General Health Concerns & Issues

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced today that one jalapeno pepper sample is a positive genetic match with the Salmonella Saintpaul strain causing the current Salmonella outbreak.

The positive sample was obtained during an FDA inspection at a produce distribution center in McAllen, Texas. The pepper was grown on a farm in Mexico, however, that does not mean that the pepper was contaminated in Mexico.

Memory loss can have devastating effects on an individual’s quality of life. But according to the results of a new Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) study, having an active social life may slow memory loss among the elderly. Researchers who conducted the study set out to test whether memory loss might be associated with social connectedness and found evidence that being socially active may increase feelings of self-worth and emotional validation that could end up helping maintain memory.

Sticking to a healthy diet and exercise plan can prevent or delay the onset of diabetes, an epidemic which affects nearly a quarter billion people worldwide and accounts for 6 percent of all global deaths. Along with diet and exercise, researchers have also found that lifestyle modifications such as drinking less alcohol are also instrumental in delaying the onset of the condition.

Diabetes (types 1 and 2) is characterized by a disordered metabolism and abnormally high blood sugar resulting from insufficient levels of insulin. As a result, diabetics typically exhibit symptoms such as excessive urine production (due to high blood glucose levels), excessive thirst and increased fluid intake (to compensate for the increased urination), blurred vision due to high blood glucose effects on the eye's optics, unexplained weight loss, and lethargy. Too much glucose, or blood sugar, in the blood can cause damage to the eyes and kidneys, and also leads to heart disease, stroke, and limb amputations over the long term.

What is in your drinking water? When you think of the possible contaminants that could be in your water, you don’t usually think of pharmaceutical drugs. But an Associated Press investigation has uncovered a disturbing concoction of pharmaceuticals in the municipal drinking water of at least 41 million Americans.

Hike up to remote areas of snow-covered Crater Lake National Park and you may be miles from civilization, but don't eat the snow because it contains industrial PCBs, the banned pesticide DDT and at least two currently used pesticides.

Go fly-fishing in Golden Lake at Mount Rainier National Park but don't eat the trout because they carry relatively high levels of toxic flame retardant.

Or try fishing Montana's spectacular Glacier National Park but make sure you don't eat them either because the DDT in them is higher than levels found in fish studies from Africa, even though the United States phased out DDT production in 1972 and Africa still uses it for mosquito control.

The Humane Society of the United States has filed suit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to close a dangerous loophole in the agency's regulations that contributed to the recent recall of more than 143 million pounds of beef. The recall was initiated after an HSUS undercover investigation documented shocking acts of animal cruelty to non-ambulatory or "downer" cattle at a slaughterhouse in Chino, California. Watch the undercover video now

About 40,000 patients of the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas are being urged to get tested for bloodborne diseases like hepatitis and HIV. It is reported that anesthesiologists exposed patients to infection by using multiple-dose vials of medications and re-using syringes between individuals.

Patients were exposed to these unsafe injections between March 2004 and January 2008. So far, doctors have found six acute cases of hepatitis C in patients from the center.

HealthGrades has released its 2008 rankings of America’s 50 Best Hospitals -- hospitals that have demonstrated superior clinical outcomes for the most consecutive years. Hospitals cannot apply for this independent analysis, and they cannot opt-in or out of being rated.

To identify the top hospitals for 2008, HealthGrades researchers analyzed approximately 100 million hospitalization records from nearly 5,000 hospitals, from the years 1999 to 2006.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is asking for public comment on a list of 104 possible drinking water contaminants that may need to be regulated in the future to ensure the continued protection of drinking water. Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, EPA includes on the draft Contaminant Candidate List (CCL) currently unregulated contaminants that are known or anticipated to occur in public water systems and which may require regulation. This draft CCL, which is the third such listing, lists 93 chemical contaminants or groups and 11 microbes, and describes the process and basis for selecting these contaminants.

Google Inc. has announced it will start storing medical records online. The search giant will begin testing the new program by storing medical records from several thousand Cleveland Clinic patients who volunteered for an electronic transfer of their personal health records to Google. The new medical records service won't be open to the general public.