Public Health Recommendations

Who would have known that there are so many summer haters out there? I didn’t think to write about summer depression until the cool website Mermaids of the Lake asked me to. (You must check out their site, because the photography alone is worth the click.) But then again, I have covered all the other seasons: “12 Winter Depression Busters,” and “5 Ways to Manage Autumn Anxiety,” and “Spring Depression.” Hell, let’s be honest, I’m depressed every damn season. So it made sense to cover summer depression. But I was unprepa

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Acne is a common skin condition that causes pimples or zits on the face, chest, back, and other areas. An estimated 60 million people in the United States have acne at some time during their lives. Acne is most common in teenagers, but can be a problem for people of all ages.

The first rule of acne treatment is never to pop or pick at pimples or zits. No matter how clean the skin seems to be, popping a pimple allows bacteria and other germs to get inside the protective surface layer of the skin which in most cases will cause a red spot or bump that will last much longer than the original pimple would have. In general, acne treatments try to deal with one of three basic causes of acne: clogged pores, bacteria on the skin, and excess oil production by glands in the skin.

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Merck & Co. is joining HIV research projects led by two major US universities, a top official with the pharmaceutical firm has announced. “Collaboration has been the hallmark of much of the progress made against HIV since the virus was first identified 30 years ago,” said Daria Hazuda, Merck’s research laboratories vice president. Merck will become the only pharmaceutical partner in a new project steered by the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. A team including 19 investigators from UNC and eight other universities will look for ways to purge persistent HIV infection from the body. Concurrently, Merck will work with researchers at the University of California-San Francisco on a five-year effort to define and better understand HIV’s reservoirs and test potential treatments. The Nat Read more…

A new study has revealed that college goers who indulge in heavy drinking – till they lost their memory – are at a higher risk of alcohol-related injuries in the future.

The study from Northwestern Medicine showed that 50 percent of college drinkers report at least one alcohol-induced memory blackout a period of amnesia in the past year during a drinking binge.

Despite being fully conscious during such blackouts, students could not recall specific events, such as how they got to a bar, party or their own front door.

The study found these drinkers who reported alcohol-induced memory loss are at a higher risk of alcohol-related injuries in the next 24 months versus their peers who drank just as much but didn’t report memory blackouts.

When you are in a blackout you are fully conscious, but you don’t really know what you are doing, and the choices you make can be irrational, risky and dangerous, said Michael Fleming, M.D., professor at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and co-author of the study.

“This study shows that these blackouts are strong predictors of future alcohol-related injuries,” he added.

For the study, Fleming and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, analysed data collected from full-time college students at four U.S. universitie

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Potentially toxic flame retardants, many of them containing compounds known as penta brominated diphenyl ethers, are a common component of many household products containing polyurethane foam.Originally intended to increase product safety by decreasing fire risk, these compounds have come under increasing scrutiny since the early 1990s due to growing evidence of their damaging health effects.But even though these chemicals have been banned in 172 countries and 12 U.S. states, they continue to make their way into a wide variety of products found in U.S. Read more…