Welcome to the Stars Hollow Gazette‘s Health and Fitness News weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.
Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.
You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Most food and beverage makers are fighting the proposed inclusion of an added sugars label on food packages. And, if there is a label, they don’t want sugars listed in teaspoons. They want it in grams, which Oliver says is because no one knows what a gram is.
So he’s offering a better solution. [..]
Since there are more than 5 grams of sugar in each circus peanut, Oliver said food makers should put a picture of one circus peanut on the front of the package for every 5 grams of sugar in the product.
“Do it, food makers. Expose your peanuts to the world. Because if you’re going to shove your peanuts in our mouths, the very least you can do is tell us what we’re swallowing.”
Oliver called on viewers to support this idea by tweeting food makers with the hashtag #ShowUsYourPeanuts.
Colon cancers may be increasing among young adults
New diagnoses of colon and rectal cancers are on the rise among young adults while the numbers are falling among people who are older, according to a new study.
If the trends continue , by 2030 the number of colon and rectal cancer cases will roughly double among people between the ages of 20 and 34 years old and grow by 28 percent to 46 percent for people ages 35 to 49 years, researchers found.
A new hepatitis C vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline based on the same technology as an experimental Ebola shot being fast-tracked through human trials has shown promise in early clinical tests, prompting strong and broad immune responses.
Researchers testing the vaccine — the first hepatitis C vaccine to reach second stage clinical trials — said their results in a group of 15 healthy human volunteers showed it was very safe and well tolerated, and generated immune responses of a strength never seen before in a vaccine against this disease.
German doctors use experimental heart drug in treating Ebola patient
Doctors in Germany said on Wednesday a patient infected with Ebola had recovered after they had treated him with an experimental drug initially designed to treat vascular problems and help heart attack patients.
Doctors at the Frankfurt University Hospital said the patient, who was medically evacuated to Frankfurt after working with Ebola victims in Sierra Leone, recovered after receiving the drug called FX06, developed by scientists at the Vienna General Hospital in Austria.
Bariatric surgery may alter taste buds, aid weight loss
Stomach-shrinking bariatric surgery may also foster changes in a person’s taste buds, which could help them lose weight and keep it off, according to a new study.
Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine in California found that patients who reported a decrease in taste intensity after bariatric surgery had lost more of their excess weight after three months than those whose sense of taste became more intense.
Empty Ebola beds in Liberia pose riddle for health workers
Health workers in Liberia are struggling to tell whether a growing number of empty beds at Ebola treatment centers is a sign that the country’s ramped up response to the disease is working – or just a lull in the epidemic.
Of the West African countries hit by the 11-month outbreak, Liberia has suffered the most deaths. The virus has killed nearly 5,000 people there and in neighboring Sierra Leone and Guinea – though numbers could be far higher owing to under-reporting of cases, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned.
Exclusive: Scientists tell U.S. – find recipe for Ebola cure in survivors’ blood
A group of scientists including three Nobel laureates in medicine has proposed that U.S. health officials chart a new path to developing Ebola drugs and vaccines by harnessing antibodies produced by survivors of the deadly outbreak.
The proposal builds on the use of “convalescent serum,” or survivors’ blood, which has been given to at least four U.S. Ebola patients who then recovered from the virus. It is based on an approach called passive immunization, which has been used since the 19th century to treat diseases such as diphtheria but has been largely surpassed by vaccination.
Young kids with food allergies may learn helplessness
Parents managing their preschoolers’ food allergies should also be alert to the need for their kids to have chances to solve other kinds of problems, suggests a new study.
“I think the biggest take home message is to just be careful that you don’t let the real need to supervise and keep your child safe interfere with letting your child develop independence,” said Linda Dahlquist, who led the research.
About 4 percent of children in the U.S. have life-threatening food allergies that require parents to constantly monitor what their children eat.
Just taking breaks from being sedentary may benefit older adults
Older adults could greatly benefit from breaking up their sedentary time throughout the day, even if it’s just shifting from sitting to a standing position, according to a new study.
“As a general finding, older adults should make nine interruptions for every hour spent in sedentary behavior,” said Luís B. Sardinha of the Exercise and Health Laboratory at the University of Lisbon in Portugal.
“In fact, just the act of standing-up can be a path to achieve an improved physical function in older ages,” said Sardinha, who led the study.
Psoriasis or rheumatoid arthritis linked to heart risk
Several conditions that stem from a malfunctioning immune system – psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis and rheumatoid arthritis – may create a higher than average risk for heart-related problems and death, a new study finds.
“It’s not terribly surprising that there is an increased risk of heart disease because of the similar levels of systemic inflammation,” said co-lead author Dr. Alexis Ogdie of the rheumatology division in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Germany reports first case of bird flu strain in Europe
Germany has detected a highly pathogenic bird flu strain which hit Asia severely but has never been reported in Europe, the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said on Thursday.
Turkeys were found infected with the H5N8 serotype of the disease on Nov. 4 on a farm in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, OIE reported on its website, citing data submitted by the German ministry of agriculture.
Siblings of kids with peanut allergy may be overprotected from nuts
Parents who have one child with peanut allergy may be shielding their other kids from peanuts when it’s not necessary, and might actually increase the child’s allergy risk, according to a new study.
Canadian researchers found that a large percentage of siblings of kids with documented peanut allergy had never been exposed to peanuts, and had even been diagnosed as allergic without ever showing signs of it.
U.S. OKs genetically modified potato with lower cancer risk
The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Friday approved the first genetically modified potato for commercial planting in the United States, a move likely to draw the ire of groups opposed to artificial manipulation of foods.
The so-called Innate potato, developed by the J.R. Simplot Company, is engineered to contain less of a suspected human carcinogen that occurs when a conventional potato is fried, and is also less prone to bruising during transport.
Idaho-based Simplot is a major supplier of frozen French fries to fast food giant McDonald’s Corp.
Google Glass may obstruct peripheral vision
The characteristic hardware of the Google Glass frame partially obstructs peripheral vision above the right eye, according to an ophthalmologist who owns the wearable tech himself.
“I actually had Google Glass myself when it first came out, and I almost got into a car accident when I didn’t see a car coming from the right,” said Dr. Tsontcho Ianchulev of the University of California, San Francisco.
Menthol cigarettes no safer than regular tobacco – and maybe riskier
Menthol cigarettes might taste better than regular tobacco but are no safer and might lead to more severe lung problems, a new study suggests.
Smokers who reported using menthol cigarettes had more trips to the emergency room and more hospitalizations or treatment for severe worsening of their lung disease compared to people smoking regular tobacco, the study found.
These worsenings, or “exacerbations,” might include difficulty breathing or a major increase in phlegm that lasts for days.
Unconditional acceptance may help kids cope with setbacks
Kids who feel accepted and supported by their peers “no matter what” are less likely to have negative feelings about themselves after a setback, new research suggests.
Kids in the study who spent time thinking about how they had felt accepted and valued by their peers, even when they made mistakes, were less likely to feel badly about themselves after getting poor grades three weeks later.
“Our findings suggest that it is important for students’ self-feelings to feel accepted and valued unconditionally,” Eddie Brummelman told Reuters Health in an email.
Parent-infant communication differs by gender shortly after birth
Mothers are more likely to respond to their infant’s vocal cues than fathers, and infants respond preferentially to mother’s voice, according to a new study
Researchers also found that mothers may be more likely to vocalize back and forth with female babies compared to male babies.
“We know that talking and playing with an infant improves cognitive and language skills,” said senior author Dr. Betty R. Vohr of the pediatrics department at Women & Infants Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island.
WHO recommends naloxone to prevent 20,000 overdose deaths in U.S.
More than 20,000 deaths might be prevented every year in the United States alone if naloxone, used to counter drug overdoses, was more widely available, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.
Few countries have such good data as the United States, but the WHO estimates about 69,000 people around the world die each year from overdoses of heroin or other opioids, with Iran, Russia and China known to have high numbers of opioid users.
Naloxone, a generic drug, is used to counter overdoses of heroin and prescription opioids including hydrocodone, oxycodone, codeine and tramadol.
Health workers miss Louisiana medical conference over Ebola warning
A healthcare worker in Liberia is among those staying away from a tropical medicine conference in New Orleans after the state of Louisiana warned of quarantining attendees potentially exposed to Ebola, Doctors Without Borders said on Monday.
Amanda Tiffany, an epidemiologist with the humanitarian aid group, was one of at least 10 people blocked from attending the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) on threat of quarantine, conference officials said, adding that they oppose the policy.
To prevent more kidney stones, drink water
People who have had a kidney stone should drink enough fluids to produce two liters of urine per day in order to prevent more kidney stones from forming, according to new guidelines from the American College of Physicians.
If drinking more fluids doesn’t work, patients can try “water pills” (known as diuretics) or other drugs to reduce stone formation. But both of these recommendations are weak, since the evidence for them is moderate to low quality, the authors write.
Recent Comments