Help The Middle ClassNews and Information For The Heart Of America
13 Things Your Pharmacist Won’t Tell You (Readers Digest)
What to bear in mind the next time you visit the pharmacy counter.
1. Don’t try to get anything past us. Prescriptions for painkillers or sleeping aids always get extra scrutiny.
2. We’re not serving fries in here. I’d think twice about using a drive-through pharmacy. Working there distracts us-not a good thing when it comes to pharmaceuticals.
TO CONTINUE [...]
Autism Signs Appear in Babies’ First Year (Health Key)
The social disengagement that is the hallmark of autism-spectrum disorders begins to appear in the second half of a baby’s first year of life, according to a new study. But Californiaresearchers found that parents typically do not notice the decline in their child’s behavior until well into his or her second year.
The study, published in the Journal [...]
How Alzheimer’s Disease Alters Lives (USA Today)
How an Alzheimer’s caretaker’s life and challenges may evolve as their loved one’s disease progresses:
Early stage
•May notice patient is more anxious, forgets friends’ names and telephone numbers, places everyday items in the wrong storage locations, leaves projects (laundry, meals) unfinished, has trouble making change and balancing a checkbook.
* May need to take over some household [...]
HEALTH ALERT: Breast-Feeding Could Save Babies Live & Billions of Dollars (Yahoo! News)
The lives of nearly 900 babies would be saved each year, along with billions of dollars, if 90 percent of U.S. women breast-fed their babies for the first six months of life, a cost analysis says.
Those startling results, published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics, are only an estimate. But several experts who reviewed the [...]
Can Eating Junk Food Really Be an Addiction? (TIME)
In 1982, Scientific American published an article suggesting that snorting cocaine was no more addictive than eating potato chips. People continue to use when the stuff is around, and simply stop when it’s gone, the researchers argued. The paper was later widely denounced for minimizing the risks of what soon became known as the most [...]
Obama Now Says “Drill, Baby, Drill! Article And Video Looking At His Stunning Reversal (Huffington Post)
President Obama announced today a new energy policy that will open up waters along the southern Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and part of Alaska to offshore oil and gas drilling.
The new policy represents a reversal not only of the current moratorium on any new oil drilling off most U.S. shores, but also [...]
Obama To O.K. Oil And Gas Drilling Off US Coast. The Dream Of George W. Bush Will Finally Come True (The Washington Post)
The Obama administration will approve significant oil and gas exploration off America’s coasts, including a possible sale two years from now of leases off the Virginia shore, administration officials said Wednesday.
The move, which President Obama will announce Wednesday morning with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at Andrews Air Force Base, ends a long-standing moratorium on oil [...]
BIG QUESTION: Will The Middle Class Really Pay Less For Health Care? (USA Today)
President Obama’s restructuring of the nation’s health care system will make it easier for poor and sick Americans to get and keep insurance. What’s less clear is whether it will reduce health care costs for most Americans, as the White House says it will.
Medical costs are rising fast — up 5.7% last year, while the [...]
FDA Feeling The Heat To Fight Food Fraud (The Washington Post)
The expensive “sheep’s milk” cheese in a Manhattan market was really made from cow’s milk. And a jar of “Sturgeon caviar” was, in fact, Mississippi paddlefish.
Some honey makers dilute their honey with sugar beets or corn syrup, their competitors say, but still market it as 100 percent pure at a premium price.
And last year, a [...]
Health Care Overhaul: Answering Some Frequently Asked Questions (NPR)
The health-insurance overhaul package signed into law by President Obama is the most far-reaching health legislation since the creation of the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
The following is a look at the impact of the law, which will extend insurance coverage to 32 million additional Americans by 2019, but which will also have an effect on [...]
