"Health News - Medicine, Diet and Fitness"

More communities in the U.S. are distributing the opiate overdose antidote naloxone directly to addicts for emergency use, but the Bush administration continues to oppose such policies, the New York Times reported Dec. 11.

Naloxone works by blocking the opiate receptors in the brain; it has been used by emergency medical personnel since 1971 to prevent overdoses. In recent years, a number of communities have distributed the antidote directly to addicts and their friends and family members — a policy credited with reversing at least 1,000 overdoses.

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The annual Monitoring the Future survey finds declining use of cigarettes and illicit drugs among 8th-graders that signifies “an ongoing cultural shift among teens and their attitudes about smoking and substance abuse,” according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

NIDA said that the 2007 survey found considerable declines in lifetime, past-month, and daily smoking among 8th-graders. Daily smoking rates fell to 3 percent, down from a peak of 10.4 percent in 1996.

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The New Mexico Department of Health would issue licenses to individuals and organizations to legally provide medical marijuana under draft rules unveiled last week, the Associated Press reported Dec. 4.

The license would allow patients, caregivers, state-run programs or private entities to legally manufacture and distribute marijuana for medical use. The draft rules will be open for public comment starting in late December, and a public hearing will be held in January.

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The Food and Drug Administration is contemplating the establishment of a class of medications that would be available only after counseling from a pharmacist but without a physician’s prescription. Physicians widely oppose the development, arguing that it could disrupt continuity of care and put patients at risk.

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The day-long, once-a-month fast many Mormons undertake as a part of their faith may help explain the lower rates of coronary artery disease in this population, according to a study presented at the American Heart Assn.’s scientific sessions in Orlando, Fla., last month.

“People who fast seem to receive a heart-protective benefit,” said Benjamin D. Horne, PhD, MPH, the study’s senior author and director of cardiovascular and genetic epidemiology at Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City.

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Medical students get a failing grade on their knowledge of physicians’ ethical obligations during wartime, according to a new study authored by a team of Harvard Medical School physicians.

The authors said their study, published in October in the International Journal of Health Services, should prompt medical schools to educate future doctors more thoroughly on the ethical questions they could face in an age of terror and torture.

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The Weight Connection
In a recent Harvard study involving 85,000 women, 61 percent of the diabetes cases that developed during the 16-year study period could be attributed to excess weight. But you don’t have to be obese, according to scientists at Kaiser Permanent Center for Health Research Northwest in Portland, Oregon. “In our study, there were moderately and even mildly overweight people who got diabetes before age 45,” says lead researcher Teresa Hillier, M.D. “The risk of early on set diabetes rose by 6 percent for every five to eight pounds of excess weight,” she says.

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For the second straight year, medical liability insurance rates are easing nationwide, with nearly 84% of company-reported rates holding steady or dropping in 2007. That’s according to the latest Medical Liability Monitor survey, the largest of its kind to track how much insurance carriers charge physicians.

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Wheat is one of the most common grains consumed by Canadians. However, for individuals with a wheat allergy, this grain is unsafe to eat. A wheat allergy is a reaction to one or

Alternative Mental Health
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A survey by the AIDS Project of Central Iowa found that most of the Democratic candidates for president said they would support needle exchange programs to help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS among injection-drug users, Medical News Today reported Nov. 30.

Each candidate was asked, “Do you support access to sterile syringes, as a means of protecting public health, by lifting the ban on federal funding for syringe exchange?” Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, former Sen. John Edwards, and Sen. Joseph Biden all answered “yes” to the question.

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