Health Tips

Listeria monocytogenes, or Listeria for short, is a bacterium that causes an infection called listeriosis. A recent outbreak of listeriosis, found to be due to contaminated cantaloupe, has placed Listeria in the news. Today’s Health Tip describes the features of Listeria infections and discusses who is at particular risk for…

Over 160 different foods have been identified that can cause allergic reactions in people. Of these, 90% are triggered by the following 8 foods: Milk Eggs Peanuts Tree nuts (such as almonds, cashews, walnuts, pine nuts) Fish (such as bass, cod, flounder) Shellfish Soy Wheat Since 2006, the Federal Drug…

A review of interventions to help with smoking cessation, recently published in the Journal of Family Practice offers encouraging news for smokers who are trying to quit. The report relied heavily on the work of the Cochrane Collaboration, a highly respected group of scientists who pool the results of the…

In a recent interview with the president of the American Optometric Association (AOA), Dr. Dori Carlson, I learned the surprising statistic that about 1 in 4 school age children have an undetected or undiagnosed vision problem. School vision screenings, while helpful, still miss more than 75% of these problems. And…

A few years back, dietary fats were the scourge of weight reduction efforts. Numerous low-fat and fat-free products appeared on the grocery shelves with claims to help with weight loss. Despite the popularity of these products, obesity rates in the U.S. continued to climb. Today, the blame for the failure…

An estimated 4.7 million dog bites and 400,000 cat bites occur annually in the United States. Although it is commonly thought that a dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human’s and less likely to cause infection, dogs, cats, as well as humans all harbor bacteria that can cause infection. This…

“Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us.” -Oscar Wilde Last week we looked at some of the causes for people’s memory to “slip”. These included medication side effects, ageing, medical conditions, and unhealthy lifestyle choices. By addressing the underlying cause, it is possible that memory can…

The brain manages memory in a manner similar to a computer. There is an area of the brain that handles short-term memory much like a computer’s RAM, and an area that stores remote or long-term memory like the hard drive. A number of conditions may affect the way the brain…

According to the National Center for Statistics and Analysis (NCSA), nearly 250,000 children are injured every year in car accidents. Car accidents are also the leading cause of acquired disability (e.g., brain injury, paralysis, etc.) for children nationwide. In the United States, injuries and deaths from car crashes have been…

Itching, known as pruritis in medical jargon, is defined as an unpleasant sensation of the skin that provokes the urge to scratch. Most often, itching involves a small area of the skin affected by a localized condition, such as poison ivy, eczema, or insect bites. On occasion, the itching is…