In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt pushed through new food safety regulation. But the Food and Drugs Act passed that day over 100 years ago was the last time the U.S. food safety system was modernized.

But recent events could bring about much-needed reform. There have been a string of foodborne illness outbreaks and product recalls -- from the salmonella in peppers that sickened over 400 last year and killed two, to salmonella in peanut products this year, which led to around 700 illnesses and nine deaths. About one in four Americans is sickened by foodborne disease each year, 325,000 are hospitalized, and about 5,000 die. And since the early 90s, foodborne illness outbreaks have more than tripled.

The peanut product outbreak in particular led to legislation being proposed at both a state and federal level, including the bipartisan FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. Is it needed? Right now, we rely on voluntary recalls -- and the Westco Fruit and Nut Company, which was knowingly using contaminated peanuts, refused to voluntarily recall its potentially lethal snack mix. FDA officials were forced to apply for an inspection warrant, which took weeks.

The FDA is currently so understaffed that it can inspect only around 5 percent of food producers and processors each year. Only one percent of imported food ever undergoes an FDA inspection.

Before you reach for expensive over-the-counter or prescription allergy remedies, you might want to try a cheap alternative treatment that really seems to work: nasal irrigation, or washing out your nose once or twice daily with warm salt water. Most medical study on nasal irrigation for allergies are rather positive, and there's little risk and little expense in trying.

Spring marks the beginning of pollen season, and the same yellowish dust that coats your car also fills your nasal passages, causing enough irritation to trigger an allergic reaction. Nasal irrigation simply washes away the irritants causing the allergy symptoms.

Many medical institutions, such as the Mayo Clinic, advocate the use of nasal irrigation. The most recent study appeared in the January 2009, with the 200 patients in the study reporting some relief of symptoms from twice daily irrigations.

To try it, you can invest two dollars in a bulb syringe. or you can buy a neti pot, which looks like a little oil lamp, often used by yoga devotees. Nasal irrigation is known as jala neti in the ancient Indian practice of Ayurveda.

Drawing from some of the most pivotal points in his life, Steve Jobs, chief executive officer and co-founder of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, urged graduates to pursue their dreams and see the opportunities in life's setbacks -- including death itself.

I tend to agree with Steve Job's assessment that Stanford is one of the best colleges in the world. Even though most of this speech was read, the content is absolutely phenomenal and should be listened to several times. It’s one of the best 15 minute investments of your time you can ever make.

The common picture of a B12 deficient patient is an elderly person with pernicious anemia. But B12 deficiency may be cause instead by food-B12 malabsorption.

Food-B12 malabsorption is the inability to release B12 from food or its binding proteins. Unlike pernicious anemia, it’s more likely to be associated with mild, preclinical B12 deficiency.

B12 deficiency is common in elderly patients. One study revealed a prevalence of 12 percent among elderly people. Other studies, focusing on those who are in institutions or who are sick and malnourished, have suggested a higher prevalence of 30 percent to 40 percent. But B12 deficiency is often unrecognized because the clinical manifestations can be very subtle. In fact, one of its manifestations -- mild memory loss -- can mimic the early stages of dementia.

Food-B12 malabsorption is caused primarily by atrophic gastritis. More than 40 percent of patients older than 80 years have gastric atrophy that can be related to H. pylori infection.

A new study shows that babies are a lot smarter than many people  realize. Even when only five months old, babies can differentiate water in a glass from solid blue material that looked very much like water in a similar glass.

The finding that infants can distinguish between solids and liquids at such an early age builds upon a growing body of research that strongly suggests that babies are not completely blank slates -- a common assumption of researchers in the not too distant past.

Rather, babies are “amazing little experimenters” with innate knowledge, according to Susan Hespos, the study’s lead author.

Children exposed to cigarette smoke have lower levels of antioxidants, chemicals which help defend against many biological stresses.

A study looked at the levels of antioxidants versus the amount of smoke exposure in more than 2,000 children. The study showed that secondhand smoke exposure is associated with lower levels of antioxidants.

The children's exposure to tobacco smoke was determined by the level of cotinine in their blood -- cotinine is a byproduct of metabolizing tobacco smoke. The higher the level of cotinine in a child's blood, the lower the antioxidant level.

Many more Americans have been using prescription drugs to treat mental illness since 1996. In fact, 73 percent more adults and 50 percent more children are using drugs to treat mental illness now than were doing so in 1996.

Among adults over 65, use of so-called psychotropic drugs -- which include antidepressants and antipsychotics -- doubled between 1996 and 2006.

The findings come from several large public surveys of health in the United States, including from the National Center for Health Statistics, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Social Security Administration.

Fear is contagious during a disease outbreak -- a survey last week found that almost half of Americans worried that they or a family member could get sick from the swine flu virus of 2009. Part of the blame may go to Hollywood, which has long turned out movies that play on fears of infection and uncertainty.

The way contagion is spread, and the time in which it takes contagion to spread, is greatly exaggerated in most fictional depictions of disease. For example, in the movies "28 Days Later" and "28 Weeks Later," a virus infection produces instant symptoms.

Similar misconceptions about the spread of disease arise in many other movies ranging from "Outbreak" to "I Am Legend."

In the autumn of 2000, a graduate student held a workshop for local farmers in the Sierra Norte de Oaxaca in southern Mexico. The student, David Quist, hoped to show the farmers how to test their seeds for GM. To do this, he thought he would show them the difference in the purity of the local maize compared to the maize that had been shipped in from the U.S., where some 40 percent is GM. He thought the U.S. maize would test positive for GM and the Mexican maize would be negative -- but instead of the local maize being negative, it kept coming up positive.

Quist’s supervisor, Dr Ignacio Chapela, had been working with the campesinos or peasant farmers in Oaxaca for over 15 years, assisting them in community sustainable agriculture. Quist was told by Chapela to bring the samples back to the U.S., where the two would repeat the experiments and test the native maize for contamination by GMOs.
Contamination threatens Mexico's unique maize genetic diversity; Mexico is the traditional home of corn, where the plant was first domesticated some 10,000 years ago.

Quist and Chapela found that GM contamination had occurred in Mexican maize, and also that the GM DNA seemed to be randomly fragmented in the genome of the maize, suggesting that the transgenic DNA was not stable. Quist and Chapela knew that if the research was published it would cause an international outcry, so they made sure that their research was correct, repeating the tests multiple times.

Soon Chapela found himself being threatened. He received a letter from an agricultural under-secretary, saying that the government had 'serious concerns' about the 'consequences that could be unleashed' from his research. Moreover the government, would 'take the measures it deems necessary to recuperate any damages to agriculture or the economy in general that this publication's content could cause'.

After that, the situation only intensified. Chapela soon found his credentials and objectivity being questioned -- accusations that were eventually traced back to the Bivings Corporation, a PR company that has been assisting Monsanto on internet PR ever since 1999, when the company decided that the net had played a significant part in its PR problems in Europe. Evidence suggests that Bivings, or those who have had access to its email accounts, has covertly smeared biotech industry critics via a website called CFFAR (Center for Food and Agricultural Research), although no such organization appears to exist.

The birth control pill was first introduced to the American public for contraceptive use in 1960. By 2002, 11.6 million U.S. women were on the Pill, making it the nation's leading method of contraception.

But oral contraceptives can have negative health effects. The Pill’s relationship with blood-clot risk and stroke is well-documented, and that risk increases when a woman is smoker, particularly a smoker over age 35. In addition, studies in recent years have found that birth control pill use impairs muscle gains in young women, increases the risk of breast cancer in pre-menopausal women, and increases the risk of cervical cancer.

And the Pill may interfere with a protein that keeps testosterone unavailable for women's physiologic needs, thus causing long-term health problems, including sexual dysfunction.

Since 2000, death rates have increased in women between the ages of 35 and 44. All other age groups, meanwhile, have seen a decline. Research on this fact cites the significant increase in the use of birth control pills as a possible contributing factor.

Too much sunlight in places like Greenland, where long summer days often cause insomnia, appears more likely to drive a person to suicide.

In many regions of the world, suicides tend to rise in late autumn and early winter months because of darkness. But new findings suggest that places where there is constant sunlight in summer seasons may be just as dangerous. During long periods of constant light, it may be crucial to maintain circadian rhythms to get enough sleep and sustain mental health.

Scientists have previously linked sleep disturbances to increased suicidal risk in people with psychiatric disorders and in adolescents.

Common drugs used to treat ulcers and heartburn can pose a problem for people taking the blood thinner Plavix.

Nexium, Prevacid, Prilosec and Protonix, known as proton pump inhibitors, are enormously popular. But they can be dangerous in heart patients taking the anti-clotting medication.

The proton pump inhibitors interfere with Plavix's effectiveness, boosting the risk of heart and stroke by 50 percent in patients taking both drugs.

Testosterone gel can cause serious harm to children, federal health officials have warned. The FDA said adults using prescription testosterone gel must be careful not to get any of it on children to avoid causing serious side effects. The agency ordered its strongest “black box” warning on the products' labels.

Side effects can include enlargement of the genital organs, aggressive behavior, early aging of the bones, premature growth of pubic hair, and increased sexual drive. Boys and girls are both at risk.

The problems arise if adults do not wash their hands well. Also, since testosterone gel is usually applied to the upper arms or shoulders, adults must cover up to keep kids from accidentally touching a spot that has the medicine on it.

Do you ever feel like you’re drowning in work? Some people say they “work well under stress”, but most people are happier, healthier and more productive when they’re we’re on top of things. Here are ten tips to help you stay on top of your work:

Don’t Take On Too Much

All the time management tips in the world won’t give you more than twenty-four hours in a day. When you’re offered an exciting new project to be part of, when a colleague asks for a favor, stop and think about your other priorities.

Minimize Meetings

Many time-management writers advocate avoiding meetings if at all possible. If you’re obliged to be in regular meetings, try cutting the frequency or the duration. If you can possibly avoid meetings, do so.

Make A To-Do List The Day Before

If you normally work on whatever catches your attention, you’re working ineffectively. Each evening before you stop work for the day, make a “to do” list for the following day.

“Big Rocks First”

There’s an oft-cited time management adage “Big Rocks First”. If you had to fill a jar with sand and rocks, it’s hard to do it by pouring in the sand first then trying to fit in the rocks. But if you fit all the rocks first, the sand can simply flow into the gaps. Fit your “big rocks” -- the major things you want to work on -- into your day first.

Work In Timed Bursts

No one can sustain their concentration for hours at a time. Work in timed bursts: for example, work on that big report that’s been hanging over you for thirty solid minutes. You’ll be surprised how much you can get done in a short space of time.

Develop Good Systems

If a particular aspect of your job is always causing you headaches, chances are that you need to fix the system you use for dealing with it. For example, if you find that you’re always forgetting to follow up on action points for meetings, develop a framework to help you do this.

Limit Email Checking

Reading and replying to emails can often be a distraction from getting on with more important work. Try “batching” your emails: instead of replying as soon as one arrives, set certain times of day when you’ll read and reply to all your emails.

Set Your Own Deadlines

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could set your own deadlines? Well, you can, of course: just make your deadline before the one that you’ve been given. If you aim to get each project finished a few days in advance of the “real” deadline, you’ll feel considerably less stressed, and you’ll also be able to cope with any genuine emergencies that crop up.

Delegate

One great way to stay on top of your work is to pass on low-level tasks to someone else. If you’re in management, you’re wasting your time and your company’s time when you perform tasks that a junior colleague could have carried out. If you’re self-employed, perhaps you can pay someone else to do tasks for you.

Ask For Less

Depending on your job, you might be unable to delegate anything. If this is the problem, don’t be afraid to say that you're being given too much to do. Don’t moan about having too much work, but mention your concerns that some aspects of your work aren’t getting done, or are being rushed, because you have too much else to work on.

Probiotic supplements during the first trimester of pregnancy can help women lose weight after their child’s birth, according to new findings.

Researchers report that supplements containing Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium were associated with less central obesity, defined as a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more or a waist circumference over 80 centimeters.

Probiotics are live microorganisms that confer a health benefits when consumed.

Previous research found that microbial populations in the gut are different between obese and lean people, and that when the obese people lost weight their microflora changed.