Mammogram Parties...The New Fad?

Every 12 minutes a woman in America dies of breast cancer.  With early detection though, doctors believe that number could be significantly reduced, that’s why they’re hosting mammogram parties.
Relaxing with a massage, being pampered with a manicure. No, this isn’t a day spa. It’s a mammogram party. The parties are sweeping the nation, helping take the stress out of getting mammograms.


"This way being around other people it takes away the nervousness,” Judith Wiersema, Mammogram Party Attendee said.
“We would like to see more women come out and participate in screening mammography. It saves lives,” said one radiologist.

The American Cancer Society recommends all women over the age of 40 get a mammogram every year. But only two out of three women say they’ve gotten a mammogram in the last two years.

 “I’ve never had a mammogram I’m just too afraid to go,” one attendee said.

But you don’t have to be. Let’s separate fact from fiction. True or false? You do not need to get a breast exam if you get a yearly mammogram. That's false! A mammogram only picks up 85-percent of lesions.  Drinking caffeinated beverages can cause breast cancer.  That's also false! A new study shows it may reduce your risk, but drinking high amounts can make your breasts more sensitive during a mammogram. The radiation you receive from a mammogram does not cause cancer. True! The risk of harm from radiation exposure is very small and that risk decreases as a woman ages.

These parties just may make mammograms worth toasting to.

Health Care Reform Law Loses in Appeals Court

In a 304-page opinion, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta on Friday struck down the individual insurance mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but allowed the rest of the sweeping law to stand.

In its decision, a divided three-judge panel of the federal appeals court ruled in favor of 26 states that had joined a lawsuit in Pensacola, Fla., which argued the reform law should be struck down because it relies on an unconstitutional expansion of federal power.

The ruling means that the Supreme Court will now have the classic split in the circuit courts that it often relies on when deciding whether to take on a case. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law in June, and the losers in that case filed for permission last month to have their case heard by the Supreme Court.
Critics said—and the 11th Circuit judges agreed—that Congress' ability to regulate interstate commerce cannot be expanded to include a power to compel private individuals to buy health insurance. Under the law, nearly all Americans who can't prove they have health insurance would face a penalty on their income taxes starting in 2014.

“What Congress cannot do under the Commerce Clause is mandate that individuals enter into contracts with private insurance companies for the purchase of an expensive product from the time they are born until the time they die,” the judges wrote.

A dissenting opinion from U.S. Circuit Judge Stanley Marcus said the majority opinion ignored decades of Supreme Court precedents to expand and define the scope of Commerce Clause powers to include over-arching regulatory schemes.

“The individual mandate was designed and intended to regulate quintessentially economic conduct in order to ameliorate two large national problems: first, the substantial cost shifting that occurs when uninsured individuals consume health care services—as virtually all of them will, and many do each year—for which they cannot pay; and, second, the unavailability of health insurance for those who need it most—those with pre-existing conditions and lengthy medical histories,” Marcus wrote.

Although the ruling technically only strikes out the individual mandate, legal observers have said that it's not clear whether the law is workable from a practical perspective without the provision. Proponents of the law have said the mandate was necessary to offset insurers' costs, since the reform law also took away their right to turn away sick patients.

The 11th Circuit is the second federal appeals court to issue a ruling on the merits of the reform law.

In June, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati upheld the law on a challenge from a federal lawsuit in Detroit after hearing a nearly identical set of arguments as the 11th Circuit judges did. The Thomas More Law Center, which lost the Detroit appeal, has already filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court to hear oral arguments in the lawsuit.
Still outstanding are rulings from the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., which heard oral arguments in May on two different lawsuits challenging the reform law. The judges have not yet ruled on those cases.

What are your thoughts on the new health care reform?

Back to School...How to Keep Kids Alert

I can't believe school has started already for many.  Here are some more back to school tips and healthy advice to help keep kids alert during the school day.

As parents prepare to send their children back to school, they need to remember that nutrition is an important factor in academic performance, an expert advises.

Studies have shown that children who eat healthy, balanced breakfasts and lunches are more alert throughout the school day and also earn higher marks than those who have an unhealthy diet.

A healthy breakfast includes a variety of foods such as fiber-rich and whole-grain cereals with low fat milk; yogurt and berries; toast, eggs and 100 percent fruit juice; or whole wheat bagels and cream cheese with low-fat milk.

When packing lunches, use the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Guide Pyramid. Include at least two servings from the bread group and one serving from each of the other food groups.

One way to prevent children from becoming bored with their lunches is to use pitas, bagels, English muffins, crackers or tortillas to make sandwiches instead of using bread all the time.

You can pack fruit such as grapes, strawberries, apple wedges or melon chunks that's quick and easy to eat.  Including a toothpick and a dipping sauce made with yogurt can coax reluctant fruit eaters to try it.

Children should be encouraged to drink low-fat white milk or plain or sugar-free flavored water. They should not drink beverages with added supplements such as herbs and caffeine.

Scientist Create A Dog That Glows

South Korean scientists said on Wednesday they have created a glowing dog using a cloning technique that could help find cures for human diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

A research team from Seoul National University (SNU) said the genetically modified female beagle, named Tegon and born in 2009, has been found to glow fluorescent green under ultraviolet light if given a doxycycline antibiotic, the report said.

The researchers, who completed a two-year test, said the ability to glow can be turned on or off by adding a drug to the dog's food.

"The creation of Tegon opens new horizons since the gene injected to make the dog glow can be substituted with genes that trigger fatal human diseases." 

The dog was created using the somatic cell nuclear transfer technology that the university team used to make the world's first cloned dog, Snuppy, in 2005.

The scientist said that because there are 268 illnesses that humans and dogs have in common, creating dogs that artificially show such symptoms could aid treatment methods for diseases that afflict humans.

The latest discovery, published online May 31 in Genesis, took four years of research with roughly 3.2 billion won ($3 million) spent to make the dog and conduct the necessary verification tests.

Is Your Brain Bigger Based on Where You Live?

 People from northern parts of the world have evolved bigger brains and larger eyes to help them to cope with long, dark winters and dim skies, scientists said on Wednesday.

Researchers from Oxford University studied the eye sockets and brain capacity of 55 human skulls from 12 different populations across the world and found that the further human populations live from the equator, the bigger their brains.

It's not because they are smarter, however, but because they need bigger vision areas in the brain to cope with the low light levels at high latitudes, the scientists said in a report of their findings published online July 27th in Biology Letters.

"As you move away from the equator, there's less and less light available, so humans have had to evolve bigger and bigger eyes," said Eiluned Pearce from Oxford's School of Anthropology, who led the study. "Their brains also need to be bigger to deal with the extra visual input.

"Having bigger brains doesn't mean that higher latitude humans are smarter, it just means they need bigger brains to be able to see well where they live."

The skulls used in the study dated back to the 1800s and included samples from indigenous populations of England, Australia, Canary Islands, China, France, India, Kenya, Micronesia, Scandinavia, Somalia, Uganda and the United States.

The researchers plotted the volume of the eye sockets and brain cavities against the latitude of the central point of each individual's country of origin and found that the size of both the brain and the eyes could be directly linked to the latitude of the country.

Oxford's Robin Dunbar, who also worked on the study, said the results showed the speed at which humans had evolved to cope with the challenges of new habitats.

"Humans have only lived at high latitudes in Europe and Asia for a few tens of thousands of years, yet they seem to have adapted their visual systems surprisingly rapidly to the cloudy skies, dull weather and long winters," he said.