If you are sneezing and itching your eyes this spring allergy season, you are not alone. 2011 is shaping up to be the worst year for allergy sufferers on record. More than 35 million American suffer from pollen allergies, according to the FDA . Every year, the United States spends $21 billion on health costs related [...]

Doctors and public health officials have been telling us for years that eating too much sodium can increase the risk of heart attack or stroke by raising blood pressure to unsafe levels. So how to explain a new study that suggests low salt intake actually increases the risk of dying from those causes? The study, which [...]

It is only a few weeks away—SUMMER! My childhood memories bring back trips in my parent’s car in the summer and hearing that song on the radio over and over again about “lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.”  Growing up on the east coast of the United States, I certainly remember the “hazy” days and [...]

Pesach! It is the holiday of freedom with not a moment to rest.  Preparations for Pesach begin a month or more before, purchases, matzo, cleaning, bedikas Chametz, the seder, Chol Hamoed.  It is non-stop, and it also turns into non-stop eating and almost no activity and exercise—a deadly combination.  When the Almighty took us out of [...]

More than half of U.S. adults take dietary supplements, such as multivitamins and calcium, and their use jumped dramatically over a recent 20-year period, according to a new government report. Between 1994 and 2006, the proportion of Americans using at least one dietary supplement jumped from 42 percent of adults to 53 percent, according to the [...]

It may be time to add a long workday to the list of risk factors for heart disease. A new study has found that office workers in England significantly increased their chances of having a heart attack by working more hours than their peers. The study, conducted by researchers at University College London, found that employees who [...]

In the biggest such study to date, a group of research institutions including the University of Miami has identified four new genes implicated in causing Alzheimer’s disease. And while only five or six of up to 100 genes linked to Alzheimer’s are now known, the development signals a “monumental breakthrough” that could lead to identification of [...]

Washing your hands in an automatic faucet seems so much cleaner than have to touch a handle on the old-fashioned model. But guess again. A study revealed that automatic faucets are more likely to harbor nasty bacteria than manual ones. Electronic faucets may conserve water, “but decreased water flow may increase the chance that bacteria grows, because [...]

Last week’s column focused on the various types of surgery one can have to help achieve weight loss. We concluded that while some are definitely less invasive than others, all carry a fair to extremely high risk of serious side effects and post-surgical complications.    Some of the side effects and complications include: Infection of the incisions [...]

Seeing other people scratching can cause your brain to trigger your own itch, researchers suggest. The team at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center investigated the causes of what’s known as “contagious itch.” “It is conceivable that the neuronal networks or mechanisms underlying contagious itching may be similar to the ones involved in contagious yawning, a phenomenon that [...]