Welcome to the Stars Hollow Gazette‘s Health and Fitness News weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.
Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.
You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.
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Even though the gratins and lasagnas require a number of elements, each one of those elements can also be made ahead: tomato sauce can be made and even frozen, vegetables blanched or roasted, grains for the gratins cooked. Then it is just a matter of assembling and baking. I baked, cooled and froze all of this week’s recipes, except for the mac and cheese, which we couldn’t resist eating on the spot.
~Martha Rose Shulman~
A crowd-pleasing dish with endless varieties.
Lasagna With Spinach and Wild Mushrooms
Mushrooms enrich this lasagna, which works well when made ahead.
Whole Grain Macaroni and Cheese
A comforting, healthy mac ‘n cheese that’s not too heavy.
A Provençal style gratin that’s dense with greens.
Winter Squash, Leek and Farro Gratin With Feta and Mint
A delicious, and simple, winter squash gratin.
Researchers Predict That Flu Season Will Peak in February
This flu season will likely peak in February and could be a mild one, according to a new model that aims to forecast the flu in the United States this winter.
The model uses information from past flu seasons, along with a mathematical representation of how influenza spreads through a population and the latest data on the current flu season, to predict how seasonal flu will pan out in the coming months.
According to the new model, there’s a less than 1 percent chance that the flu season will peak before January in most of the country, and a less than 20 percent chance that it will peak in January.
Chipotle’s Outbreak Is Scaring Customers Away From Fast Food In General
Nearly a quarter of Americans who have heard of recent E. coli outbreaks at Chipotle Mexican Grill said they are eating less often at its restaurants, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Tuesday, while social media sentiment towards the chain hit a low.
Consumers and investors are trying to understand whether Chipotle has solved its food problems and is a safe place to eat, and concerns have deepened since federal investigators on Monday said they were looking at what appeared to be a new Chipotle outbreak in late November.
Patients Fear Spike in Price of Old Drugs
Fred Kellerman, a retired car salesman from Los Angeles, was bedridden with a rare neuromuscular disease when he started taking a drug in the 1990s at Duke University in North Carolina. It changed his life. [..]
Mr. Kellerman has been using the drug ever since, paying nothing but postage. In an unusual act of charity, a small family-run drug company in Plainsboro, N.J., has been giving it away. The drug was never formally approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but was provided under an obscure federal drug provision.
But one company’s generosity is another’s opportunity. Catalyst Pharmaceuticals, a Wall Street-traded company, last week completed an application to the F.D.A. for formal approval of a slightly modified version of the drug that does not need refrigeration. In a presentation to investors last spring, Catalyst estimated that it could make $300 million to $900 million a year from the drug, named Firdapse, that could eventually benefit as many as 8,000 patients. That works out to possibly more than $100,000 per patient.
Cardiac Arrest Victims May Be Ignoring Life-Saving Warning Signs
Sudden cardiac arrest may not always be so sudden: New research suggests a lot of people may ignore potentially life-saving warning signs hours, days, even a few weeks before they collapse.
Cardiac arrest claims about 350,000 U.S. lives a year. It’s not a heart attack, but worse: The heart abruptly stops beating, its electrical activity knocked out of rhythm. CPR can buy critical time, but so few patients survive that it’s been hard to tell if the longtime medical belief is correct that it’s a strike with little or no advance warning.
An unusual study that has closely tracked sudden cardiac arrest in Portland, Oregon, for over a decade got around that roadblock, using interviews with witnesses, family and friends after patients collapse and tracking down their medical records.
About half of middle-aged patients for whom symptom information could be found had experienced warning signs, mostly chest pain or shortness of breath, in the month before suffering a cardiac arrest, researchers reported Monday. The research offers the possibility of one day preventing some cardiac arrests if doctors could figure out how to find and treat the people most at risk. When it comes to something like a cardiac arrest, no one can predict when this is about to happen, which is why knowing how to use devices like the Lifeline AED model is better than not knowing anything at all. Having basic knowledge of how to assist someone having a heart attack to a cardiac arrest could help save a life.
5 Things Everyone Gets Wrong About Napping
Slowly but surely, more and more high achievers are coming around to the idea that an afternoon nap can do a body (and a bottom line) good. But there are still enough doubters out there that haven’t yet jumped on the napping bandwagon.
To help spread the power of the afternoon snooze, we got to the bottom of a few of the common myths about napping we still hear.
Fast Eater? 7 Tips on How to Slow Down These Holidays
There’s really no reason to rush through something as pleasurable as eating. They say it takes 20 minutes for our brain to register satiety. Competitive eaters race to beat the clock and their body’s warnings of satiety, but for the rest of us, the you’ve-had-enough signal is a caring friend, trying to save us from ourselves.
Current trends are moving away from calorie counting and toward a more holistic approach of looking at adjustments and habits that can help us lead a more balanced, sustainable lifestyle. Slowing down should be high on that list: There’s good evidence to back the common weight-control advice to take your time with your meal.