Books
WIN!
Eat Well, Eat Happy: 100 Ways to Enjoy the Healthy Foods You Love
By Charity Ferreira
Chef Ferreira guides the at-home cook through a journey exploring simple cooking with whole foods in this book of recipes, which is studded with gorgeous photos and asides about nutrient-filled “superfoods.”
How We Do Harm: A Doctor Breaks Ranks About Being Sick in America
By Otis Webb Brawley, M.D.
Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, explores the current state of health care in the U.S., delving into the racial, socio-economic, political and scientific factors that drive the way patients are treated.
Sites
PubMed.gov
www.pubmed.gov
This site from the National Center for Biotechnology Information allows you to search 22 million citations from a variety of science journals and online books. Though the site doesn’t include the full text of the articles, it’s a great jumping-off point for researching any number of health concerns.
RealAge
www.realage.com
RealAge purports to calculate your scientific “age” based on your family history and how healthful – or unhealthful – your habits are. The RealAge test was designed by a team of doctors and scientists, including Dr. Michael F. Roizen, chief wellness officer of the Cleveland Clinic. Once you learn your RealAge, the site offers up helpful suggestions of what to change to become “younger.”
Studies
Redheads’ skin cancer risk may be genetic
Fair-skinned, red-headed people may be at higher risk for skin cancer – with or without sun exposure, a recent study published in the journal Nature indicates.
Having red hair is associated with a variation in the gene for melacornin 1 receptor MC1R that causes high levels of red-yellow melanin, pheomelanin. The study showed that even without exposure to UV light, mice with the “red” MC1R gene variation showed significantly higher rates of melanoma than mice without the gene variation. By the end of the year-long study, half the red mice developed melanoma, in contrast with two other groups, which had less than a quarter of the mice develop the cancer.
Researchers theorize the increased risk may correlate with pheomelanin synthesis or reactive oxygen species created by pheomelanin.
Cancer drug effectively fights MS symptoms
Two new studies by researchers from the University of Cambridge show that alemtuzumab, a drug created to treat leukemia, is effective at preventing relapses of Multiple Sclerosis.
Alemtuzumab has been used off-label for MS for several years. The studies, published in the UK journal The Lancet, show that the drug is significantly more effective than interferon beta 1a at preventing relapses, both for those whose MS was previously untreated and for those who did not respond to first-line MS treatment.
Among the side effects experienced by those taking alemtuzumab were infections and autoimmune diseases, including thyroid disorders, suggesting that those who elect treatment with the drug would require careful monitoring for signs of negative side effects.
