Whooping cough, known medically as pertussis, is a highly contagious infection of the respiratory system that is marked by severe coughing spells that end in a “whooping” sound when the person breathes in. Before a vaccine was available, whooping cough was a major cause of childhood illness and death in the U.S., but with the introduction of a vaccine in the 1940s, the number of cases fell from approximately 200,000 a year to an all-time low of 1,010 in 1976. Since then, however, the number of whooping cough cases has been steadily increasing, reaching 25,827 in 2004; the highest since 1959. Experts believe this trend could be due in part to the rising number of parents who refuse some or all of the recommended immunizations for their children—a theory confirmed by a recent study.

To get a better idea of the impact immunization refusal has had on whooping cough, Dr. Jason Glanz and colleagues analyzed the records of children 2 months to 18 years enrolled in the Kaiser Permanente Colorado health plan from 1996 to 2007. They looked for children who had laboratory-confirmed cases of whooping cough, and for those whose parents had refused at least one of the initial series of DPT—diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus—immunizations for nonmedical reasons. The researchers found that unvaccinated children were 23 times more likely to get the infection than those who received the full course of immunizations.

Additionally, a second analysis of 27,748 children from 2 to 20 months of age who were continuously enrolled at Kaiser Permanente, there was a similarly high risk of infection among the children of parents who refused the vaccine. “This study helps dispel one of the commonly held beliefs among vaccine-refusing parents: that their children are not at risk for vaccine-preventable diseases,” Dr. Glanz said. “It also shows that the decision to refuse immunizations could have important ramifications for the health of the entire community. Based on our analysis, we found that 1 in 10 additional whooping cough infections could have been prevented by immunization.”

While the study did not examine the reasons why parents refused to have their children vaccinated, the researchers say it could be because as many vaccine-preventable diseases, such as whooping cough, polio and smallpox, become rarer, parents are shifting their focus from disease prevention to issues of vaccine safety. Though numerous studies have found no link between vaccines and autism, the fear is still prompting some parents to refuse vaccinations. Other parents believe their children are at low risk for infection and that many diseases aren’t a severe enough threat to their children’s health. “These findings stress the need to further understand why parents refuse immunizations and to develop strategies for conveying the risks and benefits of immunizations to parents more effectively,” the researchers write.

Dr. Gregory Poland, director of Mayo Clinic Vaccine Research Group in Rochester, Minnesota says the findings are consistent with other studies and agrees that “parents need to know they place their children at a documented and real risk, as well as others, when they refuse vaccines based on inaccurate information.” He added that “there is plenty of pertussis out there and it is highly contagious.”

The bacteria spread from person to person through tiny drops of fluid from an infected person’s nose or mouth. These may become airborne when the person coughs, sneezes, or laughs. Others then can become infected by inhaling the drops or getting the drops on their hands and then touching their mouths or noses. Experts believe that up to 80 percent of non-immunized family members will develop whooping cough if they live in the same house with someone who has the infection.

Dr. Glanz and his colleagues say they are concerned that the decreased immunization rates could also lead to other disease outbreaks across the country. For instance, in 2008 there were 131 cases of measles, the most in 12 years.

The study will appear in the June 2009 issue of the journal Pediatrics.

According to a recent Nielsen study, the typical teen in this country sends nearly 80 text messages every day. How many minutes does it take to send 80 text messages per day? We probably really don’t want to know, because that much time is cutting into homework, class work, social time (unless you consider text messaging social time), and sleep. Observation of the populace in any setting, be it restaurants, shopping, or walking the dog, will find people utilizing their cell phones, non-stop. Most teenagers are texting while older adults are talking.

According to The New York Times, the numbers come from Dr. Martin Joffe, a pediatrician in Greenbrae, California who polled students at local high schools. Dr. Joffe is concerned about the anxiety, distraction, falling grades, repetitive stress injury, and sleep deprivation attributed to texting. Dr. Joffe is not alone in his concern, as physicians and psychologists are wondering how all the texting will affect the users. Teenagers generally have sleep issues and responding to and sending texts throughout the night is going to add to the problem. Dr. Joffe says parents tend to be less aware of texting than of video games or general computer use and unlimited texting plans often means they are not paying attention to billing details.

Michael Hausauer, a psychotherapist in Oakland, California, said teenagers have a “terrific interest in knowing what’s going on in the lives of their peers, coupled with a terrific anxiety about being out of the loop.” For that reason, he said, the rapid rise in texting has potential for great benefit and great harm. “Texting can be an enormous tool,” he said. “It offers companionship and the promise of connectedness. At the same time, texting can make a youngster feel frightened and overly exposed.”

Sherry Turkle, a psychologist who is director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at MIT has studied texting among teenagers in Boston for three years, and believes that it may be changing the way adolescents develop. Adolescence is the time to separate from parents and find peace and quiet to become the person they decide they want to be according to Turkle, and texting hits directly at both those jobs. Instant communications interrupt thoughts, and separation is hard when you are only seconds away from your parents through texting.

Since text messaging is used more than phone calls in all groups up to 45 or older, AT&T has held workshops in Cleveland and Pittsburgh to teach older customers how to use their phones for texting. AT&T spokesman Jamie Carracher said the seniors became excited and were anxious to learn to do things such as text their grandkids. Carracher said that the company attributes the increase in texting to the popularity of unlimited texting plans and cell phones with keyboards. She said that a user with a keyboard device sends 122 percent more texts than users without one.

Rob Enderle a technology analyst said that “It’s less disruptive than using the phone, there’s a lot of places where picking up the phone just isn’t appropriate.” He said that texting does have a problem, it is impersonal and removes a lot of the personality of communications, but he points out it does help solve one problem—the nonstop talker. Texting requires briefness and that prevents people from rambling on.

U.S. health officials say it appears that the outbreak of H1N1 flu that emerged in Mexico and is now spreading worldwide may be subsiding. Though many states are still reporting new cases, there seems to be an overall decline in visits to doctors and hospitals by people with the disease. On Monday May 25, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was reporting 6,764 cases in 48 states, including 10 fatalities—the latest being that of a 50-year-old woman in New York City over the weekend. However, according to Department of Health and Mental Hygiene spokeswoman Jessica Scaperotti, the woman had other health conditions, as has been the case with most of the other U.S. swine flu deaths. Worldwide, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports 12,515 cases of H1N1 infection in 46 countries, including 91 deaths.

On Friday, CDC officials reported that they are closer to a viable vaccine for the novel virus, now having two promising candidates. “Today CDC received, from one institution, a candidate vaccine virus,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, the agency’s interim deputy director for science and public health program, said during a news conference on Friday. She added that the second candidate virus was created by the CDC, along with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) using reverse genetics. Schuchat says both viruses are being tested to insure they can stimulate an optimal immune response, after which they will be sent to manufacturers. “We expect by the end of May that will happen,” she added.

Also on Friday, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the federal government will set aside $1 billion that will be used to produce bulk amounts of the two key components of a vaccine—a protein from the new flu virus designed to trigger an immune response and an adjuvant, or booster, that might be added to the vaccine to increase its potency—and to pilot test the vaccine. The HHS said the “pre-pandemic” stockpile would cover at least 20 million people. “The actions we are taking today will help us be prepared if a vaccine is needed,” Secretary of HHS Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement. Vaccine manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline confirmed that the government has placed orders for both the active ingredient and a booster.

In another interesting development on Friday, researchers from WHO, CDC, Mexico and Cambridge University said that by studying full or partial genomes from seven new H1N1 viruses from patients in Mexico and 44 from 13 states in the U.S., they had mapped out the evolution of the H1N1 virus. Their analysis suggests the virus originated in birds and then began circulating in pigs, where it added new genetic segments; two from Eurasian bird flu viruses. “From our analysis we have confirmed that the virus likely originated from pigs,” said the study’s senior author, Dr. Nancy Cox, director of the CDC’s influenza division. “The analysis suggests that the swine components of the new H1N1 virus remained relatively unchanged in pigs and humans until 1998, when the pig version began to diverge from the human strain, probably through exposure to avian flu.” CDC officials discussed the findings at a teleconference Friday and released them for publication in the journal Science.

Cox says that knowing the genetic makeup of the virus makes it easier to create a candidate vaccine. “We see much less variation among these new H1N1 viruses than we do for typical seasonal influenza viruses,” she said and added that by sequencing the virus’ genetic codes, “we can take measures to be sure that the virus doesn’t reemerge in a slightly different form.” Fortunately, she says, the virus remains susceptible to the antiviral drugs Tamiflu and Relenza, though experts fear that the virus may mutate and become more virulent, mixing with drug-resistant genes or even the H5N1 virus now decimating global bird populations.

Peter Hotez, president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute at George Washington University, says flu viruses routinely swap their genes, often in pigs, which are “classic mixing vessels” for flu strains circulating among humans and birds. “It’s an important finding. It’s a wake-up call that we have to have aggressive, ongoing monitoring of flu in pigs,” he said.

Memorial Day opens up the summer season (even though summer doesn’t officially begin until June 21). This means backyard barbecues, beach bonfires, and long nights in which to party. In many cases, this will involve alcohol, which may result in the after-effect known as the dreaded hangover.

You know the feeling: head pounding, throat dry, burning eyed feeling you wake up with from a night of too much drinking. If dehydration is the main cause of a hangover, how is it possible when you flooded your body the night before? The more toxins you allow into your body, the less time your liver has to filter them out and you wake up with the terrible effects that follow a night of imbibing. Other symptoms of a hangover can include feeling dizzy, sweating, having muscle aches, a rapid heartbeat, tremors, irritability, or anxiety. There are many recipes for a hangover, many of which are hard to stomach or hard to believe but maybe some of them will actually provide some relief if not all for your recovery woes.

Once you start drinking, the body stores the alcohol in your system which is why the effects can come on strong and last for hours. The alcohol you let absorb into your body disrupts the production of glucose (natural sugar) and makes your liver work overtime which explains the feeling of sluggishness you receive upon waking up, among the many other symptoms already mentioned. Glucose feeds the brain and accounts for the weakness encountered after your body has been taken over by the drowning qualities of alcohol.

The first cure for a hangover would be preventing one by abstaining from drinking, or not consuming too much in the first place. However, people who often regret this decision already have a hangover and want to be put out of their misery. Many people try to prevent the pain when they get home by drinking a few glasses of water and some aspirin tablets before bed, and while the water does help flood your system and is good for you in the end, the aspirin is harmful to your body. Painkillers like ibuprofen, acetaminophen or aspirin are hard on your liver, stomach, and kidneys and can cause gastrointestinal bleeding or kidney damage over time.

The morning you wake up with a hangover the best start to your day could be a nice hot shower. The steam on your face helps you sweat it out and the power of the jet stream on your neck and back can relieve the tension and blocked blood vessels that cause headaches. Breakfast for some people is the best way to cure that achy stomach and bacon seems to be the remedy for a bad mood as well. A large meal of greasy breakfast food may help fill your stomach, eggs have antioxidants in them to replenish your system, and bread can do loads of good to soak up any lingering toxins hanging around your body.

Natural homeopathic remedies for a hangover include taking ginger capsules or drinking ginger tea to curb your nausea or soothe your stomach. Vitamin B will help restore your energy and herbs like dandelion and fennel can flush out your liver and improve its function while also getting rid of any extra alcohol bloat. Taking potassium, eating a banana, or adding magnesium-loaded green vegetables to your diet after a drinking binge will help rejuvenate the senses and give your body back its vitamins and minerals that were stripped away with the alcohol.

While exercise may seem like the last thing you want to do while nursing a hangover, some experts say it helps to sweat out the booze and replace it with endorphins in order to readjust your body back to normal. The best way to help your body after a long party is to get a good rest because the fluids in alcohol rob your body of its nutrients and even if you feel as if you have rested fully, most likely you were tossing and turning and did not remember. Nap during the day (unless you are at work) and make sure to get a good night’s sleep in order to be fully functional the day after your hangover.

If you enjoy the feeling of being in control of your mind and body, and like to feel like yourself the next morning, the first step to avoiding hangover is to abstain from drinking too much altogether. Pace yourself and alternate water, juice, or soda between drinks—not just by mixing them—and you will hopefully still be able to enjoy alcohol without it enjoying you and endangering your entire next day.

Even though summer is just around the corner and the sun is shining more helping each and every one of us get our happy intake of vitamin D, stress still hides behind the sun’s rays and especially in these terrible economic times, stress relief is going to be hard to come by. Not if you take this highly praised “Queen of Herbs,” say naturalists and nutritionists across the world. The Queen is called tulsi in India where it is used often, but here in America we call it holy basil. This natural remedy is popular for its anti-inflammatory effects and antioxidant properties, but most well-known for its success in relieving stress.

For centuries, holy basil—known scientifically as Ocimum sanctum—has been popular in its native India and revered in the religious tradition of Hinduism. This herb has been the go-to remedy for all sorts of bodily conditions, as well as ailments of the mind and spirit, which is why it is considered so healing for those practicing Hindu, as it is representative of the natural trinity of healing: mind, spirit, and body.

Being stressed out over work, family, bills, or social pressures, can make adhering to a normal and healthy diet more difficult. The mix of multi-tasking, constantly worrying, and trying to maintain your body with added stress and time constraints often implodes in a cloud of emotions. If you feel your stress level is about to implode, think about adding a little holy basil to your everyday life. Holy basil comes in liquid extract form (that can be dropped into water, tea, or juice) as well as liquid capsules for easier consumption.

Not only will holy basil reduce your stress level and help to calm those possibly- mploding emotions, this helpful herb will add to your immunity levels and protect you from other serious bodily complications in the future. An herbalist from Planetary Ayurvedics, Roy Upton, explains how stress influences your body in negative ways resulting in pain and general suffering, “Stress can elevate cortisol levels, which triggers the production of inflammatory COX-2 enzymes. This cascade effect then influences blood sugar changes and increases metabolic inflammation. Research has shown that ursolic acid and the triterpenoic acids, isolated from holy basil, effectively improve the body’s response to stress.”

Holy basil comes in either red or green forms and is different from regular cooking basil, both because of its aroma and taste. Holy basil has more of a clove-like taste, making it spicier than original basil and with a stronger smell. Although more often used as a cultural healing device, holy basil has been in some scientific studies, though none done with humans involved in the experiments, so the evidence cannot be thoroughly translated from animal to human yet.

Dr. Weil—popular as a natural health author and educational guide—suggests that exercise and breathing exercises are probably the first steps you need to get balanced in terms of stress release on your own before pumping a bunch of herbs or prescription medications into your system. However, he also notes that he found an article from 1991 that was published in the Indian Journal of Pharmacology that compared and contrasted the stress-reducing effects of holy basil against Siberian ginseng and Asian ginseng as potential remedies in laboratory animals. Holy basil was found to be the most successful at acting against stress out of all three and was also seen as the safest in terms of consumption and pattern of use.

Even if you are not suffering from stress or stress-related pain, you may also consider asking your doctor about holy basil as a remedy against any of these conditions or problems: slow memory functions, the common cold, fevers, excess of phlegm in the throat, coughing, sore throat, kidney stones, heart disorders/diseases, mouth infections, bug bites, respiratory problems such as asthma or other lung conditions, eye skin or teeth disorders, and headaches. Although it is said that holy basil may have been used at one time for any or all of these conditions, safety is first and precautions should be taken at all times. Please ask your doctor which natural remedies are safe for your body and recommended for general use.

Everybody has suffered from an occasional night of restless wakefulness, but for one-third of the general population it is a regular occurrence. Defined as the prolonged inability to secure adequate sleep the problem does not just have a night ime affect, but carries over into day. Lack of adequate rest over a long period of time can lead to depression, high blood pressure, and generally erode the quality of life for those who suffer from the problem.

A high percentage of insomnia sufferers do not seek medical help and live with the problem or try over-the-counter methods to aid in sleep. Those who do seek medical help for their lack of sleep are generally prescribed a sleep aid which may aid in sleep but carries with it the possibility of dependency and other side effects.

Researchers at Laval University in Quebec, Canada have looked at ways to teach insomniacs to fall asleep and in a study of 160 adults diagnosed with chronic insomnia have found that talk therapy in combination with the medication zolpidem, sold as Ambien by Sanofi-Aventis, provided better long term results than medication alone.

During an initial six-week treatment period, weekly group therapy sessions and nightly medication worked equally well, with around 60 percent of the patients going to sleep more quickly and sleeping longer, according to researcher Charles Morin. In the six-month follow up, those patients who had continued therapy sessions had better sleep than those offered drugs as needed. Morin wrote that the best long-term outcome was obtained with patients treated with combined therapy followed by talk therapy alone. Although the findings are promising, there is no treatment that works for every patient with insomnia.

Zolpidem is only recommended for short periods. Side effects include morning drowsiness and hallucinations if sleep doesn’t arrive right away, and dependence is not uncommon. Sleep walking, sleep driving, binge eating and talking while sleeping have been reported among the drugs users.

While the researchers believe that the medication and talk therapy will improve the time and amount of sleep for those using the treatment, they also stress that the old recommendations are still worth practicing.

* Use your bed only for sleep and sex.
* Don’t read, watch TV, or lie awake worrying in bed.
* Don’t drink anything with caffeine for a few hours before bedtime.
* Exercise, but do it early in the day.
* Prepare for bed with quiet time, a warm bath, a cup of cocoa, whatever makes you feel drowsy.
* If you can’t get to sleep after you go to bed get up and do something quite until you feel sleepy again.
* Don’t leave a clock where you can see it from bed.
* Keep a regular schedule, go to bed and get up at the same time every day, even on weekends.

Down syndrome (DS) is a chromosomal disorder caused by an error in cell division that results in an additional third chromosome 21. People with DS face a marked increase for certain birth defects, such as congenital heart defect, and health conditions including hearing loss, respiratory and vision problems, thyroid disease, certain kidney disorders, and Alzheimer’s disease. And though they also have a 20-times greater chance for leukemia, people with DS have just 10 percent the risk than that of the general public of dying from many common solid-tumor cancers, including brain, lung, breast, colon, pancreas, and bone cancers—a phenomenon researchers have theorized could be due to the additional chromosomal material but have been unable to fully explain—until now.

Building on work by Harvard University’s late Dr. Judah Folkman, Sandra Ryeom, a cell biologist at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital in Boston, and colleagues used induced pluipotent stem cells or iPS cells from a volunteer with DS to genetically engineer mice to have a version of the condition. They found that the DS mice, as do people with DS, have a third copy of chromosome 21, which gives them extra versions of 231 different genes. Among them is DSCR1, also known as RCAN1, that in lab dish experiments was found to suppress vascular endothelial growth factor or VEGF—one of the compounds necessary for the process called angiogenesis. “This suggests that DSCR1 is incredibly important in blocking tumor growth, and the reason the tumors grow slowly is that blood vessel formation was blocked,” Ryeom said. “This told us that DSCR1 played a critical role in suppressing tumor angiogenesis.”

But Ryeom says DSCR1 alone is not sufficient for angiogenesis and that there may be as many as five genes involved in the action. In fact, she and her colleagues believe that DSCR1 works with another chromosome 21 gene, DYRK1A, to block what is known as the “calcineurin-signaling pathway”—which helps tumors develop the blood supply needed for their growth and survival. Without a blood supply to provide nutrients and oxygen, the tumors cannot “grow beyond a microscopic clump of cells,” Ryeom says. “When we targeted calcineurin, we suppressed the ability of endothelial cells to grow and form vessels. While it’s likely not the only pathway that’s involved, if you take it out, VEGF is only half as effective.”

Dr. Gerald Feldman of the Wayne State University Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics, calls the research promising, saying that stopping blood vessel formation not only starves the tumor, but stops metastasis, where the tumor cells enter the bloodstream and relocate somewhere else. “That’s the critical thing,” he said.

“We have known for some time that people with Down’s syndrome have lower incidences of cancer, apart from leukemia, than the rest of the population,” said Stuart Mills of the Down Syndrome Association. “This is one of the first studies to examine the reasons why, and we welcome its findings. We will be following further research with great interest.”

A variety of anti-angiogenic drugs are already used to treat cancer, the first of which, Avastin, was approved in 2004. But these medications are only showing marginal benefit and have side effects. Ryeom hopes to develop additional cancer therapies based on her research. “It is, perhaps, inspiring that the Down syndrome population provides us with new insight into mechanisms that regulate cancer growth and, by so doing, identifies potential targets for tumor prevention and therapy,” the researchers conclude.

Ryeom also envisions a low-dose anticancer drug that could be used as a preventative measure. “If we could take this as sort of a preventative, vitamin-like therapy, would it block all of us from having tumor cells grow into these huge, lethal masses?” she speculates. David Threadgill, a geneticist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, says the idea makes good sense biologically, but there would be serious regulatory hurdles for any drug intended to be used before people develop cancer.

But Debabrata Mukhopadhyay, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center in Rochester, Minnesota, advises an abundance of caution. He says that because DSCR1’s role in normal development isn’t yet well understood, tampering with its biological pathway could have unintended consequences. “If there is any distinct difference between DSCR1’s effect on pathological versus physiological angiogenesis, that needs to be resolved,” he said, but added that he is optimistic that the new findings will help researchers begin to decipher that mechanism. “But this is a very important way of looking for anti-angiogenic therapy.”

With baseball season in full swing—pun intended—it makes sense that from little league parents to major leaguers sitting in the dugout, eating sunflower seeds is more than just a great delicious snack. During the summer sunflower seeds become a must for every beach bag, backpack, and airplane carryon, as they are small, salty, and nutritious. I would much rather see ballplayers shooting cracked sunflower seed shells out of their mouths between innings than spitting juicy remnants of unhealthy (not to mention unattractive) chewing tobacco any day of the week. Sunflowers seeds are chock full of nutrients that help or prevent many different ailments ranging from minor to major across different parts of the body.

Sunflowers are popular for their size in floral bouquets. Big, bright, and beautiful, sunflowers live up to their sunny name worshipping the heat and blossoming gorgeous yellow and black flowers. One of America’s favorite flowers, no one is sure where sunflowers originated, although there are theories about Peru and Mexico being possible sources. As one of the first plants ever grown in the United States, sunflowers have been popular for thousands of years with Native Americans who used every part of the sunflower (especially the seed), finding a use for every section. Most prized, however, were the seeds for their use as a food item as well as for their oils essential in medicinal and nutritional practices.

Once you crack open the small grey or black shells that sometimes have white stripes, a kernel of light gray to black emerges protected from the rest of nature why it matured in its shell. As one of the best sources of polyunsaturated oil—also called Omega-6 fatty acids—sunflower seeds have very high oil content, it is often the reason for cultivation.

Sunflower seeds also are a wonderful source of vitamin E—the antioxidant that stops free radicals and protects the cells from the normal damage caused by free radicals like brain cell damage and attacking cholesterol molecules—resulting in anti-inflammatory effects. The content of vitamin E in sunflower seeds can be helpful in decreasing the frequency of such conditions as menopausal symptoms in women, complications associated with diabetes, and vitamin E has even been touted to reduce the risk of colon cancer. Perhaps the largest role vitamin E plays is preventing cardiovascular disease because vitamin E is in cholesterol and by blocking free radicals, it protects the body from complications such as heart attack, stroke, and blocked arteries. Studies have shown that people with a high content of vitamin E in their diets over the course of their life have a lower risk of a fatal heart attack against those who do not consume enough vitamin E. How much vitamin E is enough? Nutritionists say that only a quarter-cup of sunflower seeds contain over 90 percent of the recommended intake…I think it’s safe to say that most baseball players need not to worry about having a heart attack out on the field.

Also present in these little “miracle seeds” are called phytosterols—compounds in plants that are chemically similar to cholesterol—and they reduce cholesterol-related blood levels and hopefully lowering your risk of a whole host of cancers. Phytosterols are found in most nuts, other seeds like pumpkin, and oils such as soybean and corn and are also a great source of “good fats” in your everyday diet.

Besides protecting your body from cholesterol attacking free radicals, helping to keep your body from becoming inflamed, and boosting your general dose of heart health, sunflower seeds also carry a nice source of magnesium. Multiple studies have shown that magnesium can reduce asthma symptoms, the severity of migraine headaches, and lowering blood pressure. Magnesium is often found in milk because it is needed for keeping your bones healthy and energetic. Over two-thirds of the magnesium carried in our bodies is found in the bones.

Probably the best part of the sunflower seed—at least from my womanly perspective—is that they are a great healthy snack with the ability to curb your appetite. By enjoying a handful of sunflower seeds while watching your favorite baseball player knock one out of the park on a sunny summer day, nothing can be better than feeling full and satisfied while doing it…until of course, you pass the hot dog cart or the pretzel vendor.

In September 2000, the United Nations and its partners adopted the U.N. Millennium Declaration. From this declaration, they derived eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which commits world leaders to combat poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women. All goals have specific targets to be achieved by 2015, as well as indicators for monitoring progress, several of which relate directly to health. On Thursday, the WHO released its “World Health Statistics 2009″ report, which details the global progress made thus far.

According to the report, some developing countries have made impressive gains in achieving the health-related MDGs, but many more are falling behind. For instance, the number of children who die before their fifth birthday has been reduced by 27 percent from 12.5 million estimated in 1990 to 9 million in 2007. “The decline in the death toll of children under five illustrates what can be achieved by strengthening health systems and scaling up interventions, such as insecticide-treated mosquito nets for malaria and oral rehydration therapy for diarrhea, increased access to vaccines and improved water and sanitation in developing countries,” said Dr. Ties Boerma, Director of WHO’s Department of Health Statistics and Informatics. However, many African countries and low-income countries have failed to make the progress needed to reach the MDG target, which aims for a two thirds reduction in child mortality by the year 2015.

The MDG target for reducing the incidence of tuberculosis was met globally in 2004. Due in part to early detection of new cases and effective treatment using the WHO-recommended DOTS treatment strategy, treatment success rates have been consistently improving, with rates rising from 79 percent in 1990 to 85 percent in 2006. However, multi-drug resistant tuberculosis is a challenge in certain countries, such as those of the former Soviet Union, while the combination of HIV and tuberculosis is an issue particularly for sub-Saharan African countries.

The number of people with access to safe drinking water rose from an estimated 4.1 billion in 1990 to 5.7 billion in 2006. But 900 million people still had to rely on water from what are known as unimproved sources, for example surface water or an unprotected dug well. Also since 1990, an estimated 1.1 billion people in developing regions have gained access to improved sanitation. But in 2006, some 2.5 billion did not have access to improved sanitation and 1.2 billion had to practice open defecation.

But the area that garnered the most criticism is that of global maternal mortality, with a ratio of 400 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2005 and which has shown little change over the past two decades. Every year an estimated 536,000 women die in pregnancy or childbirth, many of which occur in sub-Saharan Africa where the maternal mortality ratio is 900 per 100,000 births. A woman in Africa may face a 1-in-26 lifetime risk of death during pregnancy and childbirth, compared with only 1 in 7,300 in the developed regions. “Areas where there has been little or no movement are notably maternal and newborn health. An estimated 37 percent of deaths among children aged under five occurs in the first month of life, and most of them in the first week of life,” said Dr. Boerma. “While the data are patchy and incomplete, it appears that the regions with the least progress are those where levels of maternal mortality are the highest.”

The Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, known as Oxfam, called the lack of progress “a disgrace” and called for greater government investment in poor women’s health services. “The appalling lack of progress on reducing maternal mortality rates demonstrates the need for governments across the world to really invest in health services for poor women. These services need to be free, public services that have trained midwives and affordable and appropriate medicines,” said Oxfam’s Claire Seaward. “Today, the World Health Assembly passed a resolution committing to primary health care in all countries. Fulfilling this commitment is the first step governments can take to improving health care for pregnant women across the world.”

Earlier this week, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the persistent high death rates from pregnancy and childbirth was “an outrage,” and Sarah Brown, the wife of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, said there was no excuse for inaction. Speaking at the WHO’s annual assembly, she said simple measures before, during, and after delivery could save women’s lives.

Among other findings, the report revealed:

* The proportion of under-nourished children under five years of age declined from 27 percent in 1990 to 20 percent in 2005.
* The use of antiretroviral therapy has increased; in 2007, about 1 million more people living with HIV received the treatment. That means one third of the estimated 9.7 million people in developing countries who need the treatment were receiving it.
* 27 countries reported a reduction of up to 50 percent in the number of malaria cases between 1990 and 2006.
* The availability of essential medicines at public health facilities is often poor and prices remain high, even for generic medicine.
* Adolescent pregnancy rates remain high. Globally, there were 48 births for every 1,000 women aged 15 to 19 years in 2006, a small decline from 51 per 1,000 in the year 2000.
* Out of every 100 deaths worldwide, 51 are due to non-communicable conditions such as heart disease, stroke, cancers and road traffic accidents; 34 due to communicable, maternal or nutritional conditions; and 14 due to injuries. Many developing countries have to cope with a double burden of both infectious and non-communicable diseases that is overwhelming their health-care systems. Action needs to be taken now to implement preventive interventions including reductions in tobacco use, overweight and obesity, and high blood pressure.

“At the mid-way point, the analysis shows encouraging signs of progress,” said Dr Boerma. “But there needs to be more effort to strengthen health systems in countries affected by high levels of HIV/AIDS, economic hardship or conflict. Moreover, there is a need to pay greater attention to the poorest groups within countries where progress is often the slowest and child mortality rates remain high.” He added that “the challenges ahead are those presented by weak health systems, those associated with non-communicable chronic conditions, and emerging health threats such as pandemics and climate change.”

The full report, available in six languages, can be accessed at: http://www.who.int/whosis/whostat/2009/.

For most people, when stress presents itself we resort to some sort of relief. For some we turn to food, for others it is the more dangerous choice of smoking cigarettes. It is a well-known fact that smoking is not a healthy habit for anyone, but a steadily growing body of research suggests that women are considered to be more vulnerable to the lung-damaging effects of cigarettes than men are.

A recent study, presented this week at the American Thoracic Society’s annual meeting in San Diego, found that women developed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at a much earlier age and after less years of smoking than men did. Previous studies about lung cancer have also shown that cigarette smoking is much more likely to cause lung cancer in women than men, even though they tend to start smoking at a later age and also smoke less.

Dr. Inga-Cecilie Soerheim, who is the co-author of the most recent study and a research fellow at the Channing Laboratory, which is division of Brigham and Young Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, said, “Many people believe that their own smoking is too limited to be harmful—that a few cigarettes a day represent a minimal risk. But there is no such thing as a safe amount of cigarette smoking. Our data suggest that this is particularly true for female smokers.”

Dr. Soerheim’s research team used the data from a Norwegian study that involved 954 current and ex-smokers that have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which is the catchall name for a group of diseases that cause a partial blockage of the airways and are strongly associated with smoking.

Among other results of the study, it found that women who developed the pulmonary disease before the age of sixty had a greater loss of lung function than the men in the same age bracket. The same held true for the women who had smoked for less than twenty years, compared with the men with similarly low exposure to the tobacco.

Why this fact holds true is not known as of now. It could be because women tend to have smaller lungs than men so the smoking does more damage, Soerheim stated.

Dr. Kathy Albain, who is a medical oncologist at the Loyola University Health System and has also studied gender differences with lung cancer, said that there could also be a difference in the way that women and men metabolize the cigarette smoke, based on the genes that they inherit. Hormones, in particular estrogen, are also being looked at to be a possible reason for why the lung cancer acts differently in women than it does in men