Health Warnings

The Center For Science In the Public Interest (CSPI) released a special report on February 6, 2006 which indicates that many of the top hospitals in the United States are serving up French fries that are laden with trans fats.

The following chart indicates the number of grams of trans fat that were found in 6 ounces of French fries from McDonald's, 18 medical centers and hospitals, and the headquarters of the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Food and Drug Administration. Read more »

Do you know someone whose daughter is involved with cheerleading?

If so, you may want to tell him or her about a recent study in the journal Pediatrics, that reports that the number of cheerleaders that suffered concussions, broken bones, lacerations, sprains, and strains increased by more than 100 percent between 1990 and 2002.

According to the author of the study, Brenda Shields, on average, more than 16,000 cheerleaders between the ages of 5 and 18 in the United States visit a hospital emergency room with an injury each year. Read more »

Although I have a lot of respect for celebrities like Bono who are trying to increase public awareness of the poverty and health challenges faced by millions of people in Africa, I find it painful to see them promoting conventional drug therapy for AIDS.

"There's no excuse to let people in Africa die of AIDS when we have the drugs that can cure them," Bono has said on Oprah and most recently during Live 8.

I just read a disturbing article in the New York Times about recent reports of deaths and abnormal behaviour in Japanese children who were given the anti-influenza drug Tamiflu.

Here is a summary of the key points I learned from this article:

1. Tamiflu was approved for use in the United States in 1999, and in Japan in late 2000.

2. According to Roche, the manufacturer of Tamiflu, of the 13 million prescriptions written for children worldwide, 11.6 million have been in Japan. Read more »

Just read a great piece on this topic in today's Washington Post. Here is summary of the main points that I took from it:

1. According to an analysis by a scientist at the Environmental Protection Agency, women living in coastal areas have twice as much mercury in their blood as women who live inland. Read more »

A study in the September issue of Biophysical Journal provides an excellent explanation for why high doses of aspirin can cause ulcers and temporary deafness.

Researchers from Rice University in Texas report that salicylate (the active metabolite of aspirin) weakens thin, fatty membranes, including those that make up the lining of your stomach and those that are critical for proper inner ear functioning. Read more »

Noise-induced hearing loss is becoming a larger health crisis every year, especially among those who listen to CD and mp3 players on a regular basis.

A recent article on CNN.com takes a close look at this issue, and points out the following:

1. Researchers are finding that growing numbers of students and people in their 30s and 40s are suffering from noise-induced hearing loss, as well as chronic ringing in their ears, a condition known as tinnitis. Read more »

A recent study out of the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine reports that very large amounts of a caramel food coloring can suppress the immune system.

You would think that scientists would use this information to warn people about the dangers of eating processed foods that have artificial colours.

If someone you know still doesn't have enough motivation to quit smoking, you may want to let him or her know that the link between smoking and blindness is about as strong as the link between smoking and lung cancer.

This is because smoking is a chief cause of age-related macular degeneration, a progressive condition that is the number one cause of blindness in people over the age of 60 throughout the world.

The Center for Environmental Health (CEH) in Oakland, California filed a lawsuit on August 31, 2005 against manufacturers and retailers of soft vinyl lunch boxes that can potentially expose children to dangerous levels of lead.

The amount of lead found in soft vinyl lunch boxes is not enough to cause acute lead poisoning, but is enough to contribute to health problems now and in the future, the most common of which are: Read more »