Public Health

The war on fat is back, thanks to an aggressive campaign by food pundits related to sugar, GMOs and corporations. For a while, it looked like all thin people were going to be placed into mandatory body image counseling, the Kardashians had made plump the new natural, but doctors have overruled activists like Michael Pollan and Marion Nestle and their beliefs about nutrition and affirmed that it's calories that matter, not the scary story of the week. A new survey by the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) and NORC at the University of Chicago finds that 81 percent of…

It's no secret that smoking causes lung cancer, but lost in the more recent smoke and mirrors about the new war on tobacco is the fact cigarettes are also linked to many other diseases, and the risk is compounded in diabetics who smoke. Diabetes, the kind occurring naturally and the lifestyle type 2 version, is a chronic illness in which there are high levels of glucose in the blood. More than 29 million people in the U.S. have diabetes, up from the previous estimate of 26 million in 2010, according to a report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One in four people…

 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), obesity has more than quadrupled in adolescents over the past 30 years and it is estimated that more than one-third of kids and adolescents in the U.S. are at least overweight. Obesity in childhood and adolescence is associated with a number of later health risks, such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. A new study has linked teenage obesity to irreparable damage to their bones, according to a new study being presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).…

You should not smoke cigarettes and if you already do, you should stop. Though the U.S. FDA has damaged the smoking cessation possibilities for current users, and California has outright subsidized cigarette companies with punitive taxes on vaping, there may still be ways to limit the destructive potential of cigarettes: Red wine. A new study finds that wine before lighting up a cigarette can counteract some of the short-term negative effects of smoking on blood vessels. Cigarette smoke causes acute endothelial damage, vascular and systemic inflammation, and cellular aging. Red wine…

It would seem obvious that a diluted nicotine vapor is much less harmful than toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke - yet groups like the Centers for Disease Control and Tobacco Free Kids have instead adopted a 'quit or die' mentality about smoking. Yet we engage in harm reduction when it comes to needle exchanges and, strangely, the political party that was against those is for e-cigarettes, while the party that is on the other side wants any smoking cessation or harm reduction tool not controlled by pharmaceutical companies to be penalized. The FDA is no help - it was recently revealed the…

Not that many years ago, many reusable food and beverage containers on the market worldwide were made from polycarbonate plastic.  Polycarbonate, which is made from bisphenol A (BPA), is an almost ideal material for these products since its clarity is comparable to glass, making it easy to see what’s inside, and it’s virtually shatter-proof – an important attribute for consumer products that could be dropped.  For years though, BPA has attracted considerable attention from scientists, environmental activists and the media.  Now, as a result of that attention, few of these…

In a randomized crossover trial, 45 healthy adults, average age 50, were asked to swap their usual loaf for bread made from ancient and modern grains during three separate interventions each lasting 8 weeks. In the first phase, participants were randomly assigned to include organically (22 participants) or conventionally cultivated (23) bread made from the ancient grain Verna in their diet. Eight weeks later, all participants were assigned to eat bread made with the modern grain Blasco. Finally, participants were assigned to consume bread made with two different ancient grain varieties (…

Democratic Presidential contender Hillary Clinton is back on the campaign trail after the 68-year-old rested at her home in Chappaqua, New York for a few days last week following what appeared to be a dizzy spell during a visit to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2016. After that, Dr. Lisa Bardack, M.D., chair of internal medicine at the Mount Kisco Medical Group and her personal physician since 2001, released a statement which read, “Secretary Clinton has been experiencing a cough related to allergies. On Friday, during follow up…

In 1991, Theo Colborn convened a group of international scientists to discuss concerns about the trans-generational effects of persistent chemicals on predator species in the Great Lakes.  Their report, and a subsequent book authored by Colborn and her colleagues entitled Our Stolen Future, Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence and Survival?,  proposed that many chemicals which display an ability to interact or interfere with the human endocrine system have the ability to elicit adverse health effects at doses far lower than the toxicities caused through other modes of…

On the American Council on Science and Health Facebook page, you just never know what you are going to find, but if you had told me I would find goat yoga I'd have made...goat noises at you. Yet there it is, courtesy of the state of Oregon, the place where Californians who think San Francisco is too politically conservative and scientifically evidence-based move. And so goat yoga is a thing there. I have no issue with goats, they will eat garbage, mow the lawn, etc. and seem pleasant enough, but have these goats gotten regulatory approval? Have they even taken a training class? Nope,…