The British Medical Association recently (2009) released a comprehensive, evidenced-based guide to infant and childhood health and nutrition, called "Early Life Nutrition and Lifelong Health." This is a timely e-book in light of the epidemic of life style diseases that now afflict our youngest citizens. These concerns and trends have been detailed in the previous post, Obesity - #1 Childhood Health Concern ...

The research arm of the University of Oxford* reports that even moderate levels of obesity can significantly reduce one's life span. In the largest ever study of the effects of obesity on mortality, researchers analyzed 57 studies that tracked approximately 900,000 participants for an average of 10-15 years. The results will appear in a future volume of The Lancet. Body mass index, or BMI, was used to asses ...

Roulette William Smith, Ph.D. details a potentially ground breaking theory that purports to unravel the mystery surrounding the underlying causative factors of autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, and a host of other mental and physical illnesses in his paper entitled, "Inferring an Autovirulent Epigenetic Etiology for the Autism Spectrum and Schizophrenia*." Dr. Smith's theory originated from insights ...

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) recently published* the results of their investigation into the varying levels of pesticide contamination of 47 domestically available fruits and vegetables. The EWG analyzed approximately 87,000 pesticide tests conducted from 2000-2007 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The complete study results and a nice "Shopper ...

This review covers an open access article* that investigates prevalence rates of adult non-medical (illicit) methamphetamine use. Check the end of this post for a link to download a free PD of the original journal article. This is truly a sad topic because chronic methamphetamine use can lead to not only major physical health problems, but also to psychosis, suicide, violent behavior, sexual promiscuity, an ...

In a long term follow up (median = 11 years) study, researchers* report that women with breast cancer who received group therapy (i.e., psychological treatment in a group format) versus those in an assessment only group (n = 227) experienced statistically significant improvements life expectancy 11 years after diagnosis. Group therapy consisted of 8-12 participants and 2 psychologists with an overall focus ...

A freely available PDF article entitled, Helping Doctors and Patients Make Sense of Health Statistics, may be a great resource for those confused or intimidated by common health-related statistical terms. For example, try to define survival rate, positive predictive value, sensitivity, and specificity. Check the article* to see if your definitions are accurate. You might be surprised. The authors report tha ...

An in-depth investigation by the Environment Working Group* (EWP) revealed that 10 different brands of bottle water contained some contaminants that were well above legal limits established for public tap water.   The researchers found a total of 38 contaminants, some cancer causing, across 10 brands purchased from different regions in the United States. This equated to an average of 8 contaminants per bran ...

Kaiser Permanente is a progressive not-for-profit health plan provider and one of the initial advocates of behavioral health integration into overall primary medical care.  Newly published research* suggests that people who lose weight immediately following Type 2 Diabetes, "insulin resistance," diagnosis realize improved health outcomes, such as reaching blood pressure and blood sugar goals.  Another impor ...

A national poll conducted by C.S. Mott Children's Hospital's National Poll on Children's Health suggests that obesity problems are not limited to adults. In fact, childhood obesity came in at #1 in their poll, bumping smoking and drug abuse from the top spots a year ago. ...