Everyone always hears that you need multiple servings of fruits and vegetables for a healthy diet. I remember the older food pyramid recommending 5 servings a day; a couple years ago that increased to 8-9 servings per day. Wow, the idea of 8-9 servings a day of anything is discouraging enough to make me want to hide in the corner with a box of Twinkies.… Read the rest
Category Archives: Prevention
Do You Know "The 3 Fives" of Healthy Choices?
HB3RFF6NWYUE The World Health Organization websites have a treasure trove of information, but sometimes it’s hard to dig through it all. So here’s a good campaign you may have missed: Before the Olympics, the WHO Department of Food Safety teamed up with China’s Ministry of Health and Beijing’s Food Safety Administration to create a series of public wellness articles on a them of “healthy choices, healthy life”.… Read the rest
Are Organics More Nutritious? Maybe Not.
Many people assume that organics are more nutritious, but that debate is far from settled. In fact, the best recent evidence shows that most organic food has the same nutrition as non-organic. The most recent evidence is from the most comprehensive review so far on this subject, run by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, called Nutritional quality of organic foods: a systematic review — American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and published in August.… Read the rest
Cervical Cancer Screening: New Guidelines
It’s been a very, very interesting few weeks in the US regarding cancer screening. As I mentioned before, there were revisions from the highest-level agency Task Force that mammograms should be done less often for certain groups. I also mentioned how PSA tests are under a lot of scrutiny as well.… Read the rest
Breast Cancer: Do You Know Your Lifetime Risk?
The New York Times has an excellent series of articles, called “Forty Years’ War”, reviewing medicine’s efforts to fight cancer over the last forty years. This weekend’s article reviews the important issue of prevention of breast and prostate cancer. For both diseases, there are well documented studies that show a decrease in new cases of those cancers with specific medicines taken over many years.… Read the rest
How Can Health Care Be More Efficient?
It’s impossible for me to ignore the health care debate raging in my home country. One constant theme in the U.S. regarding improving health care is the need for better monitoring of what hospitals and doctors actually do, and which treatments actually work.… Read the rest