Natural Health News

It is important for people who want to be as healthy as they can be, and the healthcare practitioners that strive to help them to be this way, to keep abreast of current health news. Knowledge is power and the more informed you are, the more power you have to make informed decisions about how to best manage your own health.

The food safety inspections that most Americans have grown to expect as a standard before consumables are made available to them, has more or less stopped due to the ongoing federal government shutdown. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is planning to resume at least some inspections but to do this, the agency is going to have to force furloughed workers to come back to work without pay.

The nation’s largest foundation for Parkinson’s research, The Michael J. Fox Foundation, has partnered with IBM to develop technology aimed at better tracking the onset and progression of Parkinson’s disease. The new foundation will provide grants and longitudinal data from its Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative to IBM. IBM will use this information to develop artificial intelligence technologies that will hopefully provide a more comprehensive look at Parkinson’s disease and how it progresses.

The E. coli outbreak that recalled Romaine lettuce throughout the United States and Canada, is officially over. 62 people in the U.S. and 29 in Canada became ill in this outbreak. No one has become ill since December and the lettuce that was potentially contaminated is all off of the shelves now. The outbreak was traced to farms in California. The Food and Drug Administration is continuing its investigation.

Lower smoking rates and advances in early detection and treatment of cancer have led to a milestone for U.S. cancer death rates- they have been falling for at least the past 25 years. Unfortunately though, the rate of obesity-related cancer deaths is rising and the number of prostate cancer deaths is no longer dropping; and cancer still remains to be the country’s No. 2 killer.

A new study by the World Health Organization (WHO) shows that the palm oil industry may have influenced research to show positive health effects of palm oil even though the results were mixed. The palm oil industry is being accused of deploying tactics that are similar to those of that the alcohol and tobacco industries have used to influence research into the health effects of their products, to make them seem less detrimental to peoples’ health. Evidence of the impact that palm oil makes on human health is mixed. Some studies link consumption of it to ailments that include an increased risk of death from heart disease. The demand for palm oil is expected to grow as more and more countries ban trans fats but many people are concerned that this popular alternative to trans fats may have similar, negative impacts on the health of those who consume it.