Beer is a rich source of a nutrient that can help prevent weak bones – but it depends what type you drink, claim researchers at University of California, Davis, today.

As one of the nation’s favourite tipples, beer is a rich source of dietary silicon, which can help cut the chance of developing diseases like osteoporosis, they conclude.

However, not all beers are the same, with those containing malted barley and hops having higher silicon content than beers made from wheat.

Some light lagers made from grains like corn have the lowest levels of silicon while beers made from hops seem to come out on top, according to the study. The research, published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, examined 100 commercial beers and their production methods.

The experts said beer was a major source of dietary silicon – roughly half of the silicon in beer can be readily absorbed by the body.

Charles Bamforth, lead author of the study, said: “Beers containing high levels of malted barley and hops are richest in silicon.

“Wheat contains less silicon than barley because it is the husk of the barley that is rich in this element.

“While most of the silicon remains in the husk during brewing, significant quantities of silicon nonetheless are extracted into wort and much of this survives into beer.”

Dr Claire Bowring, from the National Osteoporosis Society, said: “These findings mirror results from previous studies which concluded that moderate alcohol consumption could be beneficial to bones.

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With millions of people being vaccinated against the virus there is a real risk that coincidental events will be seen as reactions to the jab, a paper in The Lancet said.

Experts at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in America calculated the background rate of conditions that may be mistaken for vaccine reactions and warned that there is a risk people will shun the jab needlessly.

Only if these background rates are exceeded will it point to a potential problem with the vaccine.

Medical experts have been told to watch for any cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome during the flu pandemic as some research suggested there was a link between a flu vaccine used in America in 1976 and the condition, in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks part of the nervous system and can be fatal in rare cases.

However flu itself it also linked to the condition and about one in every 100,000 people a year.

Dr Steven Black and colleagues calculated that if 10 million people in Britain were vaccinated there would be around 22 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome and six cases of sudden death would be expected to occur within six weeks of vaccination as coincident background cases.

Just over nine million people in priority groups, such as pregnant women and those with long-term illnesses, and another two million front line health and social care workers will be offered the vaccine in Britain over the next two months.

Decisions will be taken soon over whether to offer the vaccine more widely.

The research also suggested that 397 per one million vaccinated pregnant women would be predicted to have a spontaneous abortion within one day of vaccination.

But this is the rate of spontaneous abortion that would occur on any given day out of a group of one million pregnant women during a vaccination campaign or not.

Dr Black wrote: “Misinterpretation of adverse health outcomes that are only temporally related to vaccination will not only threaten the success of the pandemic H1N1 influenza vaccine programme, but also potentially hinder the development of newer vaccines.

“Therefore, careful interpretation of vaccine safety signals is crucial to detect real reactions to vaccine and to ensure that temporally related events not caused by vaccination do not unjustly affect public opinion of the vaccine.

“Development and availability of data banks that can provide locally relevant background rates of disease incidence are important to aid assessment of vaccine safety concerns.”

The researchers said although scientists know that events connected only be time does not prove cause and effect, the cases ‘nonetheless raise public concern’.

Prof David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk, University of Cambridge and Co-Director of Straight Statistics, said: “What a fine paper. If millions of people are vaccinated then just by chance we can expect bad things to happen to some of them, whether it’s a diagnosis of autism or a miscarriage.

“By being ready with the expected numbers of chance cases, perhaps we can avoid overreaction to sad, but coincidental, events. And why don’t we ever see a headline ‘Man wins lottery after flu jab’?”

Professor Robert Dingwall, University of Nottingham, said: “The difference between cause and coincidence is difficult enough for specialists to grasp, let alone the wider public.

“However, this paper is very important in spelling out the fact that just because two events happen at the same time, they are not necessarily related. There is a background rate of death, disease and accidents that happen all the time regardless of what medical interventions are going on.

“Confusing cause and coincidence may lead to serious policy mistakes that put people unnecessarily at risk.

“I am sure that some coincidences will emerge from a high-profile vaccination campaign and we must be careful not to be misled by them.”

Meanwhile the World Health Organisation said that pregnant women could be immunised with any of the vaccines licensed for use against swine flu.

Dr Marie-Paule Keiny, from the WHO, said: “ Sage (the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts) has concluded that the safety profiles are good and recommend that pregnant women can be immunised with any of the licensed vaccines.”

The WHO also recommended that one dose was sufficient to immunise children. Source

Hannah Powell-Auslam of La Mirada, California, had surgery this month to check her lymph nodes, just in case the breast cancer had spread.

Taylor Thompson of Little Rock, Arkansas, also had an aggressive form of breast cancer, one that has a 98 percent chance of returning. It required surgery in June.

They’re two young women fighting breast cancer. Or rather, two girls: Hannah is 11. Taylor is 13.

While Taylor and Hannah’s cases are rare, they’re extreme examples of a troubling trend emerging with breast cancer, medical experts say. Younger women are getting a disease that usually strikes around menopause — and no one knows why.

“The breast is a very sensitive, vulnerable organ,” said Dr. Marisa Weiss, founder of Breastcancer.org, a breast health Web site. “The breast is the only organ in men and women that is formed after you’re born.” Most of the breast forms during adolescence, she said. “It’s while organs are formed that they are most vulnerable to changes and insults.”

Breast cancer could theoretically occur at any age and for either gender.

“You have breast tissue, so at any point, if you have that tissue in your body, it can become cancer,” said Dr. Jennifer Litton, an assistant professor in the department of breast medical oncology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Reducing risks
While there is no certain way to prevent breast cancer, these healthy measures can reduce risks:

* Maintain a healthy weight

* Eat real foods, such as fruits and vegetables

* Get moderate to vigorous activity/exercise

* Limit alcohol consumption

Source: American Cancer Society

Litton found that in women with the gene mutation BRCA1 and BRCA2, which is linked to breast cancer, the disease is diagnosed six years earlier than the previous generation. The cause remains unclear.

“Maybe women who have a family history, they were getting screened earlier, or having more breast self-awareness,” she said. “It could be something hormonal or environmental that’s causing women to have breast cancer earlier… that certainly is a big area of interest.”

But cases of breast cancer occurring in the 20s, teens and tweens are outliers, said Litton, who works with young patients. Only about 7 percent of breast cancer cases occur in patients under the age of 40.

Taylor’s diagnosis startled her family. They have no history of breast cancer.

“I was actually confused because I never heard of no one that young going through something like this,” said Stephanie Anderson, Taylor’s mother. “And for it to be my daughter at the age of 13, it was like too much at one time. I was concerned about her and how she’d react because she’s so young.”

Taylor had an aggressive type of cancer called a phyllodes tumor, which appears in less than 1 percent of breast cancer cases.

“I didn’t know how to explain to my 13-year-old daughter that she had breast cancer, when she didn’t know what it was,” Anderson said.

Taylor’s still in the age where she loves hot pink (especially when paired with stars) and embraces glitter lip gloss.

When she heard the news, she asked her mother: “Am I going to die? Is this going to kill me? Is my hair going to fall out? What’s going to happen?”
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KSTP does another one of the classic scary tales of hand sanitizer almost killing a child. How a child manages to swallow enough of that stuff to get legally drunk is beyond us, but apparently it’s happening. Oh, and it’s not just kids who get fooled. A 77-year-old with dementia drank almost a whole bottle of it before realizing it was hand sanitizer. Disgusting.

So KSTP laws down the facts: Handing your kid a container of hand sanitizer is like giving them a bottle of vodka. Drunk kids aren’t fun kids.

Despite the fear mongering, there are actually some serious cases of poisoning. So make sure to call poison control ASAP if you think you, your child, or someone you know may have chugged a little too much germ killer. Phone number is 1-800-222-1222.

Ok.. The flu season is here and people are running out to get there lovely vaccines. I decided to do some research of my own to find what’s hype or a real serious condition. So i started where great debates are dealt with on a large scale …Google.com. I ran in to sites that said it was a serious condition run out and get your shots like they had some kind of stake in it. I ran in to other sites that said that this is hype to create revenue for pharmaceutical companies.

This post will merge both debates and will let you decide for your self. I don’t strongly oppose vaccinations but i do question them. I hope that this post about health will help people in deciding how they will handle the flu season and those to come.

First i wanted to know how many deaths are cause by flu each yeah. So i went to the CDC and tried to see what kind of info i could receive from a government website. I started with this site because who cant trust the good old government, plus i wanted multiple references for people to see that I’m not one sided.
So lets look at the facts…

The CDC sites says that the flu attributes to about 36,000 people dying from flu-related causes.CDC site

Another site i visited is named the “wrongdiagnosis.com” said Deaths from Flu: 63,730 annual deaths for influenza and pneumonia (NVSR Sep 2001); estimated 20,000 deaths from flu (NIAID) wrongdiagnosis site

So i came to the conclusion that a lot of people die a year due to the flu. I wanted to know more so i decided to look up who was at more risk of dying and what was the age range of the deaths that occurred while having the flu.
This information came from wrongdiagnosis site

# Death statistics by age in the USA for influenza and pneumonia:

* influenza and pneumonia caused 2.5% of deaths for age 1-4 years in USA 1999 [NVSR 2001]
* influenza and pneumonia caused 1.3% of deaths for age 5-9 years in USA 1999 [NVSR 2001]
* influenza and pneumonia caused 1.1% of deaths for age 10-14 years in USA 1999 [NVSR 2001]
* influenza and pneumonia caused 0.5% of deaths for age 15-19 years in USA 1999 [NVSR 2001]
* influenza and pneumonia caused 0.6% of deaths for age 20-24 years in USA 1999 [NVSR 2001]
* influenza and pneumonia caused 1.2% of deaths for age 35-44 years in USA 1999 [NVSR 2001]
* influenza and pneumonia caused 1.1% of deaths for age 45-54 years in USA 1999 [NVSR 2001]
* influenza and pneumonia caused 3.2% of deaths for age 65 and over years in USA 1999 [NVSR 2001]
* influenza and pneumonia caused 1.5% of deaths for age 65-74 years in USA 1999 [NVSR 2001]
* influenza and pneumonia caused 2.7% of deaths for age 75-84 years in USA 1999 [NVSR 2001]
* influenza and pneumonia caused 4.8% of deaths for age 85 and over in USA 1999 [NVSR 2001]

# Death statistics by race in the USA for influenza and pneumonia:

* 19.2 per 100,000 women for influenza and pneumonia in USA 2001 (NCHS, 2003)
* 20.5 per 100,000 Hispanic/Latino people for influenza and pneumonia in USA 2001 (NCHS, 2003)
* 21.7 per 100,000 white people for influenza and pneumonia in USA 2001 (NCHS, 2003)
* 22.5 per 100,000 American Indian or Alaska Native people for influenza and pneumonia in USA 2001 (NCHS, 2003)
* 24.1 per 100,000 black people for influenza and pneumonia in USA 2001 (NCHS, 2003)
* 26.6 per 100,000 men for influenza and pneumonia in USA 2001 (NCHS, 2003)
* 3.5 per 100,000 Asian/Pacific Islander people for influenza and pneumonia in USA 2001 (NCHS, 2003)
* 43.7 per 100,000 people for influenza and pneumonia in USA 2001 (NCHS, 2003)

I couldn’t find any info like this on cdc’s site but i did find some statistics CDC site

Stay tuned to it has just been bugging me part two I’m posting in days because no one wants to see a wall of text and will skim of over my research.
Can’t wait stay tuned to bubbleblog.com

A front-page New York Times story about ground beef, one that definitely raises a few health and safety questions about your standard burger. One solution, then, is to grind your own beef.

No meat is perfect, of course, and ground beef in particular has a lot of surface area, and needs to be closely looked after to hit the right internal temperature while cooking. But buying a whole cut of meat that you know the quality and source of eliminates a vast number of variables that commercial products leave you guessing at.

NY Times food writer Mark Bittman has suggested that if you don’t have your own grinder, either stand-alone or attached to a KitchenAid-type mixer, a standard food processor can do a fine job of meat grinding, if you watch what’s happening:

Next, don’t overprocess. You want the equivalent of chopped meat, not a meat purée. The finer you grind the meat, the more likely you are to pack it together too tightly, which will make the burger tough.

If you want to delve a bit deeper into the specifics of ground beef issues, a Grocery Guy blog post will indulge your curiosity—just don’t read it right before lunch. That said, he brings up a nice halfway compromise to making a mess of your kitchen counter: Get to know your butcher, and have him or her grind your meat to order. That post also contains a few more nitty-gritty tips on cuts, seasoning, and patty preparation.

Have you long been DIY-ing your burger patties? Got any tips for those of us looking to escape the shrink-wrapped section? Share the wisdom in the comments.

Number 10

Domination (her dominating you)

Women love a big strong man who can sweep them off their feet and carry them into the sunset — but you may be surprised to learn that one of the top female sex fantasies is to have that same big strong man begging for sexual release in the bedroom. One of the top 10 female fantasies involves tying you down to a bed while she forces you to pleasure her with your tongue; the entire scenario revolves around you worshipping her body and begging for her attention. Why? She gets to be in control while enjoying total devotion from her man in the process. What more could she want?

Number 9

Domination (you dominating her)

The advent of the metrosexual is most commonly blamed for this top 10 female sex fantasy. It seems that modern, independent women actually prefer real men who aren’t afraid to embrace their testosterone. This woman fantasizes about you pinning her down, thrusting her thighs apart with your knee and penetrating her as savagely as you possibly can. She wants to feel your fingers snake through her hair and pull her head back; she wants to feel your teeth on her shoulder; she wants to be owned — if only while in the bedroom (after which, she’ll want a clear return to equality). This win-win female sex fantasy scenario allows her to fully indulge her femininity, while still espousing the merits of feminism.

Number 8

Teacher/student

You’ll be thrilled to know that the Britney Spears fantasy isn’t just for men: Women love the idea of dressing up like a schoolgirl and parading about for your viewing pleasure. Many would even like to take it a step further, playing the naughty tart who won’t stop teasing you until you pull her over your knee and give her the spanking she craves. That’s right: Loads and loads of grown women fantasize about getting a proper spanking from their man. A spanking from you is exciting for two reasons: not only does this mild show of dominance hurt so good, but it also usually leads straight into hot, hot sex.

Number 7

Sex with a stranger

Most women wouldn’t have the chutzpah to act out this top 10 female sex fantasy, but you’d better believe that most have thoroughly enjoyed thinking about it. No-strings-attached sex is something many women would love to experience, but most are dissuaded from it thanks to a lofty load of self-produced guilt. Nevertheless, her panties definitely get wet at the idea of a gorgeous male approaching her in a dark, smoky bar and taking her back to his room for a long, hot night of wild sex. This female sex fantasy appeals to her naughtiest side — the kinky one that rarely sees the light of day, thanks to a lifetime of religious and societal conditioning.

Number 6

Threesome with another woman

These days, it’s fairly common for straight women to get down with other women now and again, making this top 10 female sex fantasy a not-so-unrealistic possibility. That being said, this threesome fantasy rarely involves you getting playtime with the second hottie, as most girlfriends do not want to see their man touch another woman. In this scenario, you’re meant to play voyeur until your woman is ready for something more hardcore. This allows her to experience the best of both worlds without having to worry about things like jealousy or sharing.

Number 5

Threesome with two men

This top 10 female sex fantasy involves the woman being worshipped and adored by two gorgeous men. These men are typically heterosexual and, therefore, only interested in the woman — which translates into a whole lot of action for her. Her sex fantasy might be as innocent as being penetrated by one man while performing oral sex on the other or it might go further, drawing on more hardcore aspects such as double penetration and the like. This female sex fantasy is the ultimate taboo for many women, which makes it all the more fun to imagine.

Number 4

Voyeurism

If you think women don’t enjoy watching other people get it on, you’re completely mistaken. Your woman likes to watch for the same reasons you do: it’s erotic, exhilarating and slightly taboo. She may fantasize about peeping through the neighbor’s bedroom window, spying on a kinky couple in the park or even catching a full-on orgy from the sidelines. Believe it when we tell you she enjoys “watching” just as much as you do; it allows to her be naughty without getting her hands dirty, so to speak.

Number 3

Rape

As mentioned in our Common Female Fantasies article, rape is a massively popular fantasy among women. Most psychologists believe this top 10 female sex fantasy allows a woman to have the wild, dirty sex she craves, without having to suffer the guilt that often follows. These female sex fantasies usually involve a gorgeous man carrying her off to his bedroom and quickly getting down to business. She’ll protest as he tears her clothing off and expertly arouses her body, but on the inside, she’ll love every minute of it. This continues to the point of penetration, and leads her to an incredible orgasm despite her earlier protests. This female sex fantasy allows a woman to be wanton and enjoy sex — something society rarely permits.

Number 2

Exhibitionism

She might cringe when you bring up the topic of making homemade porn flicks, but your woman has probably fantasized about doing precisely that at one time or another. Unfortunately, most women are far too body-conscious to experiment with such things, making this a top 10 female sex fantasy, as opposed to a reality. Believe it or not, some women even take this desire to the next level, fantasizing about others watching as you shag her silly in a public place.

Number 1

Private dancer

Most women wouldn’t have the nerve to strip in a public setting, but this top 10 female sex fantasy definitely involves taking it all off. She loves the idea of tantalizing you with a striptease, and she’d love to give you a private lap dance. Why? Your enjoyment tells her you find her attractive, and your erection tells her she has control — a potent combination that women simply can’t get enough of.

THE average British man or woman has slept with 2.8 million people – albeit indirectly, according to figures released to promote awareness of sexual health.

A British pharmacy chain has launched an online calculator which helps you work out how many partners you have had, in the sense of exposure to risk of sexually transmitted diseases (STIs).

The “Sex Degrees of Separation” ready reckoner tots up the numbers based on your number of partners, then their previous partners, and their former lovers, and so on for six “generations” of partners.

The average British man claims to have actually slept with nine people, while women put the figure at 6.3, giving an average of 7.65.

“When we sleep with someone, we are, in effect, not only sleeping with them, but also their previous partners and their partners’ previous partners, and so on,” said Clare Kerr, head of sexual health at Lloydspharmacy.

“It’s important that people understand how exposed they are to STIs and take appropriate precautions including using condoms and getting themselves checked out where appropriate