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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Salmon is readily available, extremely versatile and simply delicious. Here we cover salmon basics from weeknight fillets to weekend entertaining: the cuts and types to buy, equipment you’ll need, essential methods for preparing it and sauces for dressing it up.
A couple things to keep in mind when making this dish: Make sure you use fillets of equal size. Buy skinned salmon fillet from the thick (that is, not the tail) end of the fish then cut across the fillet to make the four pieces. Also, allow the fish to sit for a while after coating to encourage the fragrant seasonings to permeate the flesh of the fish.
In this straightforward recipe, adapted from the New York chef Katy Sparks, you start with salmon fillets, liberally rub them on one side with a mixture of ground coriander, cloves, cumin and nutmeg, and then brown them in a very hot pan so the spices form a crust.
Minced anchovies and garlic add a complex salinity to seared salmon, enriching and deepening its flavor. To get the most out of them, the anchovies and garlic are mashed into softened butter, which is used in two ways: as a cooking medium and as a sauce.
C.D.C. Issues Travel Alert for 8 More Locations Over Zika Virus
Federal health officials on Friday added eight destinations to the list of those to which pregnant women should not travel in order to avoid infection with the Zika virus, which has been linked to brain damage in newborns.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added Barbados, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guadeloupe, St. Martin and Guyana, as well as Samoa, in the South Pacific, and Cape Verde, off the coast of Africa.
St. Martin, Barbados and Guadeloupe are popular tourist destinations, and the travel industry will likely be affected by the virus, which is spread by mosquitoes. Health officials in the United States Virgin Islands announced on Friday that a 42-year-old woman with no history of recent travel had been infected.
Zika Virus May be Linked to Surge in Rare Syndrome in Brazil
The virus, called Zika, made its way to Brazil recently but is spreading rapidly around Latin America and the Caribbean. Nearly 4,000 cases of brain damage, in which babies were born with unusually small heads, have been registered in Brazil in the past year, and this month American officials advised pregnant women to delay traveling to any of nearly 20 countries in the Western Hemisphere, as well as Puerto Rico, where mosquitoes are spreading the virus.
But disease specialists in Brazil say that the virus may also be causing a surge in another rare condition, the potentially life-threatening Guillain-Barré syndrome, in which a person’s immune system attacks part of the nervous system, leaving some patients unable to move and dependent on life support.
HPV Vaccination Rates Highest Among Hispanic Girls in Poorer Areas
Teenage girls living in poorer neighborhoods are more likely to be vaccinated against human papillomavirus, or HPV, than those who live in richer areas, researchers report. HPV is the cause of almost all cases of cervical cancer and some cases of other cancers.
Researchers used a nationally representative sample of 20,565 girls ages 13 to 17 with verified vaccination records. They found that 63.6 percent of girls whose families earned less than $25,000 a year had been vaccinated compared with 52.3 percent of those whose families earned more than $75,000. The study is in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.
Certain Foods May Lower the Risk of Erectile Dysfunction
A diet rich in fruits, vegetables, tea and wine may help reduce the risk for erectile dysfunction, a new study found. People who had an unhealthy diet would have more of a risk of ED because their blood couldn’t flow as freely to their penis. This meant that some even had to go to facilities like Advanced Urology in order to get help for the condition.
Previous studies have suggested that flavonoids, the antioxidants in these foods, produce anti-inflammatory effects that reduce the risk for heart disease and some cancers.
For this study, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers prospectively followed 25,096 men with food questionnaires every four years.
The men periodically rated their ability to maintain an erection sufficient for intercourse on a five-point scale. None had erectile dysfunction at the start of the study.
In Rural Alabama, a Longtime Mistrust of Medicine Fuels a Tuberculosis Outbreak
When Patricia Church, a 41-year-old warehouse worker, felt sick recently, she suspected that she had a cold. But she also feared something more deadly that has been going around this small, impoverished city: tuberculosis.
“I feel like I had been around someone that had it, and I might die from it if I don’t find out whether I got it or not and get it treated,” Ms. Church said after she learned last week that she did not have the disease. “I was nervous. I was real nervous.”
Marion is in the throes of a tuberculosis outbreak so severe that it has posted an incidence rate about 100 times greater than the state’s and worse than in many developing countries. Residents, local officials and medical experts said the struggle against the outbreak could be traced to generations of limited health care access, endemic poverty and mistrust — problems that are common across the rural South.