Health Warnings

According to a study published in the August 1, 2007 issue of the journal Sleep, rotating shift workers have significantly lower levels of serotonin (precursor to melatonin) than people who work regular day shifts. A total of 683 men of European ancestry were evaluated for this study; 437 were day workers, and 246 were rotating shift workers.

Serotonin is a hormone that circulates throughout your body. It is also a neurotransmitter in your central nervous system (brain and spinal cord). A chronically low level of serotonin is associated with many health challenges, the most common of which are:

Since 1997, I've evaluated and worked with about two dozen people who have had knee or hip replacement surgeries. A few have reported having better quality of life following joint replacement surgery, while the majority have reported experiencing more difficulties than they did before having surgery.

If you have a severely deteriorated joint that prevents or significantly hinders basic activities of daily living, I think that joint replacement surgery is an option worth considering. But I think it's critical to do two things before undergoing surgery:

Before you use a conventional lice-treatment shampoo for yourself or your children, consider this: Many lice-treatment shampoos contain ingredients that have been banned as agricultural insecticides and are extremely toxic. For instance, the insecticide lindane, once used to protect crops such as barley, wheat, and corn from pests, is no longer used by farms in Canada, and has been banned in over 50 countries around the world. But it can probably still be found at your local drug store, in bottles of lice shampoo.

In 2002, the state of California in the United States banned lindane from being used in pharmaceutical products due to reports that the chemical was causing skin irritations, dizziness, headaches, convulsions, and even death.

Approximately 60,000 to 70,000 cell phones are sold each day in the United States. Over 110 million Americans use cell phones. And worldwide, it is estimated that approximately 1 billion people use cell phones. As the number of cell phones, cell phone towers, and other wireless antennas increase rapidly in industrialized nations, should you be concerned about the effects that regular exposure to radio frequency radiation can have on your health?

If you're not concerned about the effect that wireless devices and broadcasting antennas can have on your health, I encourage you to view "Public Exposure: DNA, Democracy and the Wireless Revolution," a documentary that provides the best overall look at the connection between radio frequency radiation and human health that I have ever come across.

According to a report in the January 19 issue of BMJ, pharmaceutical companies exaggerate the benefits of osteoporosis drugs, and downplay the risks of prescribing osteoporosis drugs for women whose bones appear to be slightly weakened (a condition called osteopenia).

A news release from Starbucks indicates that 167,000 coffee mugs in the U.S. and Canada are being recalled because of a design defect that makes these mugs a burn hazard.

The release indicates that the handles on Fusion Coffee Mugs can detach without warning, allowing coffee to spill and burn the user. Thus far, Starbucks has received 23 reports of handles breaking off of these mugs - nine of these cases have resulted in minor burns.

If you wear lipstick on a regular basis, please know that a test that was recently commissioned by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics found 20 different brand-name lipsticks to contain lead. Eleven of these lipsticks were discovered to contain more than the 0.1 ppm limit that has been set by the FDA to protect children from direct ingestion of dangerous amounts of lead.

If you use synthetic air fresheners in your car and/or living space, you should know that you are increasing your risk of developing a variety of health problems. Headaches, earaches, depression, an irregular heart beat, and diarrhea in babies are just a few of many health challenges that have been linked with regular use of synthetic air fresheners.

A recent report by the associated press warns about the danger of riding escalators while wearing soft-soled clogs.

Here are the highlights from this report:

1. The flexibility and grip of soft-soled clogs can cause them to become entrapped at the top, bottom, and sides of escalators.

2. A four-year old boy in northern Virginia got his clog-clad foot caught in an escalator in August of 2007 at a local mall. His mother was able to pull his foot free, but the nail on his big toe was almost completely torn off, and he experienced heavy bleeding from the injury.

Last week, the New York Times ran a story about a 53-year old Colorado man whose penchant for microwave buttered popcorn may have caused him to develop a serious lung condition called bronchiolitis obliterans, or "popcorn workers' lung."

Initially diagnosed with generalized lung inflammation, the Colorado man's doctor eventually discovered that he ate at least two bags of microwave buttered popcorn per day for more than a decade. He often made it a point to inhale the butter-flavored steam that came out of the bags when he first opened them.