Washington state health officials will soon start asking detailed questions about the health of some state residents - and even give them brief physical exams.
The door-to-door survey of 1,100 randomly selected households across the state will try to learn more about our health, and especially about our risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes, to better target preventive educational programs.
Tens of thousands of women have a dramatically increased risk of breast cancer if they have a chest X-ray, according to research.
A study found that women genetically susceptible to breast cancer were 54 per cent more likely to get the disease if they had been given a chest X-ray. If they were younger than 20 when X-rayed, the risk of contracting the disease before the age of 40 increased two and a half times.
Comment: Yaaay modern medicine!
A major drug company is blocking access to a medicine that is cheaply and effectively saving thousands of people from going blind because it wants to launch a more expensive product on the market.
Ophthalmologists around the world, on their own initiative, are injecting tiny quantities of a colon cancer drug called Avastin into the eyes of patients with wet macular degeneration, a common condition of older age that can lead to severely impaired eyesight and blindness. They report remarkable success at very low cost because one phial can be split and used for dozens of patients.
Little Rock - It's been two years since Arkansas schools started sending letters home to parents with their kids' report cards - letters telling them if their children were fat.
Plenty of parents weren't happy. But a lot of them did something about it.
Suddenly there were more visits to the pediatrician for talks about weight problems. Fitness class attendance is up. Diet pill use by high-schoolers is down.
And more states are following Arkansas' lead, including California, Florida and Pennsylvania, which have adopted similar programs.
BEIJING - China's longest river is "cancerous" with pollution and rapidly dying, threatening drinking water supplies in 186 cities along its banks, state media said on Tuesday.
Chinese environmental experts fear worsening pollution could kill the Yangtze river within five years, Xinhua news agency said, calling for an urgent clean-up.
Los Angeles -- Alcoholic drinks made with artificial sweeteners lead to a high rate of alcohol absorption, resulting in a greater blood alcohol peak and concentration than from drinks made with sugar-based mixers.
The reason, Australian investigators told attendees here at Digestive Disease Week 2006, is the accelerated emptying of the stomach caused by artificial sweetening agents.
Andrew Bridges
Yahoo NewsMon, 22 May 2006 12:00 UTC
Washington- A government analysis of more than 100 soft drinks and other beverages turned up five with levels of cancer-causing benzene that exceed federal drinking-water standards, the Food and Drug Administration said Friday.
The companies that make the drinks have been alerted and either have reformulated their products or plan to do so, the FDA said. Government health officials maintain there is no safety concern, an opinion not shared by at least one environmental group.
Scientists say bacteria from soil in South Africa make a potent antibiotic that destroys some of the most dangerous superbugs - ones that kill 8,000 people each year in Canadian hospitals alone.
The antibiotic was used on mice and successfully fought the superbugs - methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) - according to Jun Wang of Merck Research Laboratories in New Jersey and his colleagues.
Carla K. Johnson and Mike Stobbe
Yahoo NewsFri, 05 May 2006 12:00 UTC
Chicago - White, middle-aged Americans - even those who are rich - are far less healthy than their peers in England, according to stunning new research that erases misconceptions and has experts scratching their heads.
Americans had higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, strokes, lung disease and cancer - findings that held true no matter what income or education level.
Those dismal results are despite the fact that U.S. health care spending is double what England spends on each of its citizens.
It starts with a vibrant woman dancing late into the night. "Your doctor never sees you like this," a voice-over says. The screen cuts to a shrunken, glum figure: "This is who your doctor sees." Next we see the woman in active shopping mode. "That is why so many people with bipolar disorder are being treated for depression and aren't getting any better - because depression is only half the story." We see the woman again depressed, looking at bills that have arrived in the post, then cut to her energetically painting her apartment. "That fast-talking, energetic, quick-tempered, up-all-night you," says the voice-over, "probably never shows up in the doctor's office."
Comment: Yaaay modern medicine!