The United States Faces Its Worst Measles Outbreak in Over Three Decades: This Is an Epidemic
The United States is experiencing the most severe measles outbreak in more than 30 years, with over 1,300 confirmed cases reported across 40 states as of July 2025. This represents a dramatic 460% increase from the 285 cases reported in all of 2024, and medical...
Fitness Trackers Fail People with Obesity: New Algorithm Delivers 95% Accuracy
Northwestern University researchers have developed a breakthrough algorithm that finally makes fitness trackers accurate for people with obesity, achieving over 95% accuracy in measuring calories burned during physical activities. This discovery addresses a critical...
Sauna Use Reduces Heart Attack Risk
Regular sauna bathing reduces the risk of sudden cardiac death by 63 percent and fatal heart attacks by 48 percent (JAMA Intern Med, 2015;175(4):542-548). Men who used saunas four to seven times per week showed the greatest protection compared to those using saunas...
Ideal Blood Pressure Should Be Under 120/80
One of every two North American adults has high blood pressure, and only 40 percent of those taking medications have their hypertension well-controlled (Int J Cardiol Hypertens, July 31, 2020;6:100044) . It is established that high blood pressure markedly increases a...
Prolonged Sitting? Get a Little Exercise!
Having a job that requires prolonged sitting is likely to be associated with increased heart attack and premature death risks unless you also exercise. A study involving 481,688 people followed for an average 12 years found that those who had jobs that required...
Shannen Doherty: Breast Cancer and Crohn’s Disease
Shannen Doherty was a television and film actress whose roles included Jenny Wilder in Little House on the Prairie (1982), Maggie Malene in Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985); Kris Witherspoon in Our House (1986–1988), Brenda Walsh in Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990, 2008 and 2019), Prue Halliwell in Charmed (1998) and Dobbs in Fortress (2021). On July 13, 2024, at age 53, she died from breast cancer that had spread through her body.
Plants Release an Appetite-Suppressing Hormone
When you are trying to lose excess weight, eat lots of leafy green vegetables. Researchers at Imperial College in London found that high-fiber foods from plants help people lose weight by causing the intestines to release an appetite-suppressing gut hormone called PYY (Science Translational Medicine, June 19, 2024:16 (752)). This could save your life: the Center for Disease Control reports that more than 73 percent of North American adults are overweight (National Health Statistics Reports, June 14, 2021;158:1-19) and being overweight markedly increases a person’s risk for heart attacks, strokes, cancers and organ damage.
Grass-Fed Beef for Vitamin K2?
Sellers of cow’s meat either let their cows eat grass, or they can make the cows fatter and produce more meat by feeding them corn. The latest argument for eating meat from grass-fed cows is that grass is full of vitamin K1. Animals that graze on grass can convert the vitamin K1 in grass into vitamin K2 and it accumulates in their muscles, so when you eat meat from grass-fed cows, you gain the health benefits of vitamin K2 (listed below). Vitamin K2 is soluble in fat so it can also be found in other fatty foods such as eggs and fatty dairy products. Fermented foods are also good sources of vitamin K2.
Ruth Westheimer: “Doctor Ruth” on Sexuality
On July 12, 2023, ‘Dr. Ruth” died at age 96 of complications from a stroke that she first suffered a year before. She was a sex therapist and talk show host who at age 52 in 1980 started her radio show, “Sexually Speaking”, on WYNY-FM in New York City. The show became so popular that at age 56, she hosted several television programs on the Lifetime TV network such as “Good Sex! With Dr. Ruth Westheimer.”
Exercise Helps to Treat Insulin Resistance in Diabetics
Up to 70 percent of North American adults will develop diabetes or pre-diabetes, usually from insulin resistance caused by excess fat in the liver and muscles. Exercise helps to empty fat from the liver and muscles, so exercise helps both to prevent and to treat diabetes. A study of 6,718 diabetics, average age 58, followed from 4-96 weeks, found that exercise reduced HBA1c (a blood test that measures cell damage from high blood sugar levels). The more a diabetic exercised, the greater the reduction in HBA1c.