Free Republic

A nurse is researching whether an old family remedy using sugar to heal wounds does actually work. Moses Murandu, from Zimbabwe, grew up watching his father use granulated sugar to treat wounds. Sugar is thought to draw water away from wounds and prevent bacteria from multiplying. Early results from a trial on 35 hospital patients in Birmingham are encouraging, but more research is needed. One of the patients who received sugar treatment on a wound was 62-year-old Alan Bayliss from Birmingham. He had undergone an above-the knee amputation on his right leg at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham and, as...

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) - A New York Assemblyman's proposal to prohibit kids under 11 from playing tackle football isn't going over well with some coaches. In Buffalo Thursday, a handful of youth football leaders and participants joined state Sen. Timothy Kennedy outside a stadium to protest the idea. Assemblyman Michael Benedetto introduced the legislation last week, telling reporters it's meant to protect children...

The import or export of mercury is set to be banned © ShutterstockAfter six days of complex discussions in Geneva last week, governments from around the world agreed to a global, legally-binding treaty on Saturday to limit mercury use. This is the first new major environmental treaty in over a decade.The Minamata Convention on Mercury – named after the Japanese city where thousands of residents fell ill with mercury poisoning in the 1950s – covers a range of products and processes where mercury is used or released. Countries will be invited to ratify the treaty, which took four years to...

Health professional students will march down the Mall to the steps of the State Capitol in Sacramento, where they will be joined by hundreds of community members gathered to support guaranteed, universal health care in California for the eighth year. The rally is expected to draw more than 600 people including community members and physicians and nurses from around the state. There will be a flashmob on the steps of the State Capitol, where almost 300 health professional students in white coats will hope to draw attention to the more egregious practices of the health insurance industry. Despite the advances...

Do you have an annual health check? Plenty of people do. Health screening – general checks on people who don’t have any symptoms – is widely promoted by private doctors and health insurance companies – and popular. Successful executives, who are used to being in control, understandably think of their health as another area where, if they take prudent precautions, they can minimise risks. --snip-- And they are not suggesting that doctors shouldn’t screen or test patients when they suspect something is going on. They approve of targeted interventions for specific conditions. More worrying, though, is the fact that there...

**SNIP** It's a two day course that teaches how to identify, understand, and respond to signs of mental illnesses such as depression and schizophrenia. "A lot of times what you think to do in a mental health circumstance is exactly the wrong thing to do, like telling a person who's feeling seriously depressed to 'snap out of it' or 'you have so much to live for'," said Spindeltop spokesperson Janna Fulbright. The class was offered free to educators. And Henry believes a better knowledge of mental disorders could help decrease violence in schools. "This actually gives you a little more...

Findus has tonight admitted that it has been selling packs of its popular frozen lasagne that were 99 per cent horsemeat. The news is the first time that it has been confirmed that horsemeat contamination of products sold in the UK has spread beyond beef burgers. There are concerns that the horse meat used in the lasagne contained the drug bute, which is a known human health risk. Findus was today unable to say how long horsemeat has been used in its products.

Diets lean on meat and rich in healthy fats like olive oil were most effective at promoting weight loss and lowering blood sugar among people with diabetes in a review of evidence from the last 10 years. Benefits were also seen with diets low in carbohydrates, high in protein or low in simple sugars. "If you look at different types of diets, these four can improve various aspects of diabetes control," lead author Dr. Olubukola Ajala, a diabetes specialist at Western Sussex Hospitals in the UK, told Reuters Health. More than 24 million Americans have type 2 diabetes. People with...

Study of 3 million infants suggests connection between inhaled particles and birth weight. Pregnant women who have been exposed to higher levels of some types of air pollution are slightly more likely to give birth to underweight babies, a large international study has found. The results are published online today in Environmental Health Perspectives1. Low birth weight — defined as a newborn baby weighing less than 2.5 kilogrammes — increases the risk of infant mortality and childhood diseases, and has been associated with developmental and health problems later in life, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Previous studies have looked at...

Reps. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), Pete King (R-N.Y.) and more than two dozen Democrats have introduced legislation that would create a national nurse to work alongside the surgeon general. The National Nurse Act, H.R. 485, would designate the chief nurse officer of the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) as the "National Nurse for Public Health." The bill would have the national nurse work alongside the surgeon general and "focus on health promotion, improving healthcare literacy, and reducing health disparities." "As the first registered nurse in Congress, I know from experience how nurses play a critical role in health promotion and...

Ottawa scientists have discovered a trigger that turns muscle stem cells into brown fat, a form of good fat that could play a critical role in the fight against obesity. The findings from Dr. Michael Rudnicki's lab, based at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, were published today in the prestigious journal Cell Metabolism. "This discovery significantly advances our ability to harness this good fat in the battle against bad fat and all the associated health risks that come with being overweight and obese," says Dr. Rudnicki, a senior scientist and director for the Regenerative Medicine Program and Sprott Centre for...

Sarver Heart Center’s newest video makes it easy to learn Continuous Chest Compression CPR. Every three days, more Americans die from sudden cardiac arrest than the number who died in the 9-11 attacks. You can lessen this recurring loss by learning this hands-only CPR method that doubles a person’s chance of surviving cardiac arrest. Watch physician researchers Gordon A. Ewy, MD, and Karl Kern, MD, demonstrate the easy, life-saving method that they developed at the University of Arizona College of Medicine.

In a final regulation issued Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assumed that under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000 for the year. Under Obamacare, Americans will be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS. The IRS's assumption that the cheapest plan for a family will cost $20,000 per year is found in examples the IRS gives to help people understand how to calculate the penalty they will need to pay the government if they do not buy a mandated health plan.

Amid the fireworks following Seattle’s circus-like gun buyback and the antics in Oak Harbor over guns in parks, another front in the cultural war against firearms is being reopened next Monday evening when Town Hall holds a forum on “Gun Violence as a Public Health Crisis.” Already, Seattle-area gun activists are planning to attend the gathering, which begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Great Hall on Eighth Avenue in downtown Seattle. It’s a joint effort by Town Hall and the University of Washington School of Public Health. There is perhaps no surprise in the firearms community that none of the...

Windsor on Monday joined the growing number of municipalities which have voted to end the decades-old practice of adding fluoride to the water supply in the fight against tooth decay. “A lot has changed in the last 60 years … fluoride is not the be-all and end-all to prevent tooth decay,” said Mayor Eddie Francis, who voted with the majority.… “I want to be shown that when we ingest this, we are safe,” said Kimberley DeYong of Fluoride Free Windsor. She and others said not a single study among those cited by fluoridation proponents looked specifically at the industry-sourced chemical...

Faced with the high cost of caring for smokers and overeaters, experts say society must grapple with a blunt question: Instead of trying to penalize them and change their ways, why not just let these health sinners die prematurely from their unhealthy habits? Annual health care costs are roughly $96 billion for smokers and $147 billion for the obese, the government says. These costs accompany sometimes heroic attempts to prolong lives, including surgery, chemotherapy and other measures.

This morning I watched yet another video of something that disturbs me greatly: the events leading up to the “legal” theft of several tons of cheese produced on a small family farm in Missouri. This, after the cheese had been embargoed for over 2 years and thus was no longer fit for consumption anyway. All of this was done in the name and at the expense of the taxpayers of Missouri, under the guise of “food safety.”

•EU watchdog reveals approval for GM foods fails to identify poisonous gene •54 of the 86 GM plants approved contain the dangerous gene •Gene found in food for farm animals producing meat, milk and eggs •Biotech supporters argue there is no evidence that GM foods are harmful A virus gene that could be poisonous to humans has been missed when GM food crops have been assessed for safety. GM crops such as corn and soya, which are being grown around the world for both human and farm animal consumption, include the gene. A new study by the EU’s official food...

This is one brave woman, People like this put many of us to shame for our failure to act. Appropriately her last name means 'steel' in German. "Jennifer Stahl has been a strong advocate against the smart meter program in Naperville, Ill., for the last two years. The issue came to a head Wednesday afternoon when she was arrested while refusing to let the utility workers install the controversial device.... Stahl was at a friend’s house when she received the call from her husband that the utility workers had arrived. She was home within 15 minutes and saw they were...

(CNN) - The flu hasn't hit Europe as hard as it has the United States, health officials say, but when and if it does, don't expect a call for vaccination of the entire population. Only the U.S. and Canada actually encourage everyone older than 6 months to get the flu vaccine. Apparently, not a single country in Europe asks the general population to seek that same kind of protection, according to Robb Butler, the World Health Organization technical officer in vaccine preventable diseases and immunizations in the organization's Europe office in the Netherlands. That's because global health experts say the...