The Daily HIT

From a public health standpoint, the most important policy decision a nation can make is to deter young people from ever starting to smoke. Earlier today, the United Nations (UN) called upon governments around the world to ban all tobacco-related advertising, including promotions and sponsorship of events, as a means of deterring young people everywhere [...]

Read Full Post »

In the first issue of Health Insights Today, we featured an interview with Bill Morgan, DC, who works as a staff chiropractor at National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda. The Integrator Blog, an excellent cross-disciplinary web publication, has an interview with Anthony Lisi, DC, about chiropractic inclusion in Veterans Administration hospitals. It’s well worth reading. The [...]

Read Full Post »

When I lecture about nutritional influences on bone health in my clinical nutrition class, I cite official U.S. recommendations on calcium intake as a prime example of a case where conventional wisdom has not yet caught up with current research. I’ve been predicting that within the coming decade, U.S. recommendations on calcium requirements would be decreased, perhaps substantially. An e-newsletter [...]

Read Full Post »

Researchers from Italy reported this week that spending 30 minutes a day listening to rhythmically homogeneous music — anything from classical to Celtic to Indian — has a beneficial effect on blood pressure. The study was relatively small and the benefit not all that large, but, as you might guess, the side effects of this treatment are purely positive. We [...]

Read Full Post »

Taxes on cigarettes have been enacted by state governments across the nation as a means to decrease smoking and provide funds for public spending (sometimes targeted at health needs, sometimes not). While battles continue over the rate at which cigarette sales should be taxed, there is now little objection to the basic idea of taxing cigarette [...]

Read Full Post »

A low-tech, non-drug approach is shown to be effective. The key, according to the Harvard researchers running the study? Fasting for 16 hours before your flight.

Read Full Post »

The possible role of food additives (such artificial colors and flavors) in triggering symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has remained controversial. After many anecdotal reports in the 1980s indicating that removal of such chemicals from children’s diets resulted in a sharp decrease in ADHD symptoms, clinical trials failed to find any consistent link. [...]

Read Full Post »

Virginia Commonwealth University, part of Virginia’s state university system, entered into a contract in 2006 that violated its own rules, giving tobacco giant Philip Morris the right bar university scientists from publishing the results of their research, or even speaking about it, if the results were not acceptable to the corporation. The contract bars professors from [...]

Read Full Post »

Pesticides can be harmful to health in a variety of ways. Knowing which pestcides are being used, and in what quantities, is information that is absolutely necessary to determine whether current practices are dangerous. Thus, according to this article from the Associated Press, upon learning that the USDA has decided to discontinue its survey of pesticide [...]

Read Full Post »

Scientific evidence is accumulating that early and prolonged exposure to cats has protective effects. There’s some increased wheezing at the beginning, but over time the immune system apparently adapts, leading to less wheezing later. The study, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, found at age 3, children who had made antibodies to cats [...]

Read Full Post »