Public Health

Child Care Providers Can Be Part Of The Solution For Childhood Obesity

Nov 08 2012 | 2 comment(s)

Should child care providers be tasked with childhood obesity too?

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys found that over 21% of children ages 2 to 5 were considered overweight or even obese. That has led some advocates to posit that child care settings can tackle teaching children about nutrition, since nearly 50% of children in the United States under age 5 go to some kind of child care.

Poor Control Of Anticoagulant Therapy Leads To Increased Adverse Events For Patients With Atrial Fibrillation

Nov 08 2012 | 0 comment(s)

Twelve-month data from the Global Anticoagulant Registry in the FIELD (GARFIELD) show that the poor management of stroke prevention therapy is widespread in clinical practice, which may lead to elevated rates of mortality, stroke and bleeding among individuals with newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation (AF).

If You Are Heart Healthy In Middle Age, You Are Likely To Have 14 Extra Years

Nov 06 2012 | 0 comment(s)

People with heart health in middle age may live up to 14 years longer, free of cardiovascular disease, compared to peers who have two or more cardiovascular disease risk factors, according to a new paper.

For the analysis, researchers pulled data from five different cohorts included in the Cardiovascular Lifetime Risk Pooling Project and looked at the participants' risk of all forms of fatal and nonfatal cardiovascular disease from ages 45, 55 and 65 through 95 years of age.

How To Lose 5 Billion Calories

Nov 03 2012 | 0 comment(s)

While the goal of en enlightened society has always been food so plentiful and cheap that even poor people could afford to be fat, it hasn't been without pitfalls in the form of a looming crisis for society, caused by millions of people who are seriously overweight - that will be the topic of a University of Greenwich public lecture on November 28th.

An Alimentary Voyage

Nov 01 2012 | 0 comment(s)

Yesterday evening, on BBC4 Television, I watched a repeat of Guts: The Strange and Wonderful World of the Human Stomach.

TV presenter Michael Mosley was the main exhibit in a public experiment at the Science Museum in London, exploring the inside story of the human digestive system. He swallowed a mini camera in a pill that took photographs three times a second as it passed through his gut.

Stop Selling Sprouts - And Certainly Stop Eating Them

Oct 29 2012 | 21 comment(s)

Kroger, America's largest supermarket chain, announced it will stop selling sprouts because of their "potential food safety risk". It joins retail behemoth Walmart, which stopped selling them way back in 2010.

"After a thorough, science-based review, we have decided to voluntarily discontinue selling fresh sprouts," Payton Pruett, Kroger's vice president of food safety, said in a statement that USA Today got.

What's Healthier, A GMO Cupcake Or An Organic One?

Oct 27 2012 | 21 comment(s)

Are you healthier if you eat cupcake from a mix you buy in a grocery store, which would be required to have a GMO label if California's Proposition 37 passes, or an 'organic' cupcake from Whole Foods?

On a science site, you know I would not ask that question if the answer were not obvious. Humans are inherently irrational, even in our quest to rationalize our odd behavior, like claiming random mutations due to high-energy cosmic rays are better than precisely controlled human ones, because the former are 'natural' - or eating an incredibly healthy cupcake because it is more expensive and in a fancy 'health food' store.

New Non-Invasive, Non-Ionizing Radiation Therapy For Bone Metastases Pain Gets FDA Approval

Oct 23 2012 | 0 comment(s)

ExAblate(R)MRI-guided Focused Ultrasound is effective in reducing pain from bone metastases in patients who could not undergo radiation therapy. Patients reported significant improvement in well-being, function, and reduction in medication use.

What 57 Percent Of Dieticians Recommend For Nutritional Success

Oct 22 2012 | 0 comment(s)

57 percent of dietitians say nutritional success only happens if people can indulge once in a while; in foods where taste is the priority.

A survey of 200 dietitians and attendees at the Food&Nutrition Conference&Expo on Oct. 6th-8th by online retailer FreshDirect determined that a majority of respondents said they would acquire a taste for anything that's good for them and like it, 65 percent admit to cooking or seasoning their vegetables to tolerate the taste.

Guidelines For Clostridium Difficile Infection Testing Not Being Followed In Europe

Oct 19 2012 | 0 comment(s)

Data presented at the international ID Week 2012 conference in San Diego showed that over three quarters (78%) of healthcare professionals surveyed in Europe believed that they may not be following guidelines for the testing of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI), despite survey respondents believing that CDI is increasing with a large number of cases going undiagnosed.[1]