Hot MedFax

Mine is a little weak and I gasp when someone's is a lot firmer.  Some I've had to take were sweaty or too warm.  Mine are always cold. We're talking of course about hand shakes. And now a new study is saying that how firm yours is can reveal your health. According to newswise.com, your hand shake tells the story of your health.  The firmness of your hand grip is better than your blood pressure at assessing your health, Hamilton, Ontario researchers have found, and reduced muscular strength, measured by your grip, is consistently linked with early death, disability and illness.The research was conducted by the Population Health Research Institute of McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences. “Grip strength could be an easy and inexpensive test to assess an individual’s risk of death and cardiovascular disease,” says principal investigator Dr. Darryl Leong, an assistant professor of medicine of McMaster’s Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine and car...

Would you want to know if you had cancer in your future?  Thanks to all the milestones researchers are making in genes and genetic makeup, you probably can. According to newswise.com, using a small amount of blood or saliva, a technology called whole genome sequencing makes that possible – and more than half of parents surveyed  said they’d not only be interested in the technology for themselves but for their children too, a new nationally-representative University of Michigan study shows. For obvious reasons, mothers as a group in the study and parents whose youngest children had more than two health conditions had significantly more interest in predictive genetic testing for themselves and their youngest children while those with conservative political ideologies had considerably less interest. More than three- fourths of parents also showed the same interest in genome sequencing for themselves as they did for their kids. As a cancer survivor, would I have want...

Want to truly be grossed out? Scientists now say that hollow head toothbrushes contain 3,000 more times bacteria than solid head toothbrushes, according to newswise.com. Microbial counts were lower in the solid-head toothbrush group than in the two hollow-head toothbrush groups in 9 out of 10 comparisons, in the study. “Toothbrushes can transmit microorganisms that cause disease and infections. A solid-head design allows for less growth of bacteria and bristles should be soft and made of nylon,” said lead author and professor at the University of Texas Health School of Dentistry, Donna Warren Morris, R.D.H., M.Ed. at the Web site. “It is also important to disinfect and to let your toothbrush dry between uses. Some power toothbrushes now include an ultraviolet system or you can soak the head in mouthwash for 20 minutes.” The study was conducted over a three-week period where participants brushed twice daily with one out of three randomly assigned power toothbrushes. Pa...

So it was just decided by the American Medical Association (AMA) that obesity is a disease. Say what? The New York Times reported today that this move "could induce physicians to pay more attention to the condition and spur more insurers to pay for treatments," not just make fat people feel better. To me a disease is breast cancer, or anemia or diabetes, not something that you can control.  But then I suppose that's part of the argument (and I certainly know as well as anyone), that weight isn't always a matter of making it move up or down. But if we classify it as a disease, doesn't that give people who need to lose weight more of an excuse not to?  "I have a disease, so I can't help it," is the first thing that came to my mind. Now maybe that's just me.  But I know when I was really overweight, I tried to blame it on my under-active thyroid, my genetics, even my breast cancer, just so I'd have a reason to feel better about not ...

I've never been an adventurous eater.  To me, trying tilapia was about as far as I was willing to go (hey, it has a weird name). But The New York Times every week has all these exotic recipes calling for things like tofu fingers, pancakes made with spinach, ice cream with eggs. Pork with lemon, ginger, citronelle (isn't that for mosquitoes? Oh wait, that's citronell a .) But in China this week, gourmet eaters may have gotten the biggest surprise of their lives when they found out the lamb they thought they were eating was . . .well, rat. But China didn't take this sitting down (at least, to a meal of rat). "... China's top court on Friday issued guidelines calling for harsher punishment for making and selling  unsafe food products  in the latest response to  tainted food scandals  that have angered the public," the AP reported, according to the NYT. "The Supreme People's Court said the guidelines will list as crimes specific acts such as th...

I've always known it was more art than science but to have it put in such bold, harsh terms in an essay by Abigail Zuger, MD, in The New York Times today was pretty scary. Zuger compared doctors' judging the likelihood of your beating certain diseases more like playing the lottery than having your real chances measured out in good numbers and strict statistics. It's all guesswork, she says. That may not sound so bad but when you're a cancer patient, and you're told the chances of having a recurrence are less than 1% (and then you do), who wouldn't want statistics to be right? Of course they're educated guesses, but if you choose a doctor based on his successful outcomes, there are ways he can fudge it. Some just don't take on the sickest patients.  I have friends who chose fertility clinics based on the number of babies produced, not realizing the stats were so good because the doctors only accepted younger patients. So, what to do?  Your homework,...

So we thought we were safe from bedbugs at school.  Now they could be in our library books! http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/garden/bedbugs-hitch-a-ride-on-library-books.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0