Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Cyber Diagnosis?

I found an interesting article on diagnosing yourself on the internet. Amanda Stevens concludes in it that WebMD's Symptom Checker and the Mayo Clinic Symptom Checker are reliable sites for finding information on your condition. Sounds like solid advice.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Excessive tea drinking linked to skeletal fluorosis

Excessive tea drinking linked to skeletal fluorosis: "New research conducted on four advanced skeletal fluorosis patients suggests that the fluoride in their tea could have been responsible for the condition."

The people studied were drinking a gallon or more of tea daily!

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Interesting Article on Pseudomonas Infections

Research could lead to non-antibiotic treatments for hospital infections tells how "Lack of an adequate amount of the mineral phosphate can turn a common bacterium into a killer, according to research to be published in the April 14, 2009, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science... Pseudomonas aeruginosa is one of ...hundreds of bacteria that colonize the human intestinal tract, usually causing no apparent harm. However once its host is weakened by an illness, surgical procedure, or immunosuppressive drugs P. aeruginosa can cause infection, inflammation, sepsis and death."

Read the article here.

Not Much of a Vacation

I just got back from a week-long trip. I'm not going to call it a vacation because we only had short periods of fun surrounded by stress and fatigue. My spouse broke our no-yelling-in-the-car rule so many times that I've come up with a new policy: separate vacations!

Monday, August 2, 2010

Eating Meat an Evolutionary Advantage

There was an interesting story on NPR about how a Meat-based Diet Made Us Smarter. It tells how eating calorie-packed meat freed our ancestors from having to eat all day long. It also required tools (like stone knives).

Another point: cooking made food more digestible. (Raw-food faddists will find this as objectionable as vegans find the main point of the article.)