallon supervised the transplants over a two-week span in June at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, says the report in The New England Journal of Medicine. While transplanted...
April 26, 2012
Although the health of the world's infants and children has improved significantly in the past 50 years, that same success has not been achieved for adolescents and young adults, say reports out today. According to a UNICEF report, 1.4 million adolescents (ages 10-19) die each year from traffic injuries, complications of childbirth, suicide, violence, AIDS and other health-related causes. A synthesis...
April 25, 2012
First-time abusers of prescription painkillers such as OxyContin most often get the drugs free from friends or family, while chronic abusers seek doctors or dealers to get their fix, a new analysis of two years of data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health found. More than two-thirds of people who said they had gotten high on painkillers got the pills from family or friends the first time,...
April 25, 2012
An internal investigation at the Department of Veterans Affairs released today says tens of thousands of veterans waited far longer last year to receive mental health treatment than what the VA contends. The inspector general's office found that claims by the VA that 95% of its patients are both evaluated for mental health problems and begin receiving therapy within a 14-day goal set by the department...
April 24, 2012
Conventional wisdom says that hardship can make us old before our time. In fact, a new study suggests that violence leaves long-term scars on children's bodies - not just in bruises on the skin, but also altering their DNA, causing changes that are equivalent to seven to 10 years of premature aging. Scientists measured this cellular aging by studying the ends of children's chromosomes, called telomeres,...
April 24, 2012
TTC may well be the new OMG for life as a young woman with motherhood on her mind. TTC, in Internet-speak, means "trying to conceive." Being labeled "infertile" or discovering a partner's infertility is changing the life plans of many in their late 20s and early 30s. "I wanted to have three children by now," says Lindsay Coser, 28, of St. Peters, Mo. "It's been very devastating because this is out...
April 23, 2012
The government plans to announce today that the 2010 health care law will save Medicare beneficiaries $208 billion through 2020, and save Medicare itself $200 billion through 2016, based on a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services actuary report. "We have achieved significant tangible savings that have been passed on to beneficiaries," said Jonathan Blum, director of the Center for Medicare. "There's...
April 23, 2012
Family physician Steven Butdorf of Eugene, Ore., was tired of rushing patients through appointments, tired of insurers denying procedures, and tired of paperwork. "The burden of third-party health insurance reached a point where it just wasn't fun to do it anymore. It was burdensome to do it," said Butdorf, 56. "I just decided I was going to pursue a different path." On Feb. 1, Butdorf opened Exceptional...
April 23, 2012
Women's life spans in the USA are improving at a slower pace than men's and are shorter in many U.S. counties than they were 20 years ago, according to a report released Thursday. The trend is cause for alarm even though women are still expected to outlive men by four years, says the report by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research center at the University of Washington....
April 20, 2012
Amid reports of weeks elapsing before veterans are able to begin mental health treatment, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced Thursday an immediate, nearly 10% increase in mental health staffing across the country, adding 1,900 therapists and other workers. The agency treats 1.3million veterans for mental health problems, including nearly 400,000 who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are...
April 20, 2012
Worried parents are phoning their pediatricians, fearful of the spread of a nasty new strain of hand, foot and mouth virus, a common childhood disease. It hit Alabama last month, is in Northern California now and may be headed to a day care near you soon. The hand, foot and mouth virus that usually causes a slight fever and a rash on the palms in toddlers is called coxsackie A16. The new variant, A6,...
April 20, 2012
Kathleen Marshall used to think the fenced backyard of her Philadelphia home was a safe place for her five children to play. Not anymore. Marshall was horrified to learn that a long-forgotten factory once melted lead just across the street and that soil tests by USA TODAY indicate her yard is contaminated with hazardous levels of the toxic metal. "You're living here and you have no idea of what's really...
April 20, 2012
Ken Shefton is furious about what the government knew eight years ago and never told him - that the neighborhood where his five sons have been playing is contaminated with lead. Their Cleveland home is a few blocks from a long-forgotten factory that spewed toxic lead dust for about 30 years. The Environmental Protection Agency and state regulators clearly knew of the danger. They tested soil throughout...
April 19, 2012
One in 10 U.S. children has been or will be affected by the nation's surge in foreclosures, a new report says. Five years into the foreclosure crisis, an estimated 2.3 million children have lived in homes lost to foreclosure, according to a report from First Focus, a Washington, D.C-based bipartisan advocacy group focused on families. Another 3 million children live in homes at risk of foreclosure...
April 19, 2012
Jack Hanke, 18, arrived at rehearsal wearing a giant sombrero and green kimono. Noah Britton, 29, took off his pants midpractice, explaining that they still stank from last night's concert. He ran through the rest of his comedy troupe's practice wearing boxers and the group's signature T-shirt, which reads: "I don't want your pity." Britton, Hanke and the other two members of Asperger's Are Us don't...
April 18, 2012
Hundreds of the nation's nearly 1,200 community health centers, which serve millions of mostly poor people, fall short on key measures such as vaccinating children and helping diabetics control blood sugar, federal data show. More than 20 million sought care at the non-profit, largely private centers last year - double from a decade ago. The centers are poised to take an even more central role in the...
April 18, 2012
Would sugar by any other name be as sweet? A coalition of groups sent a letter to the Food and Drug Administration Tuesday opposing a proposal by manufacturers to call high-fructose corn syrup "corn sugar" instead. The coalition says consumers are against the name change by 100-to-1. The ubiquitous sweetener has a bad rap in some circles, and the groups say the new name is just a ploy to confuse consumers...
April 18, 2012
Our aching backs still can't get a break. The genetically engineered drug etanercept, hailed as a breakthrough in safe pain management, is no more effective in the long term than other back pain treatments, research published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine finds. Back pain torments nearly two-thirds of Americans and is the leading cause of disability in people 45 and younger. Physicians...
April 17, 2012
The number of children and teens who die from any kind of accidents has dropped nearly 30% from 2000 to 2009, mostly because of a decline in traffic deaths, says a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The good news - that more than 11,000 lives have been saved by the reductions in unintentional deaths for those from birth to age 19 over that period - is offset by the sobering...
April 17, 2012
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