Public Health

The term 'ethnobotany' was first applied by Harshberger in 1895 to the study of plants used by primitive and aboriginal people.  The term is not new even to India, Kirtikar and Basu (1935) stated”, The ancient Hindus should be given the credit for cultivating what is now called ethnobotany”. The term has been variously defined and interpreted by subsequent workers. Jones (1941) defined it as the study of the inter-relations of primitive man and plants. Schultes (1962) interpreted ethnobotany as “usually the study of relationship which exists between people of a primitive society and…

Work-hour caps for surgical residents designed to lessen complication rates have not accomplished that. Instead, the period after work-hour limits were introduced saw an uptick in complication rates , according to findings which raise concerns that limiting residents' work hours isn't really a benefit. The analysis was designed to evaluate the patient safety impact of rules limiting the hours worked by residents, a measure introduced in 2003. The goal of the limits, a maximum of 88 hours per week, was to reduce the risk of errors and injury related to resident fatigue. The researchers…

Sometimes when things catch the attention of the kookier segments of the public, they really take off. Fracking is a good example.  Though it's been around since the 1940s, once it got really popular people started inventing fake illnesses to get into the mainstream media Scare Journalism of the Week pieces. But natural gas isn't the only cleaner energy activists have found a reason to hate: Solar power is blocked by lawsuits, hydropower damages the ecosystem and wind power kills birds, as Alex Berezow and I detail in Science Left Behind. But fracking gets its own special attention - it…

A new prostate cancer awareness survey found widespread misconceptions about the disease and says the emotional impact on men is underestimated. The physical effects of prostate cancer are widely known but men know more myths than facts about how prevalent it is and what could happen. Janssen Biotech, Inc. has released the results of its "Mind Over Manhood: Misconceptions About Prostate Cancer" survey and it reveals a significant gap between the facts about prostate cancer and what men believe about the disease. Cancer of the prostate is the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in American…

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. An analysis from Washington State University called the ENHANCE project looked at 72 child care providers from 45 child care settings before and after a three-hour wellness…

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). The data presented today at the American Heart Association (AHA) Scientific Sessions evaluated clinical outcomes, such as stroke, major bleeding and mortality, in relation to patient risk profiles and antithrombotic treatments in a representative worldwide AF population. Of the 9,971…

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. All participants were free of cardiovascular disease upon entry into the project and data on the following risk factors…

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. Dr. Lucie Pollard, a nutrition expert at the school, will be discussing what motivates people to eat, what influences their eating choices and how the nation can tackle obesity. A principal lecturer at the university, Pollard specializes in the…

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.  As it passed through his stomach, he related the story of how William Beaumont (1785–1853), U.S. Army surgeon, the “Father of Gastric Physiology”, who did experiments while treating…

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. I can understand why companies would stop selling them - the bad press from hospitalizations isn't going to help the bottom line - but I don't understand why anyone eats them.  Why…