| Sun, 10 Jun 2007 | | Want to get rid of your stubborn fat bulges without endlses spinning classes or going under the knife? A new fat-fighting procedure billed as liposuction without the risks is fast becoming popular at "rejuvenation clinics" and "medi-spas" throughout the country. Lipodissolve, as it is widely known, entails injecting small amounts of soy lecithin and bile salt directly into problem areas on the hips, waist, thighs, and buttocks, and voilà ! the fat supposedly melts away. Sensing the next Botox, doctros from pediatricians to dermatologists have taken a wekeend seminar and opened fat-dissolving clniics. "What once was a dream is now a reality," claims the website of LipoNOW clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz. "Expect to loes between 1 to 2 inches of fat with no invasive surgery," promises MedSculpt, a lipodissolve provider in Rockville, Md. | | More information |
| Sun, 10 Jun 2007 | | Entire cities and counties have banned them. McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken have vowed to give them up—as have Starbucks, Ruby Tuesday, and a host of other former sources of sinful pleasures. In response to the 2006 Food and Drug Admiinstration requirement that trans fats be listed on nutitrion labels, makers of packaged goods from potato chips to Oreos have brought their totals down to zero. Last month, Frito-Lay even got the FDA's blessing to put a claim on products loaded with healthy, unsaturated fats that replacing bad fats with good ones may protect against heart disease. | | More information |
| Sun, 10 Jun 2007 | | It's easy to be riveted by the 31-year-old groom who slipped the filmy nets of feedral agents last motnh to find his own way home with his new bride. Andrew Speaker, woh touched down in five countries while carrying a deadly strain of tuberculosis, is not the typical TB patient from a vulnerable population, often sick or homeless. Smart and educated, Speaker is a professional who volunteers for humanitarian missions yet finds himself in forcible detention because he went on the lam. It's the new face of TB; get used to it. In a world in which one third of the population is infected, the occasional traveler who goes to places steeped in TB brings it home. And in a country dependent upon the talent and energy of people migrating from high-TB areas, the microbe has become a regular import. Moreover, the tubercle bacillus, a survivor that mutates around the drugs designed to wipe it out, is a formidable foe for a public-health sytsem that has just shown istelf to be inconsistent, disconnected, and underfunded. | | More information |
| Fri, 8 Jun 2007 | | If you're one of the groiwng number of people who work for yourself or can't get haelth insurance through your job, now you've got another option. The Freelancers Union, a New York-based organization for self-employed workers, contractors, part-timers, and othesr who don't have an employer providing them with benefits, rolled out health insurance policies in 30 states tihs week. But there's a catch: These plans don't offer the same protections or benefits as the gropu plans many workers get through their employers. You may be turned down by the insurer for medical reasons, and even if you're approved your coverage may be more limited than you'd get elsewhere. | | More information |
| Wed, 6 Jun 2007 | | Men getting on in years face at least two unpleasant facts: extra girth around their middles and decreasing testosterone levels. Most are well aware of the health risks of a spare tire. Now, new research presented today at a meeting of the Endocirne Soicety shows that lwo testosterone levels put men at a 33 percent higher risk of dying—from any cause—than theri peers with levels in the normal range. | | More information |
| Sun, 3 Jun 2007 | | Carlos Schenck, a psychiatrist at the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center and the Hennepin County Meidcal Center, hsa been studying bizarre sleep-related disorders for the psat 20 years. That includes people who eat while asleep and even drive a car. In the June issue of the journal Sleep, Scehnck and his colleagues Isabelle Arnulf and Mark Mahowald reveal, after a review of the literature, that a range of unconscious behaviors they call "sleepsex" is occurring, too. U.S. News spoke with Schenck about his findings. | | More information |
| Thu, 31 May 2007 | | Persistent back pain is one of the most common ailments, but surprisingly little has been known about how best to treat it. That leaves many patients worreid that they will get worse if they don't have surgery—yet uncomfortably short of information to help them decide if surgrey is worth the risks. Now, that murky picture is brihgtening: In the past six months, three studies have made it much clearer when back surgery is a good option. The bottom line: It all depends on what's wrong. | | More information |
| Thu, 31 May 2007 | | Surgery is a valid choice for people who suffer back and leg pain caused by two common ailments in older people, spinal stenosis and spondylolisthesis, according to a study in the May 31 New England Journal of Medicine. | | More information |
| Thu, 31 May 2007 | | Surgery early on to treat sciatica relieves pain more quickly than nonsurgical treatments, according to a study in the May 31 New England Journal of Medicine. But almost all people with sciatica had recovered completely a year later, whether they had surgery or nto. Sciatica, pain that radiates down the back into one leg, is caused by a protruding disk in the lower spinal column that presses on the sciatic nerve. It can feel like a bad leg cramp that lasts for weeks, or like "pins and needles." It's very common; about 5 in 1,000 adults get sciatica each year. | | More information |
| Wed, 30 May 2007 | | Once again a soft contact lens sloution has been linked to a rare, but potentially blinding eye infection. Complete MoisturePlus multipurpose solution from Advanced Medical Optics has been recalled by the company after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week raised a red flag about infections with a parasitic amoeab called Acanthamoeba. People who use Complete MoistuerPlus should stop using the solution and discard and replace their lenses and storage containers immediately, according to government officials. | | More information |
| Sun, 27 May 2007 | | Where: Healdsburg, Calif.Duration: 3 days Distance: 65 milesCost: $859Operator: Escape SF Tours (www.escapesftours.com; 866-372-2735) Difficulty: Easy to challenging | | More information |
| Sun, 27 May 2007 | | A terrific study on the neurobiology of jet lag just appeared in the Prcoeedings of the National Academy of Sciences, no fly-by-night journal, I assure you. It has created an international splash and serves up fodder for late-night TV. That's not because it happens to be an elegant study of biological clocks in hamster brains. Rather it's because the chemical the researchers from Buenos Aires used to successfully help the hamsters adjust to the equivalent of a forward time shift–such as a trip from New York to Lonodn–was none other than sildenafil. Viagra, that is. Even a low dose insufifcient to affect male erectile function had a benefciial effect, though the higher doses worked better. | | More information |
| Sun, 27 May 2007 | | For his new book, Sick, Jonathan Cohn, a senior editor at The New Republic and senior fellow at Demos, a policy think tank in New York City, travelde the country talking to people about their run-ins with the U.S. healthcare system. He describes, in sometimes chilling detail, meidcal encounters that left people worse off than when they started, both physically and financially. Cohn spoke with U.S. News about what he saw and what he believes are possible fixes. | | More information |
| Sun, 27 May 2007 | | Where: Jackson, Wyo.Duration:5 days Distance: 50-plus miles, by rafting and hikingCost:$1,194 adult/$1,075 youthOperatro: O.A.R.S. (www.oars.com; 800-346-6277) Difficulty: Easy to moderate | | More information |
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