The current economic downturn can be measured by all kinds of economic indicators–including some showing up in hospitals and doctors’ offices around the country, where surveys show that patients are deferring non-emergency care and not showing up for appointments. In response, some doctors are offering special rates and payment plans. Some are even treating patients in dire straits for free.

Antioxidants are good. The free radical molecules they neutralize are bad. Or so we’ve all been led to think. Now a study of exercise and insulin sensitivity turns that conventional notion on its head.

After cancelling his wildly popular comedy tour “Weapons of Self-Destruction” because of serious heart problems, Robin Williams is soon to be back on the circuit. And by all accounts, his over-the-top sense of humor is undiminished. The tour was postponed after the comedian underwent major surgery at the Cleveland Clinic in March to replace his aortic valve, repair his mitral valve and treat an irregular heartbeat.

If the local 24-hour Fitness is any measure, sports drinks seem to be the favored breakfast of champions these days. But a new study by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin suggests that the best pre-workout meal is a whole grain cereal with milk.

Researchers have long known that women who get adequate amounts of folic acid are much less likely to give birth to infants with spina bifida, a devastating birth defect. New research shows that folic acid supplements dramatically reduce the risk of preterm births, as well.

A bacterial infection that causes chronic diarrhea and fever, among other symptoms, is on the rise, experts say. Since 2000, the incidence has increased 25 percent a year. The chief cause of the epidemic: the very drugs designed to fight off bacterial infections, antibiotics.

Many cancer patients swear by acupressure wristbands as a way to ward off treatment-related nausea. Most doctors have assumed the bands work because of the placebo effect. No longer.

Sports drinks may give you an energy boost when you’re working out. But disturbing new evidence suggests they may also be wreaking havoc on your pearly whites.

Every 90 seconds, an American family is forced to file for bankruptcy–not because they’ve mismanaged their finances but because their savings have been wiped out by medical expenses.

That shocking statistic is part of a new report from Harvard Medical School and Ohio University researchers that compares 2001 and 2007 bankruptcy data in the U.S. The experts found that 60 percent of all bankruptcies in 2007 were driven by unaffordable medical bills, up 50 percent from six years earlier. The odds that a bankruptcy resulted principally from medical expenses was almost 2.4 times greater in 2007 than in 2001.

That’s troubling enough. Even more disturbing: many of the families forced to declare bankruptcy had health insurance. Either it didn’t cover many of their expenses or the policies were cancelled when families needed them most. Among bankrupt families, those with health insurance had out-of-pocket expenses averaging $17,749. Those without insurance found themselves socked with bills averaging $26,971. Among families that had health insurance but then lost it, out-of-pocket expenses totalled an average of $22,568.

Those numbers won’t surprise many Americans who have gone in for health care recently, even basic recommended preventive care and screening. In our family of two, for instance, we were recently hit with more than $8,000 in out-of-pocket expenses after we followed our doctors’ orders and underwent screening colonoscopies. And we have insurance!

The latest statistics underscore a stubborn fact: Fixing the nation’s economy requires fixing the health care system.

Even when results from early clinical trials are overwhelmingly positive, medications once approved often prove less effective than first hoped. Indeed, there’s a joke among doctors about newly-approved drugs that goes like this: “Prescribe it now…while it still works.”

Why do drugs lose their lustre when they begin to be widely used? For many reasons. Initial enthusiasm on the part of investigators may bias the results to make them seem more favorable, even in controlled studies. Drug makers, who fund the clinical trials that are conducted to win approval, may intentionally make the results appear rosier by fiddling with statistics or leaving out less-encouraging results.

Now a new study offers another surprising reason. Volunteers chosen for clinical trials may not represent the patients who ultimately end up taking the drugs.

How worried should you be about swine flu?

That’s the question of the hour for world health officials and the rest of us alike.

For decades, virologists have worried about exactly this nightmare scenario: a brand new influenza virus makes the leap from birds or pigs to human beings and then begins to spread freely from person to person. The imaginary nightmare would be even scarier if it began in one of the world’s densely-crowded megacities–a place like Mexico City, for example–where it could infect millions of people before anyone knew it even existed.

That’s exactly the sort of nightmare that seemed to be unfolding as swine flu emerged and began to spread.