Most of us have experienced those maddening midnight moments when, no matter how tired we are, we either can’t fall asleep, can’t stay asleep or our sleep is of such poor quality it feels as if we were awake. For anyone who has tossed and turned at night, here’s some expert advice for solving nine sleep problems.
Good sleep habits don’t solve sleep problems, but they do create a foundation for improved sleep, experts say.
Alcohol, a drug that is a major cause of accidents, may actually protect the brain from a life-threatening injury when an accident does occur, according to a study published this week in Archives of Surgery.
Half of the patients hospitalized for trauma are intoxicated at the time of injury.
(CNN) — At the beginning of the school year, a couple of hundred parents, myself included, gathered in the middle school lounge for the principal’s back-to-school speech. The chatting hushed as the principal walked from the back of the room to the podium. As she proceeded down the aisle, parting the crowd of parents, she carried with her the biggest bottle of hand sanitizer I’ve ever seen.
Expert: Washing hands works well to prevent many diseases, but it’s not very helpful agains the flu virus.
LONDON, England – A new drug for melanoma has been shown to rapidly shrink malignant tumors in an early trial at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York.
New drug inhibits BRAF, the main driver of mutation in over 50 percent of melanomas.
The drugs said to have contributed to Michael Jackson’s death are routinely used in hospital settings, but should never be combined at home, medical professionals say.
The Los Angeles County coroner ruled that Michael Jackson’s death was a homicide.
The Los Angeles County coroner, ruling that Jackson’s death was a homicide, said in a news release Friday that the anesthetic drug propofol and the sedative lorazepam were found to be the primary drugs responsible for Jackson’s death.
Brazil has confirmed 557 deaths caused by H1N1 flu, the highest total in the world, the nation’s Health Ministry says.
A vaccine against H1N1 is being tested but is not expected to be available until at least mid-October.
The United States has counted 522 fatalities through Thursday, and nearly 1,800 people had died worldwide through August 13, U.S. and global health officials said.
BELLEVUE, Nebraska – If LeRoy Carhart’s abortion clinic had a terror alert scale, it would be at Code Red this weekend.
Anti-abortion protesters plan demonstrations this weekend outside Dr. LeRoy Carhart’s clinic in Bellevue, Nebraska.
“I feel safer on an airplane than I do in my clinic,” Carhart said, sitting at his desk in his windowless office in Bellevue, Nebraska.
“You try to think about every way an attack could happen. You try to do all you can to prevent it, but obviously Dr. [George] Tiller thought he was safe in church.”
WASHINGTON — For almost 50 years, Sen. Ted Kennedy pushed unsuccessfully for legislation that would reform the health care system and ensure coverage for every American.
Kennedy had “unique way of … making the right concessions,” said Senate colleague John McCain.
Ironically, his death might bring about a change of tactics that would help reach the goal he was unable to achieve in life, one veteran political analyst says.
Sonia, a single mother with HIV in Brazil, travels four hours to reach a government-run health facility that provides her with free drug treatment.
Brazil’s response to the HIV/AIDS fight has been widely praised and adopted as a model around the world.
The journey is long, she told CNN, but it’s a small price to pay for the government-provided drugs that have helped keep her out of the hospital for the past 11 years.
ARLINGTON, Virginia – Daniel Buruca had a bad experience the first time he took drugs.
One young recovering addict said “there would always be something” in the medicine cabinet at a friend’s house.
“I was shivering and I was seeing things, and my mom was playing a video game and it was just 10 times louder than it was.
“I could feel the monsters in the video game coming towards me… and I got so scared at one point that I threw up,” the 17-year-old said from the Virginia drug treatment center where he lives.
NEW YORK – A new federal report says employees at four New York state juvenile residential centers have been responsible for abuse resulting in concussions, broken bones and even one death.
The Rev. Al Sharpton called the problems highlighted in the report “a human rights violation of children.”
Staff at the institutions have consistently used “a high degree of force in nearly every type of situation,” according to the report, released Monday by acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King. The report resulted from an investigation launched by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division in December 2007.
WASHINGTON — The H1N1 flu virus could cause up to 90,000 U.S. deaths, mainly among children and young adults, if it resurges this fall as expected, according to a report released Monday by a presidential advisory panel.
The report urges speedier production of the H1N1 vaccine and the availability of some doses by September.
The H1N1 virus, commonly known as swine flu virus, could infect between 30 percent and 50 percent of the American population during the fall and winter and lead to as many as 1.8 million U.S. hospital admissions, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology reported.
Editor’s note: Dr. Vance Harris is a primary care physician in Redding, California. An earlier version of this commentary was posted on SERMO.com, a private, physicians-only online community.
Dr. Vance Harris says primary care doctors get minuscule payment for saving the system huge sums of money.
Health policy experts agree that any reform in our health care system must include a well-educated, caring primary care doctor who is able to manage the health of his or her patients with an eye to using resources optimally to keep costs down.
Classes resumed last Thursday at the University of Kansas at Lawrence, and by Monday 47 students had swine flu, a college official said.
The CDC recommends someone sick with the virus remain out of class for 24 hours after fever has abated on its own.
Although that’s less than two-tenths of 1 percent of the 27,000-member student body, and no one has died or been hospitalized, the school has moved into action.
Editor’s note: Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. His new book, “Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security — From World War II to the War on Terrorism,” will be published this fall by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely about current events.
Julian Zelizer says the public option is a clear concept that liberal backers of health care can rally around.
PRINCETON, New Jersey — President Obama was caught off guard by the frustration that liberals expressed at the suggestion he might drop the public option from health care reform.