Category: Uncategorized

MS Symptoms – Influenced by Weather Changes

Here’s the latest interesting news about multiple sclerosis and weather.  Temperature changes may actually influence the severity of MS symptoms.  This is according to a study published recently in Neurology.

Researchers, looking at the brain patterns of 44 untreated MS patients, found that they were two to three times as likely to have disease activity during spring and summer months.

As author Dominik Meier of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston reported to BBC News, “Not only were more lesions found during the spring and summer seasons, our study also found that warmer temperatures and solar radiation were linked to disease activity.”

Up until now, MS was thought to get progressively worse with time.  These weather-influenced findings, however, suggest that MS patterns may change on a regular basis.

Well Structured Study Shows Cannabis Does Relieve Pain

One of the more infamous of herbal remedies, cannabis, also known as marijuana, has been shown in a small but well-designed study conducted in Canada, to help relieve some of the discomfort experienced by people who suffer from chronic pain. Marijuana has been used in pill form for a number of years as a treatment for certain types of pain, but the risks and benefits associated with smoking the herb until now have been mysterious.

Dr. Mark Ware is an assistant professor of family medicine and anesthesia at McGill University in Montreal. He was determined to find out more about the effects of marijuana, so with the help of several colleagues he designed a study based on a randomized controlled trial, considered the most thorough way to discover efficacy for a medication. Dr. Mark had 21 adults with chronic neuropathic pain inhale cannabis in what is said to be the first outpatient clinical trial of smoked cannabis.
The subjects were divided into four groups, each getting a different percentage of THC, the active ingredient in cannabis. Also included was a placebo which contained no THC. According to the authors of the study, which was published in the on-line issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, “We found that 25 mg herbal cannabis with 9.4 per cent THC, administered as a single smoked inhalation three times daily for five days, significantly reduces average pain intensity compared with a zero per cent THC cannabis placebo in adult subjects with chronic post traumatic/post-surgical neuropathic pain.”

Tea Drinkers Listen Up – Drink the Real Thing!

If you love tea, you’ll want to hear about this research.  Researchers at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society revealed that bottled tea contains low levels of antioxidants and polyphenols compared to brewed tea.  Shiming Li, PhD. Reported on the research carried out by Professor Chi-Tang Ho when he explained, “There is a huge gap between the perception that tea consumption is healthy and the actual amount of the healthful nutrients found in bottled tea beverages.”

They pointed out, as well, that bottled teas don’t only lack the healthy ingredients that tea drinkers are looking for, but that they are often full of sugar as well. The researchers found that, while a regular tea bag may contain up to 175 milligrams of polyphenols, most highly-rated bottled teas contain less than half that amount.

Citations for SeaWorld After Trainer Dies

SeaWorld has recently been fined $75,000 by the Occupational Safety and Health administration for three specific violations after an animal trainer was killed in February of 2010.  SeaWorld denies what it called “unfounded” allegations by the U.S. Department of Labor agency and they plan to contest the citations.

This past February, a 12,000 pound killer whale at the Orlando, Florida SeaWorld pulled trainer Dawn Brancheau, 20, underwater and killed her as park visitors were watching.  AS the OSHA statement said, “SeaWorld trainers had an extensive history of unexpected and potentially dangerous incidents involving killer whales at its various facilities, including its location in Orlando. Despite this record, management failed to make meaningful changes to improve the safety of the work environment for its employees.”

Delaware – Taking Charge Where Obesity is Concerned

Some local coalitions are getting creative to get children’s weight back on track.  One local coalition of Delaware County organizations has created a program called Healthy Living Take Charge!  Their goal is to take concrete steps to lower the county’s high obesity rates among adults and children.

As Tamara White, co-chairman of Healthy Living and a Delaware County Health Department employee, said, “Instead of reinventing the wheel, coming up with a program that may get funded for a couple of years and that’s it, we created small grants to assist agencies that already have a good track record creating obesity-focused programs. The focus on obesity is what we needed in this community and this way we’re working on this issue.”


Healthy Living Take Charge! is using its $14,000 in mini-grant dollars to offer money to programs that address both nutrition and physical activity.  They are trying to encourage day cares, preschools and other agencies that work with young children to use their forum to address obesity and to teach children at an early age.

Pesticides Linked with ADHD: The Latest Findings

A new study, conducted by Brenda Eskenazi at the University of California at Berkely, and published in the August 19th issue of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found fascinating results about ADHD.  They point to a connection between prenatal levels of exposure to metabolites of organophosphate pesticides and an increase risk for ADHD in children.

The researchers, examining 300 children enrolled in the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas, found that pesticide exposure during pregnancy didn’t significantly increase the risk of ADHD for children ages 3.5, but did seem to be highly associated with children around 5.


In another study, published in Pediatrics by Dr. Marc Weisskopf of the Harvard School of Public Health, researchers found that these pesticides may increase the risk of ADHD in children ages 8-15 years.