Flu
Shot - Flu Season Update
This year's flu shot shortage is forcing officials to take a closer
look at the benefits the shot provides. A study published last week in the
Archives of Internal Medicine reported that flu shots did not
significantly reduce flu-related deaths in people over 65. About 90% of 36,000 flu-related
deaths each year occur in people over 65.
Another study published last week in the American Journal of
Epidemiology suggests that by vaccinating schoolchildren and high risk
people, transmission among the general population would be dramatically
reduced and that no one else would really need the
shot
Ironically, a new flu strain that was not included in this year's
vaccine has shown up in 28 percent of flu-virus samples nationwide and
could end up as the predominant strain infecting patients this year.
Read more on preventing the flu here.
Breakthrough Canker Sore Treatment Study
Released
A new canker sore treatment in the form of a tablet-like patch
healed canker sores in most participants in just 8 hours while protecting
the sore from food and liquid irritations. Read more here.
According to Dr. Abraham J. Domb, Corresponding Author of the study
which appeared in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences last December,
"The 248 person study showed that the Canker Cover patch healed the
majority of canker sores with a single application, provided immediate
pain relief and afforded excellent protection from food and drink
irritants for nearly 8 hours."
The tablet-like patch, made from edible ingredients sticks to the
canker sore within seconds, and then turns into a protective film that
lasts over 8 hours.
Canker Cover Works in
Three Ways:
1. The natural ingredients in Canker Cover speed
healing. Most canker sores are eliminated with a single patch.
2.
Canker Cover "seals" and isolates the canker sore from contact with the
tongue, teeth, and food. No other canker sore treatment products protect
so thoroughly for eight hours.
3. Canker Cover provides immediate
and long lasting pain relief by steadily releasing pain-numbing menthol,
beta-carotene and other natural ingredients onto the sore.
Using the product is very
simple. Place the Canker Cover patch on a clean, dry
finger with the white side up, then place and hold the white side on the
sore for 20 seconds. Within 30 minutes the patch becomes gel-like. It
absorbs fluids from the sore as part of the healing process and expands
slightly. The canker sore treatment patch will stick to the affected area
and cover the sore for 6 - 8 hours and then dissolve.
Vitamin D May Protect Against Prostate
Cancer
Men with higher levels of vitamin D in their blood were almost half
as likely to develop aggressive forms of prostate cancer as those with
lower amounts, reported researchers last week.
"Our findings
suggest that vitamin D plays an important protective role against prostate
cancer, especially clinically aggressive disease," said lead investigator
Dr Haojie Li, a research fellow at Brigham and Women's Hospital and
Harvard University School of Public Health.
Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men
after lung cancer. It was the most common form of cancer diagnosed among
men in the European Union during 2004, representing 15 per cent of male
cancers and 238,000 new cases, according to figures released last week by
the International Agency for Research on Cancer.* Read
more.
