Public Health

When is a smoker not a smoker? When they live in California and simply choose to self-identify as a non-smoker. Who are we to criticize the self-identify of people in a state where boys can just declare they are female and use a girl's restroom? Smoking has plummeted in the last few decades- health statistics, rampant sin taxes and billions of dollars in anti-smoking campaigns will do that - but University of California, San Diego School of Medicine scholars wonder about people who say they use cigarettes but didn't consider themselves to be "smokers" in  the 2011 California…

Many people in their school years like Manga comics. They predate the American kind by about 150 years, are generally more complex and even older American adults got an introduction to it in cartoon versions of "Astro Boy." In recent decades, they have grown in popularity so it was only a matter of time before someone came up with the idea of social engineering using them. A recent pilot program in Brooklyn used minority students and found that exposure to Manga promoting fruit intake significantly improved healthy snack selection. Conclusion: we can solve obesity by using a Transportation-…

While the developed world has levels of scientific and technical capacity that allow crop pests to be effectively managed, poorer nations, where food production is incredibly important, are caught in a tug-of-war between modern agriculture and an activist culture that tells them not to trust science. As a result, not only are crop pests not effectively managed, with the disastrous drops in yields that brings, but no one can even be sure what crop pests there are. The abundance of crop pests in developing countries may be greatly underestimated, according  to an analysis of data on the…

You don't need to show kids a frying egg in a pan to get the message across about drugs; just show them this statistic.  Heroin and cocaine addicts in Spain have a fatality rate that is 14.3 times higher than for the general population, and that is among people seeking treatment. For those who never seek treatment, it is probably far worse. Even users of cocaine alone have a 5.1 times higher fatality rate. In Spain, the authors say, the majority of deaths related to cocaine are not correctly certified so very few studies have been carried out that analyze the consequences of consuming…

We have a biological clock related to sleep cycles and a new paper says we have weight loss cycles related to behavior; people are going to gain weight on the weekend so if they lose more during the week, that weight loss cycle will result in better health. Dr. Brian Wansink of the marketing department at Cornell University, in collaboration with researchers from the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Tampere University of Technology, looked into the impact that the seven-days-a-week human cycle has on weight. 80 adults participated, ranging in age from 25 to 62 years old. They were…

A new review doesn't add any value to supplements but at least it shows that people who spend money on supplements are more inclined to be developing a healthier lifestyle overall. The review by  Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) consultant Annette Dickinson, Ph.D., and CRN's senior vice president, scientific and regulatory affairs, Duffy MacKay, N.D., only covered 20 articles, and those were all surveys anyway, so it's no surprise they found what they set out to find, that "overall, the evidence suggests that users of dietary supplements are seeking wellness and are consciously…

States that have decriminalized marijuana have also seen dramatic increases in children requiring medical intervention, according to research in the Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Association of Unintentional Pediatric Exposures with Decriminalization of Marijuana in the U.S.") which analyzed call volume to U.S. poison centers from January 2005 through December 2011.  The call rate to poison centers in states that decriminalized marijuana increased by more than 30 percent per year between 2005 and 2011, while the call rate in non-legal states did not change. More pediatric exposures in…

Population health has a lot of different factors - and infant mortality is one of them but it doesn't tell the entire story. Some in America laud Cuban health care, for example, but Cuba just had a cholera epidemic, something that doesn't happen in the United States. And Cubans abort babies if there are signs of trouble, as do many industrialized nations, while America does not. Trying to save more babies is one reason why America ranks 27th among industrialized nations in infant mortality, and if you are in the business of criticizing American health care, you can stop thinking critically…

A new survey finds that nearly half of HIV-infected teenagers and young adults don't seek treatment unless the disease advances, which can them at risk for dangerous infections and long-term complications. It is accepted that starting treatment as early as possible can go long way toward keeping the virus in check and prevent the cardiovascular, renal and neurological damage characteristic of poorly controlled HIV infection over time. Those most likely to delay treatment until they had advanced infections were males, blacks and Hispanics, the paper in JAMA Pediatrics found. …

At 78 percent among people aged 50 and over, South Africa has the highest rate of high blood pressure reported for any country in the world, at any time in history. And less than 10 percent of people are effectively controlling their condition with medication, according to an analysis of data from the Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE) conducted by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which surveyed more than 35,000 people aged 50 and over in South Africa, China, Ghana, India, Mexico and Russia.  High blood pressure increases people's risk of experiencing stroke, heart…