One more reason to pop a vitamin D pill, especially at this time of year: low levels of this essential nutrient are now linked to cognitive problems as people get older.

My name is Peg. I’m a 57 year old, single/divorced parent of three adult children and one precious granddaughter. They’ve all heard me say many times, whenever we’re talking about our detours in life, “Start right where you are!” In other words, there are no failures in life. You can start right where you are with anything that you desire for your life.

The Ms.Fits are off and running…and walking, and stair climbing, and cycling. The jazzed-up members of our hometown team, competing in the 100-day Live Healthy America challenge, tallied up an individual average of 39 minutes of activity every day. The team gets together twice daily during breaks to climb stairs at the University of Iowa, in addition to exercise they do on their own. As Kim, the team leader, wrote: “It’s not something that you can easily get out of either. None of us would just get up and do it on …

Oprah’s back on the weight-loss bandwagon. “How did I let this happen again?” she asks in the January issue of O. From a low of 160 pounds, she’s climbed back up to 200 pounds–and she’s determined, once again, to get them off. After reading “Feed Me!: Writers Dish About Food, Eating, Weight, and Body Image,” I couldn’t help wondering if Oprah wouldn’t have served women better–make that all of us–by saying, “That’s it. I’m through with dieting. I’m through trying to be someone I’m not. I love my ample self. Hallelujah!”

Acupuncture effectively treats both tension headaches and migraines, a review of 33 trials reported this week. But guess what: fake acupuncture treatments proved to be equally effective. Could the benfits of acupuncture be nothing more than a placebo effect?

Results from a recent University of Florida College of Medicine study reminded us of a wonderful quote from Thomas Jefferson.

First, the findings. Reviewing 100 studies that looked at the effect of alcohol taxes on consumption of booze, Alexander C. Wagenaar, PhD, professor of epidemiology and health policy research, discovered a clear but unsurprising association. “When prices go down, people drink more,” he succintly explained, “and when prices go up, people drink less.”

In a commentary published along with the research findings in the journal Addiction, Frank Chaloupka, PhD, a professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, wrote: “these findings provide a strong rationale for increases in alcoholic beverage tax as a way to promote public health by reducing drinking”.

Here’s where Mr. Jefferson comes in.

Low-carbohydrate diets burn fat in the liver more effectively than low-calorie diets, according to new findings from the Univerity of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. The results add more to a growing pile of evidence that cutting back on carbs may be the best and healthiest way to trim off fat.

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Featured in the Press Democrat
January 20, 2009
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With apologies to the poetess
Whose fine-turned words and lofty address
Will grace the nation’s grand inaugural.
Herewith, instead, a shaggy doggerel,
A modest clutch of limping rhymes
In keeping with these threadbare times.

Don’t eat another peanut butter cookie, cake, or anything else that has peanut butter as an ingredient. That’s the advice of federal health officials, who are investigating a nationwide outbreak of salmonella that has so far sickened 470, hospitalized at least 90, and killed as many as six people.

Too much caffeine has been blamed for everything from irregular heartbeats to kidney stones. A new study claims that java junkies face an otherworldly risk: hearing voices, sensing the presence of dead people, and seeing things that aren’t there.