Yes, it’s bad year for ticks. Actually, it’s a good year for ticks and a bad year for humans who live near ticks. What to do? Tamar Barlam, interim chief of the Section of Infectious Disease at Boston Medical Center, has some advice. It’s all about the exposed areas, Barlam tells […]
Pain
Daily Aspirin Doubles Melanoma Risk in Men
Remember when your doctor ran down the list of reasons you should take a daily aspirin? (It appears to reduce the risk of gastric, colon, prostate and breast cancer.) Well, that was before researchers at Northwestern University concluded that men who take once-daily aspirin have nearly double the risk of […]
The Bad News About Next Year’s Flu Vaccine
Next year’s flu vaccine will be no more effective than last year’s flu vaccine. How effective is that? When put up against H3N2, the type of influenza A that infected most people in the US in each of the past two years, it’s about 19 percent effective. That’s the estimation […]
Bananas Beat Sports Drinks
They are cheaper, better, and their packaging is completely organic. Bananas, it turns out, are better than sports drinks when it comes to providing anti-inflammatory agents during and after workouts. The New York Times reports that researchers (partially funded by Dole Foods) put 20 competitive cyclists through a 47-mile bike […]
Think Before Repairing Meniscus
Surgical repair of a meniscal tear may be just what the doctor ordered, but the doctor may not have read the latest research, which suggests that the surgery is good for young athletic people with acute tears, but that older people with partial tears are probably better off with exercise […]
The First World Problems of Ocean Swimming
Forget about sharks, drownings and being run down by a powerboat. The most likely affliction caused by swimming in the ocean is an ear ache, followed by a stomach bug. This anticlimactic and largely first world news comes from researchers at the University of Exeter, who analyzed the medical complaints […]
The Problem With High-Intensity Workouts
It sounds good: go all out for one or two minutes and you don’t have to spend 45 minutes doing something you don’t like to do. But now comes Panteleimon “Paddy†Ekkekakis, a professor of kinesiology at Iowa State University, who says the whole idea of high-intensity workouts is a bad one. […]
More Intense Exercise=More Endorphins
OK, this may not be the most surprising news… In fact, for those who do high intensity interval training, it may not be news at all, but researchers at the University of Turku in Finland have determined that high-intensity interval training (HIIT) leads to an endorphin release in the brain, which […]
No, Rain Does Not Increase Joint Pain
Finally, we can all stop blaming rain for our occasional joint pain. According to research using the largest database ever–Google– rain actually reduces the number of searches for remedies for joint pain. A University of Washington news release reports that researchers at the school used Google Trends to create search strings of words and phrases […]
Clipping Knee Cartilage Doesn’t Help
For decades, surgeons treating meniscal tears have clipped and smoothed any dislodged cartilage they found. Why?  Because it seemed like it would help. But now comes a study from doctors at the University of Buffalo suggesting that the practice, called debridement, doesn’t actually benefit the patient. In fact, patients who […]