Widespread obesity among Native Americans has led to spiking diabetes rates among young people in the current generation. The phenomenon partially blamed on the lack of access to healthy food on reservations. Edible Idaho’s Guy Hand recently looked at what a food coalition on the coeur d'alene reservation of North Idaho is doing to connect the people there to better eating, starting with their nutrient-rich roots.
Today’s report from the USDA’s economic research service upends the notion that healthy food options are more expensive for consumers than sweet and fatty junk-foods. The report points out that price depends on how you measure it. When factored by calorie, a chocolate doughnut will often cost more than a tomato.
A Soviet news reel shows teary mourners shuffling past the body of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The Bolshevik leader and chair of the soviet state in its early years died of a he died of an apparent massive stroke in 1924 at age 54. His embalmed corpse still throngs of visitors to his tomb in Moscow’s Red Square, and was the topic of an annual clinicopathological conference held at the University of Maryland.
New research finds that younger athletes are more susceptible to head injury than once thought, take longer to recover, and are more at risk for suffering second concussions. Now, New Hampshire may join a growing list of states asking coaches and trainers to monitor these injuries more closely. We talk with experts on head trauma in youth sports.
There have been hints that the obesity epidemic's rise has slowed a bit among certain populations, but for the most part, it continues to dominate American health. One third of children and teenagers are now overweight or obese. And researchers forecast as many as half of our nation's population could be obese — not overweight but obese — by 2030.
TimeSlips is a program based on the idea that storytelling can be therapeutic for people with dementia.
Credit Joanne Silberner for NPR
Linda White (left) leads a session based on a program called TimeSlips at a Seattle senior center. The idea is to show photos to people with memory loss to help them make up a story.
Ask family members of someone with Alzheimer's or another dementia: Trying to talk with a loved one who doesn't even remember exactly who they are can be very frustrating.
But here at a senior center in Seattle, things are different.
On one recent day, 15 elderly people were forming a circle. The room is typical — linoleum floors, cellophane flowers on the windows, canes and wheelchairs, and walkers lined up against the wall.
Most people know how we should be eating: more fruits and vegetables, more whole grains, fewer candies, fats, and calories. But putting that into practice can be tough.
When you walk into the convenience store and a bag of potatoes chips is a dollar, and a salad is six, which are you going to buy?
Nano-technology is enabling breakthroughs in a number of scientific fields at an unimaginably small scale. Consider that the basic unit of measurement for nano-particles is 40,000 times smaller than the width of the average human hair. Recently, researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital developed a nano-particle capable of infiltrating the human immune system and delivering a targeted dose of powerful antibiotics.
