Tag Archives: health

Hoopy Froods: Know Where Your Towel Is

It’s perfectly legal to be nude on the streets of San Francisco, provided one isn’t hassling passersby or behaving lewdly. But the city does want its naturists to make one small, but important change. While nudists roam free in tolerant San Francisco, one city lawmaker wants to require them to wear clothing in restaurants and to put a towel on …

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Snake Oil

I consider most dietary supplements to be useless scams. (Including 99% of everything on the shelves at GNC.) Give me hard serious chemistry, not hippie-inspired hooey. Hit the link for a giant version of the above assessment.

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The Sloth Index

(Source)

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San Francisco’s Big Gay 10K

Benefiting the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. “You don’t have to be fast, just fabulous.”

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Spin Spin Sugar

New York Times Magazine has published a mammoth feature asking whether sugar and high-fructose corn syrup is really as bad for us as it seems. Short answer: yes. (He said as he reached for another Reese’s Cup.)

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U.S. Life Expectancy Declines

Newly released data from the federal government show a slight decrease in life expectancy for residents of the United States. According to the report, West Virginia is the worst state for mortality, with a death rate there that is almost 1.5 times greater than Hawaii, where people are living the longest. Data gathered by the National Center for Health Statistics …

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Jimmy Carter: Best Former President Ever

Jimmy Carter’s two-decade battle against a global pest in approaching victory. This fight against the guinea worm is a battle former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has waged for more than two decades in some of the poorest countries on earth. It is a battle he’s almost won. In the 1950s the 3-foot-long guinea worm ravaged the bodies of an estimated …

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Sending Our Love To Pam Spaulding

As readers of Pam’s House Blend are nervously aware, our pal and fellow blogger Pam Spaulding is undergoing major surgery this morning in North Carolina. Pam’s illness is forcing an unpaid leave from her day job, so if you’d like to kick her a few bucks her team has set up a Paypal fund. Best wishes, Pam! We’re all thinking …

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Circumcision Ban May Go To SF Voters

Next year San Francisco’s voters may see a ballot question that would ban the circumcision of males under 18 years old. “It’s genital mutilation,” said Lloyd Schofield, the author of a San Francisco ballot measure that would make it a “misdemeanor to circumcise, excise, cut or mutilate the…genitals” of a person under 18. Baby boys in San Francisco may be …

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FDA Wants Gruesome Smoking Warnings

The FDA has proposed changing the warnings on cigarettes to include photos of dead bodies and gruesomely emaciated cancer patients. U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials said a new “comprehensive tobacco control strategy” would include not only these graphic photos but bold statements such as “Smoking Will Kill You.” “Today, FDA takes a crucial step toward reducing the tremendous toll …

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20% Of Teens Have Some Hearing Loss

The incidence of partial hearing loss among teenagers is soaring, according to a just-released study out of Massachusetts. And experts are naturally pointing to the iPod and similar devices. The study of thousands of 12 to 19-year-olds found the number of them suffering from partial hearing loss jumped by 30 per cent between the early 1990 s and 2005-06. The …

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Federal Court Rules Vitaminwater A Scam

A federal court has ruled that Vitaminwater is nothing but a sugared drink and that its marketing is deceptive. The product is owned by Coca-Cola. A federal judge ruled this week that Vitaminwater will not, as its labels promise, keep you “healthy as a horse.” Nor will it bring about a “healthy state of physical or mental being”. Instead, Vitaminwater …

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Possible 90,000 U.S Swine Flu Deaths Forecast For Coming Season

A new report forecasts that up to 90,000 Americans could die of H1N1 virus during the coming flu season. But keep in mind that 36,000 die of the regular flu every year.

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Influenza A (H1N1)

New from WHO: The World Health Organisation (WHO), bowing to pressure from meat industry producers and concerned governments, said on Thursday it would refer to a deadly new virus strain as influenza A (H1N1), not swine flu. “From today, WHO will refer to the new influenza virus as ‘influenza A (H1N1)’,” it said on its site. The new strain has …

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Watch How HIV Infects Immune Cells

An astonishing new video shows for the first time how HIV attacks and infects healthy immune cells. This glimpse has provided researchers with some new ideas. Researchers found that the virus is transferred from infected cells to healthy ones in a previously unknown way. It is hoped that the discovery will help researchers create a vaccine to combat the virus, …

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Eat Dirt

Everybody knows that humanity’s relatively newfound obsession with cleanliness and germ eradication has spawned a host of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. An interesting story in the NYT says that there’s a reason kids will eat dirt if you let them – it’s an instinctive behavior that provides an evolutionary advantage. In studies of what is called the hygiene hypothesis, researchers are concluding …

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New Masturbation/Prostate Cancer Study

According to a new study, frequent masturbation after the age of 50 is good for your prostate. Before 50, not so much. Masturbation may be good for you – or bad, depending on your age. The solitary sexual activity that is widely practised but little discussed, is linked with an increased risk of prostate cancer when practised frequently by young …

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