There are downsides other than cost to unnecessary screening tests. Positive results can lead to invasive, dangerous and expensive follow-up tests along with anxiety.

One organization, Health Fair runs buses in the Washington, DC region that offers a package of five tests for $139. The US Preventive Services Task Force recommends against all five of these tests. Abnormal results of one kind or another are found in almost half of all patients screened. You can bet a whole lot of those are false positives or minor issues that are best ignored.

Im gals to see Kaiser Health News go after this kind of story so people are aware that what looks like a friendly, innocuous service may be something less positive.

By David E. Wi

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After 32 weeks of regular exercise, 71% of mice on the controlled diet developed tumours larger than 10mm versus 100% in the sedentary group. The mean number and volume of HCC tumours per liver was also reduced in the exercise group compared to the sedentary group.

EASL’s Educational Councillor Prof. Jean-Francois Dufour said the data showed the significant benefit of regular exercise on the development of HCC. Exercise decreased the level of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in mice receiving a high-fat diet. He said: “We know that modern, unhealthy lifestyles predispose people to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease which may lead to liver cancer; however it’s been previously unknown whether regular exercise reduces the risk of developing HCC. This research is significant because it opens the door for further studies to prove that regular exercise can reduce the chance of people developing HCC.”

Prof. J

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In an op-ed piece published by the New York Times on Tuesday, the Oscar-winning Jolie wrote that she decided to have the surgery based on the discovery that she has a “faulty” BRCA1 gene.

Jolie said her doctors estimated that she had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer.

“Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could,” wrote Jolie. “I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy. My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent.”

Jolie explains that it’s possible for women to find out if they’re at risk for breast cancer through a blood test, however she doesn’t mention any companies by name.

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Our nations bees are vanishing. Every winter for the last six years, more than a third of all bee colonies in the U.S. have simply gone. The staggering losses within the bee population have caused many to speculate on causes.

Is it GMOs? Is it new pesticides? Is it a bacteria or virus? The media have given the phenomena a name: Colony Collapse Disorder. Now the decimated bee population has finally reached critical mass.

According to an industry wide survey, there will no longer be enough bees in the U.S. to pollinate our almond, avocado, blueberry, pear, plum, and apple crops this year.

Yes, you read that right. Next year, these crops will fail not because of poor weather, not because of a new blight ravaging the crops, but because of a lack of bees.

On average, U.S. beekeepers lost 45.1% of the colonies in their operation during the winter of 2012/2013.

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Christine Farrell, Outstanding Alumna

Christine Farrell (DH 1981) received the Outstanding Dental Hygiene Alumna Award for her service to the profession for more than 30 years.  The award was presented by the U-M Dental Hygiene Alumni Association during its luncheon with the Washtenaw District Dental Hygienists’ Association last month.

After graduating, Farrell spent a short period of time in clinical practice and then worked in state government, beginning in 1988, for the Michigan Department of Community Health.  She was a Medicaid analyst administering the Department’s dental insurance program.  In 2010, she was appointed director of oral health.

Active in local, state, and national levels of dental hygiene and public health, Farrell was president of the Michigan Dental Hygienists’ Association (1993-1994) and editor of the Bulletin of the Michigan Dental Hygienists’ Association (1998-2001).  She served a three-year term on the School of Dentistry’s Alumni Society Board of Governors (1996-1999), including a two-year term as secretary. 

Farrell also served four terms on the ADHA’s Council of Public Relations (2000-2004), including a one-year term as chair, was national chair of the Medicaid/State Child Health Improvement Program (2004-2007), and was ADHA delegate chair (2008-2010).

She earned a Master in Public Administration degree from the University of Michigan in 2006.  Farrell is curren

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For some people, the mere idea of accountability, even if it is only to an electronic device rather than to a group of people such as Weight Watcher’s, is enough to keep them in check. And that’s great. I wish I could say that something like this would keep me in check but I really need much more of a swift kick in the pants in order to get myself motivated to lose weight or keep myself fit by working out regularly.

All of these various Smart Phone apps that are available now can really help people get on board with their dieting and exercise habits and start healthier habits. There are a number of reasons for this. The first is that many of these apps make people feel accountable.

For example, if you have to enter in everything you eat, and you see how many calories and fat grams that item is, or you see that it’s going to put you in the red as far as you daily entered calorie allowances, then you’re less likely to eat that item.

Either that, or some people may just cheat and not enter it because they don’t want to see the number on the screen. However,

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The California Supreme Court ruled Monday that cities and counties can use their zoning powers to keep out medical marijuana dispensaries.

The unanimous ruling came in a legal challenge to a ban the city of Riverside enacted in 2010.

The advocacy group Americans for Safe Access estimates that another 200 jurisdictions statewide have similar prohibitions on retail pot sales.

Marijuana advocates had argued that allowing local government to bar dispensaries thwarts the intent of the law California voters approved nearly 17 years ago that legalized marijuana use for health purposes.

ONC, along with the Office of the HHS Chief Technology Officer and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), recently launched the Apps4Tots Health Challenge – a developer challenge to create applications using the new TXT4Tots message library.

Through this challenge, we are calling on developers, researchers, and innovators to use the new TXT4Tots message library by integrating it into new or existing applications that will reach parents and caregivers of young children. There will be a total of $25,000 in prizes awarded to the top three winners, including $17,500 for the first-place challenge winner.

Like TXT4Baby, the TXT4Tots message library can send caregivers appointment reminders, health alerts and parenting advice.  The messages provide information about nutrition and physical activity for parents of children between the ages of one and five including:

While the goal of this app challenge is to integrate the TXT4Tots library and messaging functions into existing or entirely new applications, we aren’t looking for a typical smart phone application. We w

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Oestradiol, an oestrogen, is primarily known as a female hormone but it also circulates at very low levels in men. Testosterone is converted to oestradiol by the enzyme aromatase, the activity of which might be increased in obesity leading to raised oestradiol and reduced testosterone.

To determine whether obesity might alter heart function via changes in sex hormones, Drs Maarten De Smet and colleagues at Ghent University in Belgium recruited 20 healthy men aged 20-40 and used an aromatase inhibitor and an oestrogen patch to artificially alter the hormone levels to mimic sex hormone concentrations in obesity (high estradiol and low testosterone) vs contrast by an aromatase inhibitor (low oestradiol, high testosterone).

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Diflucan is an azole also known as fluconazole. It is manufactured by Pfizer http://www.pfizer.com/products/rx/rx_product_diflucan.jsp and is an antibiotic that can fight against any sort of fungal infection, even systemic candidiasis. It affects the entire body including the blood and organs. There are two ways that Diflucan is administered, one is through an oral solution, and another is through intravenous therapy. Read full post…

Express Scripts breaks waste into 3 categories:

• ~$60B wasted on high priced meds when cheaper equivalents, (e.g., generics) were available.
• ~$95B from not using the most cost-effective and clinically appropriate pharmacies, including home delivery and specialty. This is further broken into savings from lower drug costs (~$35B ) and savings from higher adherence through those channels (~$60B)
• ~$270B from avoidable pharmacy and medical expenses from low adherence, independent of the waste included in the second bullet point

All three bullet points are self-serving, especially the second one, since it describes the line of business that is most profitable for Express Scripts.

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Seeing the calories listed next to each item isn’t likely to affect your decision, according to a new study being presented at the Experimental Biology 2013 meeting this week. But seeing the amount of time it would take you to work those calories off at the gym just might.

The study

Researchers at Texas Christian University asked 300 men and women aged 18 to 30 years to purchase food from one of three fast food menus. All of the menus contained the same options, including burgers, chicken tenders, salad, French fries and desserts.

One group’s menu had no labels of any kind. The second group’s menu was labeled with the total calories in each item.

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