The UCLA School of Dentistry has developed a new mouthwash that may completely eliminate cavities and tooth decay during our lifetime. The new mouthwash targets Streptococcus mutans bacteria, primarily responsible for causing tooth decay and cavities.
The mouthwash, which is the result of nearly ten years of research, could be a big step toward the eradication of all forms of tooth decay.
In a recent clinical study, 12 subjects who rinsed just one time with the experimental mouthwash experienced a nearly complete elimination of the S. mutans bacteria over the entire four-day testing period. The findings from the small-scale study are published in the current edition of the international dental journal Caries Research.
Smoking is the number one cause of preventable disease and death in the United States, and half of all regular smokers are killed by smoke related diseases. Smokers are 2-4 times more prone to heart attacks than non-smokers.
2. You stink!
Seriously. And the smell isn’t harmless either. If someone just smells the smoke, they’re actually breathing the cancer causing agents that are found in the smoke, either first or second hand. And it’s just as dangerous.
Tricking the immune system can help to make the allergen safer and to prevent the body’s life-threatening reaction. Researchers found that they could trick the immune system into thinking that nut proteins aren’t a threat to the body. The preclinical study achieved peanut tolerance by attaching peanut proteins onto blood cells and reintroducing them into the body. Using this approach may also allow more than one food allergy to be targeted at a time.
“We think we’ve found a way to safely and rapidly turn off the allergic response to food allergies,” said Paul Bryce, an assistant professor of medicine in the division of allergy-immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Bryce and Stephen Miller, professor of microbiology-immunology at Feinberg, are co-senior authors of a paper published in the Journal of Immunology. (more…)
In a situation that could have ended in tragedy, a two year old’s life was saved. A ten year old girl named Annie, who has Downs Syndrome, recognized that the two year old child was in trouble, having fallen into the pool, and told twelve year old Sophia. Sophia alerted her grandmother Lianne who jumped in and rescued the child using CPR.
“I put him on the ground, and I began CPR. And then he began to gurgle. And when he finally began to gurgle, I rolled him over, tried to get the water out of his lungs,” Lianne Azevedo said. The EMT’s praised Lianne for her fast action that saved the little boy’s life. Little Brady Dones was awake and alert when he went to the hospital, and he’s expected to be okay.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has released the Food Pyramid replacement today. Called “My Plate” it is meant to help Americans get healthier with their food options. The graphical icon is one that will likely be everywhere, as it should infiltrate grocery stores nationwide in short order.
When I was in school we learned about the four food groups. It seemed a very simple chart to follow, and it wasn’t until much more recently that I learned that the whole system that I had learned was replaced in 1992 with the food pyramid. It looks as though the paradigm is about to shift again, with the replacement of the food pyramid on June 2nd.
When I first saw the food pyramid, I found it slightly overwhelming and a bit confusing, and it appears that I was not alone. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) feels that the food pyramid just doesn’t capture the attention of the public anymore. Personally, I think it was a failure to begin with, since it took so long for me to learn about it. I don’t remember when it was, but I definitely first learned about it after 2000, after it had been around for at least eight years. I’d call that a failure.
The United States’ Food and Drug Administration has just approved a new drug to fight HIV in combination with other antiretrovirals that are already on the market. The drug is called Edurant, and it was made by New Jersey based Tibotec Therapeutics. It works by blocking the HIV from replicating and is part of a class of drugs known as non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor.
“Patients may respond differently to various HIV drugs or experience varied side effects,” said Edward Cox, director of the office of antimicrobial products in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.
“FDA’s approval of Edurant provides an additional treatment option for patients who are starting HIV therapy.”
The FDA also approved a long awaited drug for the treatment of Hepatitis C, which was developed by Vertex Pharmaceuticals. The drug is called Incivek, and it is so effective that the chances of a person being cured of the disease double with its’ use. This drug works in combination with others such as ribavirin and pegylated interferon. It was unanimously approved by the FDA, and Vertex founder and former CEO Joshua Boger remarked that this is “a great day for patients that we at Vertex envisioned almost 18 years ago.”
If you’re looking for a good sunscreen, you might be surprised to find that the best is also one of the cheapest. According to Consumer Reports, the most effective sunscreen is the Target store brand Up & Up’s Sport Continuous SPF 30. It took the top honor as the best buy, with top marks for effectiveness while costing just $0.88 per ounce.
After testing the ability of 22 sprays, creams and lotions to protect against ultraviolet A and B radiation. UVA exposure is linked to skin cancer and aging, and UVB exposure is linked to burning.
Three other brands were rated highly for their UVA, UVB protection and reasonable price:
Julie Wilks, a British mother of two, says that she began to realize she was suffering from Parkinson’s disease only after she stepped on the Wii Balance Board. The device comes with Wii Fit Plus, which as a primary function works by helping you learn to optimize your balance.
About a year ago, she noticed that her balance was heavily shifted to one side, which the Balance Board confirmed. The Balance Board uses four sensors, two on each side, to capture where you’re focusing your weight, and if you’re shifting at all. The heavy shift began to worry her, and other symptoms later started to emerge. She visited a doctor who delivered the diagnosis. She had Parkinson’s disease.
“I’m so grateful that I was playing the game that day and that it ended in my diagnosis,” she told the Daily Mail. “What an amazing piece of technology.”
Paramedic Roy Shaw is doing a series of entries about the newly released 2010 CPR guideline updates. If you’d like to go in-depth with the new guidelines, take a look at the following entries, and continue to follow his series as he updates with more.
The UCLA School of Dentistry has developed a new mouthwash that may completely eliminate cavities and tooth decay during our lifetime. The new mouthwash targets Streptococcus mutans bacteria, primarily responsible for causing tooth decay and cavities.
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