Public Health

Earlier today, Dr. Leonardo Trasande and colleagues from New York University (NYU) published yet another in a series of economic studies which they interpret to indicate that low level general population exposures to some brominated flame retardants (PBDEs)1 and organophosphate pesticides (OPPs)2 are now causing a larger share of societal economic burden from IQ loss and intellectual disability than from what they regard as the more traditional threats of lead and methylmercury.  It is a serious allegation, and for those who conscientiously strive to ensure that currently available…

In a Current Treatment Options in Gastroenterology review, a nutritionist and a gastroenterologist claim that "ultra-processed" food causes obesity. If you are not familiar with ultra-processed food, that is a new-ish designation, an arbitrary metric of numerous things to separate it from regular processed food. All bread made in the last 10,000 years is "processed" food, for example, and 'all food is processed' reality hobbled efforts by integrative medicine/food is medicine proponents to claim our modern lifestyle is killing us, when the science community instead knows it's simply obesity…

For many people, the start of a year is a time for new health resolutions – be it eat more vegetables, consume less sugar or drink more water. Keeping hydrated is essential for body functions such as temperature regulation, transporting nutrients and removing waste. Water even acts as a lubricant and shock absorber for joints. But while most people know they should drink more water, it can be a bit boring. So what about sparkling water as an option to liven things up a bit? After all, sparkling water is just as good as normal water, right? Not quite. Fizzy fluids Sparkling water is made by…

With health insurance costs having gone up for many Americans by 300 percent since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, there is concern about ways to contain costs. No one is willing to contain costs when it comes to children, a new study shows. In America's sue-and-settle culture, the big cost for medicine was not drugs or malpractice insurance, it was "defensive" medicine; running tests doctors know patients don't need, or providing a treatment that won't help, because they have to check off every box to prevent lawyers waiting to sue for malpractice. That is still evident today…

Sperm quality can be reduced by several lifestyle factors, like obesity and related diseases such as type 2 diabetes, but a new examination of epigenetic phenomena - gene expression changing even if the DNA sequence is not changed -  finds that even diet can impact sperm quality, and in just two weeks. The concern is that such epigenetic changes might be able to lead to properties being transferred from a parent to offspring via the sperm or the egg.  This pilot study in humans followed a study of male fruit flies which had consumed excess sugar shortly before mating more often…

The CDC has updated its fatality and illness list due to illicit marijuana vaping. Now there have been 54 deaths and 2,506 hospitalizations. The culprit is Vitamin E acetate, needed to make marijuana tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)products into a vapor because, unlike nicotine, it does not dilute readily. Most of the products were purchased from corrupt vendors and now DEA has seized 44 websites advertising the sale of illicit vaping cartridges containing THC. The sites were advertising THC vaping cartridges in various brand names alongside pictures and statements about THC levels or other…

Filtered coffee has been linked to lower risk of type 2 diabetes by an epidemiology group. That's an awfully narrow claim, right? Like a baseball player arguing he led the team in 9th inning doubles in the month of August.(1) Coffee has already been touted as a way to lower risk of type 2 diabetes for a while. Before you get too excited about this "filtered" coffee preventing diabetes, we need to remember what they are measuring - numbers, not coffee. This is not a science finding, it is an "exploratory" result. Drinking coffee, filtered in paper or Turkish in a pan, is not going to prevent…

A cross-sectional study has found that head and neck injuries related to cell phone use increased steadily over a recent 20-year period. But that may not be meaningful in a relative risk way. The sample was just over 2,500 cases from 1998 through 2017. Media will trumpet 300 percent since 2007 but that doesn't make injuries common. It just means that as phones changed from phones to messagers to full-on portable televisions and computers people are able to walk and be distracted more. Data are from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) database, which collects data about…

Although I’m a trained and credentialed epidemiologist, and an ardent supporter of the professional discipline as a foundational science that underlies legitimate public health efforts, several of my past blogs (Bond 2016 and Bond 2017) have remarked on the many limitations of observational epidemiology1 research for establishing disease causation.   Of course, I’m not the only such critic writing about it. Of late, observational studies have been getting a particularly bad rap in the popular press as too unreliable. This has been especially true with respect to their application to the…

Although I’m a trained and credentialed epidemiologist, and an ardent supporter of the professional discipline as a foundational science that underlies legitimate public health efforts, several of my past blogs (Bond 2016 and Bond 2017) have remarked on the many limitations of observational epidemiology1 research for establishing disease causation. Of course, I’m not the only such critic writing about it. Of late, observational studies have been getting a particularly bad rap in the popular press as too unreliable. This has been especially true with respect to their application to the topic…