Health & Wellness

The most popular anti-anxiety drug in the benzodiazepine, Xanax was America's 11th-most prescribed pill in 2010, according to the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.

Emergency room visits involving Xanax soaring

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM) • Catholic Online • 5/16/2012

Xanax is a drug ostensibly used to assist anxiety-related disorders. Now, the drug has been linked to anxiety-creating situations such as emergency room visits in hospitals. Between 2004 and 2009, New York City emergency room visits involving Xanax and other anti-anxiety prescription drugs ...

Most of the study's participants will be drawn from an extended family of 5,000 people who live in Medell�n, Colombia, and remote mountain villages outside that city, a family that is believed to have more members afflicted with Alzheimer's than any other place in the world.

Breakthrough Alzheimer's study

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM) • Catholic Online • 5/15/2012

In some of the most exciting news in the fight against Alzheimer's disease, a condition that affects primarily elderly people's memory and cognitive skills, a drug intended to halt the onset of the disease is to begin clinical trials. LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The trials are historically ...

Parents should listen to the general advice regarding choking, especially for those 5 years and younger.

Batteries sending more children to ER

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM) • Catholic Online • 5/15/2012

Cases of children taken to the emergency room after accidentally swallowing batteries have doubled over the past twenty years. LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - "The increase we're seeing is a call to action," said study lead author Dr. Gary A. Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research ...

Dr. Denton Weiss on Curbing Comfort Food and Learning to Live Beautifully

By Dr Denton D Weiss, MD • Catholic Online • 5/15/2012

Dr. Denton Weiss explains why we are so drawn to those "comfort foods", what we should do when the urge strikes, and how we can develop a way of life that enables us to be fully human as well as truly healthy in body, mind and spirit. A way of living he calls beautiful living! ...

The panel recommended that Truvada be prescribed for people at high risk of infection, like gay men who have multiple sex partners, as well as people engaged in sexual acts with someone who is H.I.V.-positive. Young black men who have sex with other men are at the highest risk.

Drug used to treat H.I.V. now may be used to prevent it

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM) • Catholic Online • 5/14/2012

An advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration says that Truvada, a drug already used to treat H.I.V. infection should also be approved to prevent it. The recommendation is the first time government advisers have advocated giving antiviral medicine to healthy people who might be exposed ...

Police are reporting increases in robberies and other crimes by people who are addicted to oxycodone and hydrocodone, the key ingredient in most prescription pain pills.

Americans gulping down pain pills like candy: 80 percent of the world's supply

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM) • Catholic Online • 5/14/2012

An alarming new study has shown that Americans consume 80 percent of the world's supply of painkillers. This translates to more than 110 tons of pure, addictive opiates every year as the nation's prescription drug abuse epidemic spirals out of control. LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - ...

The use of Truvada could lead to a new milestone for treatment in the evolution of the worldwide AIDS epidemic. The FDA advisory committee voted 19-3 to endorse the drug's use for controlling HIV infection among the highest risk group - homosexual or bisexual men.

FDA recommends use of drug that prevents HIV transmission

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM) • Catholic Online • 5/11/2012

An outside panel of experts with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recommended Gilead Sciences Inc's Truvada as a treatment for preventing HIV infection among people most at risk for contracting AIDS, including homosexual and bisexual men. However - some doctors say the drug does ...

Jessica Harris of Cancer Research U.K. said: 'It's important that authorities worldwide make every effort to reduce the number of infection-related cancers, especially when many of these infections can be prevented. In the U.K., infections are thought to be responsible for 3 percent of cancers, or around 9,700 cases each year.'

One in six cancers the result of infection, study suggests

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM) • Catholic Online • 5/11/2012

One in six cancers, or two million cases a year globally are caused by largely treatable or preventable infections, a new study suggests. According to the Lancet Oncology review, which examined incidence rates for 27 cancers in 184 countries, four main infections are responsible. LOS ANGELES, CA ...

The Center for Consumer Freedom, funded by restaurant, food and other industries, condemned the institute as joining forces with the nation's 'food nannies.' The Center said the agency's recommendations would 'actively reduce the number of choices Americans have when they sit down to eat.'

Does the U.S. have an 'obesity-promoting environment?'

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM) • Catholic Online • 5/9/2012

The number of overweight and obese people in the United States is one of national shame. Health economists say that unless the American populace begins to lose weight fast, that the health costs surrounding weight issues will overwhelm the U.S. health system. However - there is a growing ...

If the obesity rate stays at 2010 levels instead of rising to 42 percent as predicted, then the country could save more than $549.5 billion in weight-related medical expenditures from now till 2030.

Forty-two percent of all Americans may be obese by 2030

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM) • Catholic Online • 5/8/2012

Health experts say they fear a dramatic jump in health care costs if nothing is done to bring America's obesity epidemic under control. "The obesity problem is likely to get much worse without a major public health intervention," health economist Eric Finkelstein says. A recent projection ...