The Checkup

Health in the News and in Your Life

Flu Stories

Scientists consider the chances of a worldwide influenza epidemic to be a matter of "when," not "if." A deadly strain of avian flu is thought to be the most likely culprit.

Arguing that awareness of the likelihood of a pandemic like the one that killed 50 million people 90 years ago is the first step toward preparation and perhaps even prevention, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has come up with a novel way to focus attention on the issue. A Web site launched last month, http://www.pandemicflu.gov/storybook/index.html, features first-person accounts written by survivors and descendants of the 1918-1919 and 1957 flu pandemics. (The latter killed at least 70,000 people in the United States.)

The CDC wants those who visit to click on links to information about steps that states have taken to prepare and about things people like you and me can do in advance of a pandemic.

-- Jennifer Huget

Anonymous wrote:

A pandemic is Mother Nature's way of thinning the herd occasionally. The harder we fight, the nastier bug she's just gonna come up with.

Franconia wrote:

I remember nightly newscasts from a few years back when health correspondents kept on playing up the threat of The Killer Flu and eventually seemed disappointed that it never materialized.

Virulent flu strains are a concern that must be addressed at the local, state, federal and world levels. But so are natural disasters and terrorist attacks, and both seem to be much more likely.

michael wrote:

My company has a corporate task force to evaluate the threat and educate our employees and customers. Locally we have looked at work-at-home options, replaced towel and soap dispensers in the restrooms with hands-free devices, and developed fact sheets to educate our employees and their families. These are sensible options for everyday health. . . . We were hit pretty hard at the end of February for about six weeks of the annual flu season . . . but raising consciousness now will hopefully make a full-court press easier to implement during a pandemic.

Nuts and Diverticular Disease

In medicine as in politics, sometimes an idea gets repeated so often it takes on the aura of fact.

So it's been with the advice offered for more than 50 years to people with diverticulosis, the development of pockets in the lining of the colon, or its relative, diverticulitis, in which those pockets become inflamed or infected. The advice: Don't eat popcorn, nuts or corn.

But a study published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that men who consumed the most nuts (eating them at least twice a week) had a 20 percent lower risk of diverticulitis than those who ate nuts the least.

-- Jennifer Huget

Dr. O wrote:

As a working physician for 30 years I have always suspected that ingestion of nuts and seeds had no correlation with bouts of diverticulitis. In fact, I have long noted that the folks who have the most attacks of diverticulitis are the ones most scrupulous in avoiding intake of nuts and seeds -- and still have the most attacks.

Online Herbal Remedy Alert

There's some disturbing news for those who use ayurvedic medicine: Many of the herbal products sold on the Internet for ayurveda contain dangerous levels of lead, mercury and arsenic, according to a new study.

To try to get a sense of the safety of the products sold over the Internet, Robert Saper at the Boston University School of Medicine and his colleagues identified 25 Web sites featuring 673 ayurvedic medicines. They randomly selected, purchased and tested 193 products from 37 manufacturers.

More than 20 percent of the products contained detectable lead, mercury and/or arsenic, the researchers reported in last week's Journal of the American Medical Association. Products made in the United States were no less likely to contain the toxins than those produced in India, the researchers found.

-- Rob Stein

Alex wrote:

That's EXACTLY why I don't buy any of the so-called "all natural" or "herbal" snake oils out there. They're not regulated and can prove toxic when taken with REAL medication, prescribed by a REAL doctor.