The big concern about the latest Vitamin D fad is the potential for toxicity. 

Some people have low vitamin D levels and we have been told to avoid the sun so vitamin D supplement use has climbed in recent years and some articles and even books are claiming that Vitamin D is the cause and cure for many things, making potential harm even greater.  But Vitamin D is important because it has been shown to boost bone health, that's why some foods are fortified with it. 

Coffee has been enjoying a health resurgence. It was once considered a bad thing because of caffeine but now it is lauded for its antioxidants. 

A new paper details how free radicals and antioxidants behave during every stage of the coffee brewing process, from intact bean to coffee brew.

Olive oil, canola oil, and vegetable oil largely consist of unsaturated fatty acids, whereas animal fat is richer in the saturated ones. After a meal, carbohydrates are the primary source of energy production by the heart but under fasting conditions, free fatty acids become the major energy producer. 

Metformin, a medication commonly taken for Type II diabetes, is being found in freshwater systems worldwide, and a new study says that it causes physical changes in male fish exposed to doses similar to the amount in wastewater effluent. It causes intersex in fish - male fish that produce eggs - according to the study in Chemosphere.

Because intersex fish occur more often downstream from wastewater treatment plants, studies have investigated the effect of hormones from birth control pills, but metformin is not a hormone and it targets blood sugar regulation so the correlation is surprising.

A new study concludes that most U.S. clinical registries that collect data on patient outcomes are substandard and lack critical features necessary to render the information they collect useful.

A paper in the Journal for Healthcare Quality reveals poor data monitoring and reporting that researchers say are hurting national efforts to study disease, guide patient choice of optimal treatments, formulate rational health policies and track in a meaningful way how well physicians and hospitals perform.

Citizen science, where the public pitches in to make large-scale analyses of data possible, has successfully predicted the path of a deadly plant disease, Sudden Oak Death, over a six-year period. 

The disease has killed millions of oak and tanoak trees in California and Oregon and can infect more than 100 susceptible host plants and can spread from nursery stock to residential landscapes. Starting in 2008, 1,000 volunteers collected leaf samples from trees in metropolitan and urban-wildland areas.