If you are on vacation in the Mediterranean basin and happen upon a person gnawing on a pine tree, fear not – the person is likely treating one of a myriad of inflammatory symptoms. While Western medicine tends to eschew traditional or “natural” therapies, the alternative movement is winning more and more converts as people seek to reduce health care costs and invest in a more organic lifestyle. The latest example of non-traditional medication comes to us from the lovely western Mediterranean, home to the Pinus pinaster , more commonly known as the maritime pine.

Often people taking antidepressants - or really any drug - have to balance side effects versus benefit overall. Those crippled by depression and/or anxiety may be willing to give up a few things to dispel the gray clouds. For example, sex.

Doctors in a study published in JAMA estimate antidepressant treatment-associated sexual dysfunction occurs in 30 percent to 70 percent of people treated for major depression. Also, women experience major depressive disorder at nearly double the rate of men and also experience greater subsequent sexual dysfunction.

Typically the palm of your hand doesn’t excite much interest, unless you’re a chirologist – those who divine the future through palm-reading.

  

Luckily for palmophiliacs, there’s a new show in town, and it just may change the way we think about biometric security systems.

 

A new biometrics system called PalmSecure, developed by Tokyo-based Fujitsu Ltd., works by matching the unique vein pattern in your palm to an infrared scan of your palm stored in a database. The system is akin to fingerprinting, but improves upon the oft-used identification system of police stations everywhere.

A story in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune caught my attention today, not only because it was an interesting article but because it may indicate a shift in our country’s approach to health care. As we all know, the number of people with diseases and conditions that are preventable is growing in America (and globally).

 One way to deal with this is on an individual level, treating the symptoms or curing the disease after the fact. In this model, the focus is on individual treatment, or downstream of the event. Another way to deal with this problem is at the community level, working to prevent the disease or condition from ever occurring. In this model, the focus is on prevention, or upstream of the event. (I’ve greatly oversimplified the issues – there are accidents, genetic predispositions, etc that we can’t prevent – but you get the general idea.)

Health care costs are skyrocketing, competing with gas, food and mortgages. Perhaps at an individual, day-to-day level, we can’t control gas, food or the housing crisis. But we can do something about our health. If we take steps to prevent something from occurring, we can dramatically increase the health of our nation (and ourselves) while reducing the money spent on treating health issues.

An article published in the Journal of Forensic Science details the fruits of a collaboration between the University of Leicester and the Northamptonshire Police, which led to a “major breakthrough” in crime detection, perhaps allowing “hundreds of cold cases being reopened,” according to a press release. The University’s Forensic Research Center has been working with Northamptonshire Police's scientific support unit to develop new ways of taking fingerprints from a crime scene. The collaboration between the boffins and bobbies – boffin being British slang for someone engaged in technical or scientific research, apparently, and bobby being slang for police – was formally launched May 14. (For those without an intimate knowledge of U.K. geography, Northamptonshire Police headquarters is located in Northampton, about 70 miles NW of London. The University of Leicester is another 40 miles or so northwest of Northampton.) The newly developed method enables scientists to visualize fingerprints even after the print itself has been removed, the press release said.

Do you ever get the feeling that science figures out a problem a few years after the fact, but then discovers that their methods for fixing the problem are also hopelessly outdated or just plain wrong, which puts us back another several years and at that point we may as well just give up and have wine with breakfast and hot fudge brownie sundaes for dinner? We know that Americans are fat. (If you don't believe me, look down - do you have a lap?) We also know that kids are getting fatter, which leads to a whole host of problems that will further tax our already overburdened health care system. Now, it seems as if maybe we're not getting fat as fast as we thought they were - although it could be a statistical aberration - and even if they are, we aren't sure if the diagnostic tools we have are relevant!