Recalls for about 10 million Fisher-Price toys were announced yesterday by the company and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and Health Canada. The recalls were announced jointly by the two safety commissions and Mattel, the parent company of Fisher-Price.

The recalls involve four different products manufactured by Fisher-Price, a child’s trike, a baby play area, a highchair and Little People cars. Consumers should stop using the products immediately and to contact Mattel for information.

The trike recall involves more than 7 million trikes sold primarily in the United States. The plastic trikes, pictured below, have a plastic key which protrudes from the trike in front of where a child sits. The recall was announced following 10 known reported incidents, six of which required medical attention for the two and three-year-old girls injured by striking, sitting or falling against the protruding key.

Fisher-Price also recalled nearly 3 million of several different models of baby play areas with have inflatable balls attached to an arch above the play area because of problems with choking on the valve from the inflatable balls which can become detached and pose a choking hazard to infants.  About 125,000 of the play areas were sold in Canada. Fisher-Price has had 46 reports of the valve detaching in the U.S. and another eight incidents in Canada. The company said, “These include 14 reports of the valve found in a child’s mouth and three reports of a child beginning to choke.” No actual injuries have been reported.

The third announced recall involves Healthy Care, Easy Clean and Close to Me High Chairs. Nearly 1.1 million high chairs have been recalled across the United States and Canada, with nearly one million of those recalled sold in the United States. The CPSC is aware of 14 incidents in which injuries have occurred when children have fallen against the pegs on the rear legs. The injuries have resulted in children receiving stitches in half of those reported cases and one child who suffered a tooth injury from falling against the protruding peg (pictured below).

The final announced recall involves the popular Little People brand – the Little People Wheelies Stand ‘n Play Ramp. This recall involves approximately 120,000 purple and green cars provided as a part of the product. The wheels on the purple and green cars can loosen from the plastic body and become choking hazards for children using the cars. Free replacement vehicles are being offered from Fisher-Price.

A joint announcement by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) concerning baby sleep positioners advises parents and caregivers to immediately stop using the products.

Despite claims that the baby sleep positioners protect infants from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), the use of the positioners themselves have led to the death of a dozen children between the ages of 1 to 4 months from suffocation since 1997. Most of the infants suffocated when they rolled from their backs or sides to sleeping on their stomachs. Most manufacturers recommend discontinuing use once the child begins to move in their sleep, but the timing of the first movement of a child during sleep is impossible to predict.

“The deaths and dangerous situations resulting from the use of infant sleep positioners are a serious concern to CPSC,” said CPSC Chairman Inez Tenenbaum. “We urge parents and caregivers to take our warning seriously and stop using these sleep positioners, so that children can have a safer sleep.”

The FDA has never approved the products as safe for use with infants in the United States and has never endorsed the claims that the use of the positioners prevents SIDS. The FDA has contacted every manufacturer of the sleep positioners and asked them to stop selling their products. The American Academy of Pediatrics does not support the use of any sleep positioner to prevent SIDS.

As part of the announcement, the CPSC and the FDA are warning parents and child care providers to:

• STOP using sleep positioners. Using a positioner to hold an infant on his or her back or side for sleep is dangerous and unnecessary.
• NEVER put pillows, infant sleep positioners, comforters, or quilts under a baby or in a crib.
• ALWAYS place an infant on his or her back at night and during nap time. To reduce the risk of SIDS, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends placing infants to sleep on their backs and not their sides.

There have been numerous studies trying to pinpoint why those with a higher education tend to live longer lives than those who don’t. One possibility is that the more educated you are, the more likely you are able to think for yourself, make healthier, educated choices about what to eat, not to smoke or drink, and generally make more money. Also, those people who have a higher education usually make more money which lends itself to better health care and a healthier way of life.

One theory by Ellen Peters, a psychological scientist at Decision Research in Oregon, focuses on the possibility that formal schooling teaches people to think and these skills will carry on into adulthood and lead to healthier choices. She took her research to rural Ghana because it as a huge HIV/AIDS problem and because only half of the adults in that area are uneducated. Peters compared those who were schooled versus those that were unschooled and found that even a small amount of formal education lead to better health and the ability to make better decisions about protection against HIV.

Peters reported in Psychological Science that, “schooling led to sharper cognitive skills across the board, and these enhanced intellectual abilities in turn led to more protective health behaviors.” However, her study found one very important detail. It wasn’t just the knowledge about HIV and AIDS that led to healthier living, but cognitive abilities like memory and working with numbers that better assisted people in their everyday life, and helped them “extrapolate to new situations and reason statistically in everyday life.”

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For years vaccine manufacturers have been saving money by introducing multi-dose units to administer vaccinations while adding preservatives to prevent contaminations. This way doctors can open and close vaccine containers, which may spread germs to the solution, but the drug companies assure us that those contaminants are quickly killed by the preservative.

The preservative, Thimerosal, introduced in the 1940s, contains 49.6 percent mercury. This is the main ingredients that kills contaminants and according to researchers may be doing us more harm than good. Scientists and the general public know that mercury is toxic, but the question lies in how much mercury-laced thimerosal is toxic and how does it affect our children at low doses.

Eli Lilly and Co., manufacturer of Thimerosal, began tests on the product back in the 1930s and some say the company suppressed important information on the toxicity of thimerosal until now. The drug was banned in many countries more than 20 years ago, yet the United States is still continuing to produce and sell the product. A Russian study found that adults exposed to the form of mercury in thimerosal suffered brain damage years later and some patients developed nervous system injury, coma and death. Because of these findings, Russia banned thimerosal from children’s vaccines in 1980. Denmark, Austria, Japan, Great Britain and all the Scandinavian countries have also banned the preservative.

So how does this affect our children? In 1999, the number of childhood vaccinations rose from 12 to 15 per child and one study revealed that some infants, due to a genetic or developmental factor, lack the ability to eliminate mercury. Trace amounts of mercury in these infants from vaccinations, and then accumulated through multiple vaccinations, could pose a severe health risk. According to The National Vaccine Information Center in Vienna, Virginia, some vaccines such as hepatitis B contained as much as 12.5 micrograms of mercury per dose. That is more than 100 times the EPA’s upper limit standard when administered to infants.

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A superbug is threatening to make germs impervious to many antibiotics. The gene called NDM-1, has caused people to become sick in three states in the U.S. as well as Canada, and the bug is beginning to show itself all over the world.

According to the Huffington Post reports:

“People traveling to India for medical procedures have brought back to Britain a new gene that allows any bacteria to become a superbug, and scientists are warning this type of drug resistance could soon appear worldwide. Experts warn that booming medical tourism industries in India and Pakistan could fuel a surge in antibiotic resistance, as patients import dangerous bugs to their home countries.”

“Antibiotics are now failing to do their job and disease specialists are concerned. More of a concern is how quickly the gene can spread. Dr. M. Lindsay Grayson, director of infectious disease at the University of Melbourne in Australia said, “It’s just a matter of time until the gene spreads more widely from one human to another.” So far the gene has mostly been found in bacteria that causes stomach or urinary infections.”

The gene, NDM-1 was named for New Delhi and has doctors and scientists worried. “The U.S. cases occurred this year in people from California, Massachusetts and Illinois,” said Brandi Limbago, a lab chief at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We want physicians to look for it, especially in patients who have traveled recently to India or Pakistan,” she said.

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We take care of our bodies by watching what we eat and drink and through devoted exercise regimens.

Do you know that you also need to take care of the toxins that may be lurking in your home?

Research shows that common household products and body-care products are increasingly being found to have negative effects on our nervous, immune, reproductive, cardiovascular and respiratory systems.

Most chemicals found in our home cannot be tasted or smelled. Chemicals in average home products may be reasonably safe in smaller doses, but serious problems can be presented when one is exposed to them in larger forms or in combinations of toxic substances.

Dr. Frank Lipman, an integrative physician and author on chronic disease prevention, says that tolerance levels to chemicals are different; being influenced by genetics, nutritional status, and previous contacts with other chemicals.

Lipman also points out that many of the cleaning products we use to clean furniture, bathrooms and windows are full of toxic chemicals, although many of them do not appear on the labels. The same goes with personal care products that we put on our skin and pet products.

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The Food and Drug Administration and European drug regulators made a major announcement today that will affect more than half a million Type 2 diabetics currently using Avandia, or its generic form rosiglitazone, to control their blood sugar.

Although manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, has continued to stand behind the drug, Avandia has been under scrutiny for years.  A New England Journal of Medicine study released in May 2007 first indicated an increased risk for conditions such as cardiovascular disease, stroke, heart attack and death, yet the drug has remained on the market.

The FDA’s most significant action short of recall, a Black Box warning was issued in November of 2007, but many consumers and physicians were still unaware of the dangers.

The use of Avandia can increase the risk of major cardiac events by as much as 43% in patients who are already at a heightened risk due to their Diabetes.  An FDA advisory panel that met in July 2010 was split on the decision to discontinue use of the drug, with about half the advisory group desirous for a recall and the other half arguing for only a stronger warning.

Action in the best interests of consumers has finally been taken, and substantial restrictions have been placed on the drug that will make it nearly impossible to obtain.

Patients who are currently using the medication should not discontinue taking Avandia, but they should immediately consult with their physicians to consider an alternate course of treatment.

To continue the drug regimen, patients and physicians will have to attest that Avandia is the only drug that is effective for the patient and the patient will be required to sign documentation of informed consent before they are allowed to refill their existing prescriptions.

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The first of the applications is called “Vree”. It is an application, which runs on the IPhone and the IPod Touch. The application includes features including:

• Diabetes education – interactive lessons to help understand diabetes.
• Blood Glucose tracking – reminders to check glucose and record it.
• Nutrition tracking – calculates nutritional information for foods and counts calories.
• Activity tracking – record physical activity
• Medication tracking – track medication information and set medication reminders.
• Progress charts – Tracks and evaluates progress to permit easy review with health care professionals.

The second application is called iChemoDiary. It is an application that operates on IPhones, IPod Touch and n computers. It acts as a personal oncology diary, allowing patients to record:

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For several years now, there have been numerous reports of safety concerns relating to a number of popular osteoporosis drugs that are part of the bisphosphonate class. This group of drugs includes Didronel, Skelid, Aredia, Fosamax, Boniva, Actonel, Aclasta, Bondronat, Fosavance, Reclast, and Zometa. The first safety concerns were over jaw osteonecrosis.   Then, there were reports of arrhythmias and a possible link to esophageal cancer.  Now, the focus is on whether the drugs that are marketed to improve bone health are actually the cause of rare bone fractures.

In March of 2010, the FDA released a safety alert about an ongoing investigation into whether patients taking these osteoporosis drugs were at greater risk of suffering atypical subtronchanteric or long-bone fractures.  This week, further evidence to support this link was released by a task force working for the American Society of Bone and Mineral Research.  This group of medical experts reviewed reports of 310 patients who had suffered atypical femur (thigh bone) fractures, and found that a staggering 90% of those patients had ingested bisphosphonate drugs.  The researchers also noted that many of the patients had taken the drugs for more than 5 years, confirming a long-held suspicion that patients who ingest these drugs for longer periods of time are at greater risk.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released another study on how much fruits and vegetables are consumed by Americans and the findings were not encouraging. Only about 26 percent of Americans ate vegetables three or more times a day and only one-third of US adults consumed fruits or fruit juice twice a day. The numbers are down slightly from more than 34 percent in 2000 while vegetable consumption stayed the same from the 2000 study.

In 2007, the government began a campaign, The Healthy People 2010, to increase awareness of the important of eating more fruits and vegetables in your daily diet. The new study suggests that we are no where near the goals set by the Healthy People 2010 objective. This objective projected that in 2010 at least 75 percent of Americans would be eating their recommended fruit servings and 50 percent of Americans would be eating their recommended vegetable servings.

CDC spokesperson Larry Cohen says people may not be eating these nutrient-rich foods because of cost, lack of time for preparations or lack of easy access to them. In 2007, in an effort to get people to eat more of these nutrient-rich foods, the CDC, the Produce for Better Health Foundation and other leading health groups launched a new initiative called “Fruits & Veggies—More Matters,” which replaced the “5 A Day” campaign.

The groups expected their new campaign to be a rallying cry to eat more fruits and vegetables. However, America wasn’t listening. Data from the CDC’s 2009 study was very discouraging. (more…)