ACSH

Tens of thousands of women have mastectomies to treat breast cancer each year and a new study lends hope to the idea that reconstructive surgery could make breastfeeding possible afterward.

I have been a long-time reader of Pacific Standard (once called Miller-McCune), a publication that tries to be the West Coast equivalent of The Atlantic. That is a fine mission because, as a Seattleite, I am keenly aware that there aren't many West Coast media outlets that capture the attention of the rest of the nation. 

Glutathione (GSH), a combination of three amino acids made by the body, had become a fad for skin bleaching. While it is a potent antioxidant, GSH supplements or injectables have not been widely tested or approved for skin lightening. And for anyone interested in using GSH for that purpose, we can only warn that the injectable form should not be given by unqualified individuals.

Over the past couple of decades, there has been a significant increase in the incidence of thyroid cancer throughout the world.  This phenomenon is mainly seen in “high income” countries of North America, Europe, and Asia.  In the United States alone, the annual incidence has tripled between 1975 and 2009.

The MINDACT trial results suggest that women with a certain genetic profile would have a good chance of survival and cure regardless of chemotherapy, but it's not so simple.

The first in a series about all of the weird stuff people get stuck in places that may not seem to make sense.

Over the course of the past few weeks Mylan has replaced Turing and Valeant as the most scrutinized and critiqued pharmaceutical companies in the United States. Though politicians and pundits have claimed the problem is Big Pharma, the issue of price-gouging is far more pervasive among generic drugs.

Bariatric (weight loss) surgery works. A severely obese person (BMI > 40) might lose 50 percent of his or her excess body fat in the first year after such surgery. One question that has lingered for decades is, how long do such effects last? Do people gain back the weight that they've lost and, if so, how quickly does that happen?

Over the course of the past few weeks Mylan has become quite possibly the most scrutinized and critiqued pharmaceutical company. The staggering price increases of their EpiPen resulted in a wave of criticism across all entities - from policymakers to doctors to patients. But this issue actually speaks to the underlying and pervasive price gouging that has been a burgeoning component of both the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. And the EpiPen is simply the latest example. Before the EpiPen, naloxone was at the center of a similar debacle.

We know you hate guessing games so lets' get right to the answer. An alarming 58 eight countries or territories currently have active Zika transmission. And those do not include those countries where someone brought it back home after becoming infected on a trip. Here's the breakdown.

Haiti did not have a single case of cholera until October, 2010 - ten months after a devastating earthquake leveled the country on January 12 of the same year, killing up to an estimated 300,000 people. 

The ensuing nightmare continued through the entire month of January, with aftershocks bringing more devastation as they rolled across the country. But, by the end of January, the horror was over, and multiple organizations were mobilized to help get the country get back on its feet - one of which was the United Nations. 

One of the few places one might expect to find a soaring rate of gonorrhea infection is the piously conservative state of Utah. But, new CDC data shows that the incidence of gonorrhea is up over 400% in merely three years, from 2011 to 2014.

Researchers in Pittsburgh studying the effectiveness of email say that the electronic process is rife with miscommunication, exchanges between parties often have a difficult time conveying feelings properly, and most interestingly that emails among friends are no more effective than those between total strangers. 

Haiti did not have a single case of cholera until October, 2010 - ten months after a devastating earthquake leveled the country on January 12 of the same year, killing up to an estimated 300,000 people. 

The ensuing nightmare continued through the entire month of January, with aftershocks bringing more devastation as they rolled across the country. But, by the end of January, the horror was over, and multiple organizations were mobilized to help get the country get back on its feet - one of which was the United Nations. 

It isn't just you that has a lot of accidents. Hundreds of thousands of people per year do.

When it comes to picking produce at the grocery store, don't judge a book by its cover! Spotted fruits and veggies aren't spoiled or harmful — they've simply been through a lot, and they need a little TLC.

One of the latest contributions from Huffington Post to the national dialogue comes courtesy of self-described teenage "food safety activist" Rachel Parent, who skyrocketed to fame after giving an anti-GMO talk for Tedx and debating Kevin O'Leary. Her new article is titled "GMO Propaganda Has No Place In Your Child's Classroom." She then goes on to regurgitate her own propaganda.

The American Academy of Pediatrics wants to guide clinicians on “Countering Vaccine Hesitancy” among parents. This policy statement, published in the journal Pediatrics, rightly champions vaccination as "one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century." There is just one problem; pediatricians actually don't need more guidelines and protocols.

We all know aerobic exercise (e.g. running, swimming, walking briskly)  is good for the heart, and apparently it's also good for the brain. Of course, if one neglects to keep up with the activity, fitness declines. Dr. J. Carson Smith from the University of Maryland in College Park and colleagues wanted to know what happens to the brains of older folks who exercised vigorously and often if they stopped exercising.

Fortification of enriched grain foods with the B vitamin folate has been mandated in the U.S. and Canada since 1998. Since then, the prevalence of central nervous system defects in babies has decreased, as was the purpose of the fortification. A recent Canadian study indicates that such fortification has also reduced the prevalence of several heart malformation — an unexpected benefit.