Archive for September, 2012

According to a study which followed female coffee drinkers for over ten years, women who consume more than one cup of coffee daily have about a 25% lower chance of having a stroke than women who do not drink as much coffee. The study could not confirm that coffee is necessarily good for the heart, but the strong correlation between a cup of joe and lower incidence of stroke shows that, at the very least, coffee isn’t bad for you.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) have reported that this year’s outbreak of West Nile virus could be the largest ever. According to the CDC, more people have been diagnosed with West Nile virus at this point in 2012 then at the same point in any previous year since the disease was discovered in 1999.

A new study out of Australia shows that environmental factors including viruses and toxins are at play in the development of type I diabetes. The study, which was published in the Diabetes Care Journal, looked at each new case of type I diabetes in Western Australia over the last 25 years and found a strong cyclical pattern.

About every five years, a mini-epidemic of type I diabetes would appear, and then the occurrence would drop off again in a cyclical pattern. The difference between peak years and low years was sometimes as high as 20%. This significant swing in the outbreak of diabetes shows that environmental causes play a major role in the development of type I diabetes. According to the data, the Australian researchers believe that the next mini-epidemic of type I diabetes will occur this year.

A new study by the Massachusetts General Hospital has found that increasing a child’s vitamin D intake can help reduce the amount of colds that the child gets per year. While adults average two to three colds per year, pre-schoolers get around nine colds annually, and children in kindergarten can get as many as twelve colds per year says WebMD.

A new strain of swine flu has been discovered in humans and it is continuing to spread throughout the US. So far approximately 150 cases have been reported, the majority of which have occurred in Indiana. Other states that have reported cases include Ohio, Illinois, Hawaii, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

There is currently a lack of emphasis on oral health in this nation. Elderly people on Medicare generally do not receive dental coverage. 49 million people in rural areas do not have access to nearby dentists. And overall, an estimated 100 million Americans do not have dental coverage.

American children are drinking too many sweetened drinks. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, most boys drink 15 teaspoons of refined sugar every day and most girls drink about 10 teaspoons. All of that sugar comes from sweetened beverages and amounts to the total amount of sugar that children should be ingesting each day.

Earlier this year, concerns that statins increase the risk of developing diabetes prompted the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to require that statins come with a warning label denoting the risk. However, the National Institutes of Health report that new research shows the risk of developing diabetes while on a statin, a cholesterol-lowering drug, does not outweigh the potential benefits of statins.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) there have been an unprecedented number of West Nile virus cases this year. So far at least 693 people have contracted the virus and 28 of those people have died. The majority of cases occurred in Texas, though the CDC reports that cases have cropped up in 32 states.