category : Disease Prevention

Transcript:

Fast food is both fast and cheap. This makes it popular for parents and children alike. But beware, fast food does more damage than just making you fat. A recent international study of asthma and allergies in childhood demonstrated that children who eat fast food three or more times per week, have a 30% increase in their incidence of asthma, eczema, and hay fever. Thus far, no one knows if it’s the high-fat diet or the fact that these kids tend to weigh more than normal, damaging their immune systems, or if there is something in the way of food additives or even the way the fast food is prepared, that is damaging these children. There is obviously a lot we don’t know. But this much is clear, you should limit fast food for both you

In medicine as in so many walks of life, one thing we have to learn over and over is the law of unintended consequences. A series of new studies about vitamin D proves this in spades!

For many years, medical societies and government committees have warned us all to avoid sun exposure as much as possible. These same experts have cautioned us to use sunscreens on a daily basis to minimize the amount of inadvertent sun exposure we get in our day-to-day lives. But a new study indicates that this may be a bad idea, with far-reaching (and completely unintended) health consequences. It’s true that avoiding excess sun exposure and using sunscreen may well minimize your risk of getting malignant melanoma, and can certainly improve the look of your skin as you get older. But since exposure to sunlight causes our bodies to produce vitamin D, all these precautions can dramatically decrease the amount of vitamin D in our systems. These low levels of vitamin D have been linked to