Health and Wellness News

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Indonesian police say they are investigating the deaths of 21 people who drank a concoction labelled as an herbal remedy. A police spokesman says investigators have not determined whether the brew was deliberately poisoned or inadvertently contaminated during production. The victims in the town of Jambi on Sumatra island all died over the last two weeks. Police say the drink was...
March 27, 2008
Mar. 28 - Bees love it, and so do the birds. But, springtime pollen is a bane for the sniffly and sneezy folks out there. They're not the only one running out of tissue. Neighbors and co-workers have the runny, drippy, wheezy misery, too. It's spring, but what's going on? Something is in the air: more pollen than usual. The National Allergy Bureau's latest pollen and mold counts show "very high concentration"...
March 27, 2008
Having a tubby belly in midlife can increase the risk of developing dementia decades later, a new study says. About half of Americans have excess fat that accumulates around the waist, says Rachel Whitmer, a researcher at Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland. Past research had suggested that belly fat increases the risk of developing diseases like diabetes, stroke and heart disease, she...
March 27, 2008
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J., Mar 27, 2008 (UPI via COMTEX) - The Atlantic City City Council held off voting on a casino smoking ban Wednesday night, the council president said. The proposed ordinance comes almost a year after the city implemented a partial bar on casino smoking, which allowed patrons to continue lighting up in only 25 percent of the casino building, The (New Jersey) Star-Ledger reported Wednesday....
March 27, 2008
WASHINGTON, Mar 27, 2008 (UPI via COMTEX) - As state motorcycle helmet laws weaken, crash death rates are rising steadily in the United States, a survey indicated Thursday. The proportion of older fatalities also went up, the Gannett News Service analysis reports. Most states once required motorcycle riders to wear helmets but that trend changed course after 1995 when the federal government stopped...
March 27, 2008
Maybe it was in the water. Genetics probably had something to do with it. And then there's family. For Tommy and Dick Smothers, the duo who form the Smothers Brothers comedy team, it was, well, maybe some luck that made them a success, Tommy Smothers says. And a lot of other factors. Like being really, really funny. But if you were green with envy when you saw one Super Bowl champ, Peyton Manning,...
March 27, 2008
NEW YORK (AP) - Can a workplace epidemic be cured? With the personal computing boom of the 1990s came thousands of "repetitive stress injuries" or "repetitive strain injuries." RSI became the hip medical acronym of the keyboard era, with subset carpal tunnel syndrome the diagnosis of the day. "At its height of diagnosis, anybody showing up at a doctor's office with wrist pain or hand pain was being...
March 27, 2008
Mar. 26 - People living in West Virginia mining communities may have greater risk of chronic lung, heart and kidney diseases, a WVU study has found. The study, "Relations between Health Indicators and Residential Proximity to Coal Mining in West Virginia," uses data from two surveys to determine that living close to a coal mine is detrimental to health. A health research phone survey from 2001, which...
March 26, 2008
If you're looking for guidance on how to improve your diet, the Department of Agriculture has a new menu-planning tool that could become your new best friend. The Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion has crafted a free Internet program that allows users to type in information about what they are eating and see how their diet stacks up nutritionally. The planner calculates what the user should...
March 26, 2008
San Francisco - Middle-aged people with excess visceral fat - usually apparent in the thick waist or pot belly of an apple-shaped body - are nearly three times more likely to suffer from dementia in their 70s and 80s than people with little to no belly fat, according to a study of Kaiser Permanente patients. Researchers have long connected obesity, diabetes and heart disease to dementia. The new study...
March 26, 2008
HARRISBURG, Pa. The FBI is trying to find out how herbal supplements got into a family's frozen fish dinner, a discovery that prompted a voluntary recall in 11 states. A spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Philadelphia, Jerri Williams, said Monday that agents were attempting to determine if a crime occurred. "That's part of the investigation - to look at how the pills got into the...
March 26, 2008
WORCESTER, Mass., Mar 26, 2008 (UPI via COMTEX) - Scientists have found exposure to the low levels of radon gas found in most U.S. homes might cut the risk of developing lung cancer by up to 60 percent. The study by researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the Fallon Clinic and Fallon Community Health Plan, is said to be the first to observe a statistically significant hormetic effect of low-level...
March 26, 2008
Mankind's greatest triumph of the last century was not the mastery of flight, the invention of the computer or the recognition of rights for women and minorities. As huge as those achievements were, they were overshadowed by something more profound. Over the past 100 years, humankind fulfilled the age-old dream to extend life, by making bigger gains in life expectancy than during the previous 50 centuries....
March 26, 2008
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - New research concludes that people who live in Appalachia's coalfields are far more likely to have chronic heart, lung and kidney problems. They're also more likely to die early, West Virginia University professor Michael Hendryx said Tuesday. Hendryx and Washington State University professor Melissa Ahern reached those conclusions in a study based on a telephone survey of...
March 26, 2008
Mar. 26 - RUSSELL - Children in several schools in Greenup County are trimming their waistlines while adding important information to diabetes research. A Weight Watchers family program targeting third-, fourth- and fifth-graders focuses on healthy lifestyles with the goal of changing eating and exercise habits, according to program coordinator Margaret Ward. Funded through the Bon Secours Health System...
March 25, 2008
WASHINGTON, Mar 26, 2008 (UPI via COMTEX) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has expanded a voluntary recall of Honduran cantaloupes because of possible salmonella contamination. Central American Produce Inc. of Pompano Beach, Fla., distributed the fruit across the United States and Canada. The FDA said the recalled product appears to be associated with a salmonella outbreak in the United States...
March 25, 2008
Cox News Service WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. Few things are more heart-wrenching than a child who can't communicate with his or her parents. No matter what the reason may be, the mom and dad may feel helpless, confused, even rejected. That's especially so when the diagnosis comes after the child has appeared to develop normally. Autism - that's what Denise Negron and her husband, Felix Hernandez, were told...
March 25, 2008
Mar. 26 - Susie Woodworth saved two lives with one kidney. Here's how. Lucy McKinney, of Midlothian, had known for decades she had polycystic kidney disease when she became gravely ill two years ago. It's a hereditary condition. She just didn't know how bad it would get. "It started out like I had the flu, and the flu never went away," McKinney, 55, said. "I started losing a lot of weight very quickly...
March 25, 2008
NEW YORK - Breaking up large classes into several smaller ones helps students, but the improvements in many cases come in spite of what teachers do, new research suggests. New findings from four nations, including the USA, tell a curious story. Small classes work for children, but that's less because of how teachers teach than because of what students feel they can do: Get more face time with their...
March 25, 2008
SAINT LO, France (Thomson Financial) - French officials said they had issued a health warning after thousands of people were sold beef contaminated with the E.coli virus in supermarkets across much of the country. Some 2.35 tonnes of unfit beef mince and burgers, from a slaughterhouse in northern France, were sold across the north and the Paris region, a veterinary services official said, confirming...
March 24, 2008
Mar. 25 - Windy Slone, a diabetic for eight years, took her last insulin shot on Dec. 19. A few days later, doctors told her she was free of diabetes. About one month later, she no longer needed the five other medications she'd been taking. "I went from having five shots a day for the past four years to none. It's amazing," Slone said. "Three weeks ago I gave all my unused syringes to my friends and...
March 24, 2008
The Food and Drug Administration has blocked all cantaloupes imported from Agropecuaria Montelibano in Honduras because they have been associated with a salmonella outbreak in the USA and Canada that has hospitalized 14 people and sickened at least 50 in 16 states. Melons contaminated with salmonella may not look or smell spoiled. Consumers who recently bought cantaloupe should ask the store it came...
March 24, 2008
Around the kids, they're nothing if not supportive. But a growing number of baby boomer parents are freaking out inside. They don't want to let on to their adult children that they're getting worried, but these parents are sharing their concerns at work, at the gym, at the grocery store or anyplace they can commiserate: Their offspring - post-college degreed and in their mid- to late 20s - still haven't...
March 24, 2008
Pope Benedict XVI said he was "particularly close" to those sick with tuberculosis following Easter prayers which coincide with the World Tuberculosis Day. "During this world day to fight tuberculosis, I am particularly close to those who are sick and their families and hope to increase global engagement against this scourge," Benedict said at his Castel Gandolfo residence near Rome. "My appeal is...
March 23, 2008
Switzerland's most senior citizen Rosa Rein prepared to celebrate her 111th birthday in customary fashion Monday: with a glass of champagne and surrounded by the media. Rein, who since 2001, has lived at a home for the elderly near the southern city of Lugano, was born into a Jewish family March 24, 1897 in what was then the German region of Silesia and lost her mother in a Nazi concentration camp....
March 23, 2008