Public Health

Even though many of us are aware of the higher rates of alcohol-related traffic fatalities on New Year’s Eve, myths about drinking and driving persist. These myths are related to how quickly alcohol affects the body and how long these effects can last. Scientific studies supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) on how alcohol affects our brains and bodies provide important information that challenges these commonly-held, but incorrect beliefs. Many New Year’s revelers get into trouble because they generally do not recognize that critical driving-related…

It's probably not a good idea to buy a car for a teenager, but for parents inclined to do so, financial prudence is recommended: They will not drive with the same skill as an older person, the risk of accident is higher, they may not know how to maintain it and those things all add up to expensive mistakes. But a new study finds that almost 50% of teen drivers killed on US roads in the past few years were driving vehicles that were 11 or more years old. So is that because more teens are driving older cars because they are more accident prone, or that cars in the 1990s and early 2000s…

Every ten minutes in Australia someone has a heart attack. For 17% this will be fatal; the rest get a second chance. If you have had a close call, these five food tips will help get your health back on track. 1. Eat more wholegrain cereals There are heart health benefits from eating a range of wholegrain fibers. These include barley, buckwheat, bulgur wheat, corn and popcorn, millet, oats, quinoa, brown rice, wild rice, rye, triticale (a wheat-rye hybrid) and spelt wheat. The health benefits of some fibers have been studied more extensively than others. Beta-glucan, for instance, is a…

Examples of poisonings due to people mistakenly picking and consuming poisonous botanicals in the wild made it clear that, contrary to claims by an alarming number of nutritionists and supplement sales compnies, natural does not mean safe. Nature has always been just as toxic as any synthetic chemical and people being sold botanicals need public awareness, and they won't get it from the people making money off of their lack of knowledge. When health problems occur, medical professionals also need better awareness of negative health consequences related to consuming certain botanicals – both…

Being obese brings with it a greater risk of heart disease, but patients who are obese before developing heart failure live longer than normal weight patients with the same condition, an 'obesity paradox' that is still unexplained. Using data from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study, researchers looked at body mass index before the initial diagnosis of heart failure in 1,487 patients and followed them for 10 years, comparing the survival rates of obese, overweight and normal weight patients after the development of heart failure. The majority of patients included in the study were…

Congress provided a historic victory for the legal marijuana industry with the massive government-funding bill passed Saturday night, December 13. The bill will end the federal government’s ban on selling or using pot for health reasons in states where it’s legalized. Within the $1.1 trillion spending measure are protections for industrial hemp and medical marijuana companies in states where they are legal. In addition, an amendment to the measure prohibits the Department of Justice from spending money to go after medical cannabis programs in legal-weed states. When signed into law…

Use of a light-emitting electronic device like an iPad in the hours before bedtime can adversely impact overall health, alertness, and the circadian clock which synchronizes the daily rhythm of sleep to external environmental time cues, according to a new study which compared the biological effects of reading an light-emitting electronic device (LE-eBook) to a printed book.  Previous research has shown that blue light suppresses melatonin, impacts the circadian clock and increase alertness, but little was known about the effects of this popular technology on sleep. The use of light…

In case you are fooled by the title, and are expecting to learn about a retro-metal group with a really terrible name, I apologize in advance. That's not what this is about. At some point during the rancorous comment section that followed my last piece about Dr. Oz,  I promised I wouldn't be writing about him anymore. I lied. Unfortunately, these days there is little downside to doing this. At worst, it will make me slightly more likely to hold an elected office in New Jersey. "Lied" may not be accurate anyhow—more like I lacked the essential internal control mechanisms to enable me to…

City folk may not think much of rural living - but they are healthier. A new study finds that diabetes, once rather uncommon, is now affecting 387 million people worldwide - and 77 percent of it is in developed nations. The reason is stress, write the authors of a paper in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology&Metabolism. City life - noise, crime and traffic all lead to higher stress and the body producing more of the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol can counteract insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar, and slow the body's production of it and that makes people…

Airline pilots can be exposed to the same amount of UV-A radiation as if they visited a tanning bed, because airplane windshields do not completely block UV-A radiation. Airplane windshields are commonly made of polycarbonate plastic or multilayer composite glass. UV-A radiation can cause DNA damage in cells and its role in melanoma is well known, according to the background information in an article by Martina Sanlorenzo, M.D., of the University of California, San Francisco, and co-authors. It may be why airline crews have 2X the incidence of melanoma as the general population. They measured…