What does a woman’s fidelity have to do with her unborn child’s health? A lot, if the news reports of a study from New Zealand are right. The results of the study were published in the most recent issue of Journal of Reproductive Immunology.

Actually, if you really read the study, it’s not the faithfulness that was the issue, it was how much the woman was exposed to the father’s semen. You know how I caution people to read studies carefully and not take news at face value? Here is yet another case. The news that came out of this study …read more

I remember art class and rarely was it dangerous. If we were working with sharp scissors or chisels, that could be risky, but most of our other projects were only dangerous if we poked each other with sharp pencils or something like that.
Sadly, that isn’t always the case though, as a teenager in the United Kingdom and her teachers discovered over two years ago. In January 2007, a 16-year-old girl went to make a plaster of paris model of her hands. To do so, she placed her hands in the bucket of plaster. What she – and apparently her teachers …read more

Interesting reading around cyberspace…
Health officials in Los Angeles are targeting young woman with a program that offers STD Results Via Text. The progam that started earlier this week provides home delivery of STD testing kits and a text message to alert them when the results are ready online.
A man is suing a Chicago restaurant that he claims provided an undercooked salmon salad that resulted in him having a  9-foot-tapeworm growing inside him.  The Scientific American article that highlights this case asks Are Urban Tapeworms on the rise?
Chastity Bono (daughter of Sonny and Cher) is transitioning from woman to man.
An anti-abortion blogger, who wrote in detail about …read more

The sad news of the death of four-year-old Exodus Tyson who died as a result of strangulation from a treadmill cord offers a somber reminder to parents everywhere of the dangers of treadmills.
Treadmills and other home gym equipment is great for keeping adults fit but are a definite danger to children.
In fact, the Australian Office of Fair Trading has become so concerned the increase in reports of treadmill injuries to children that they issued a public education campaign in 2008.
Called  Treadmills and Kids Don’t Mix, this campaign highlights the dangers of treadmills for children, especially how a treadmill’s moving belt …read more

Remember the saying ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away.’ Well, those with sleep apnoea might want to add an banana to that as well.
Someone with obstructive sleep apnoea experiences recurrent choking when their throat closes during sleep, making it a potentially life-threatening disorder. Because of this, many people who suffer from this disorder end up wearing uncomfortable and cumbersome CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) apparatus during the night.
Now some researchers in Australia have found that having a banana smoothie nightcap might just help keep the throat open and therefore reduce this risk of choking.
The study, conducted by a …read more

Spring and summer might not be the best time for women in the United States to conceive according to a new study published in the April edition of the Acta Pædiatrica journal. Seems that the study, which analysed the 30.1 million births in the U.S. between 1996 and 2002, found that there was an increased number of birth defects in the children born of women who last menstruated in April, May, June, or July.

This is the time of the year when there are increased levels of pesticides, such as atrazine (which is banned in Europe but still permitted in the …read more

I knew changes were coming but still, it was a shock when I clicked onto Healthbolt today and discovered that all the red had gone.
It was like the blood had been drained out of it.
In fact, I had to look twice to make sure I was at the right blog.
I wonder if everyone feels like that when they have a facelift?
But like any good facelift, what’s underneath stays the same.
Healthbolt is still going to supply the interesting, the intriguing, the entertaining, the bizarre, and sometimes down right gross in the world of health and wellness.
So what do you think about …read more

Today is National Women and Girls HIV/AIDs Awareness Day, so why not join Healthbolt and The Red Pump Project and spread the word. 
HIV/AIDS remains one of those subjects that not talked about so much over the dinner table or when out for coffee with the girls. But prehaps it should be because the numbers tell us it’s a disease that does not seem to be going away. In fact, according this Snapshot of the U.S. Epidemic provided by the Kaiser Family Foundation, it seems to be growing…
• Number of new HIV infections, 2006: 56,300
• Number of people living with HIV/AIDS: 1.1 million, …read more

Today’s Sunday Sidebar focuses on three different cases that intrigue and mystify me.
First up, the 60 year old woman from Western Canadian who recently gave birth to twins. Seems she had her heart set on having children and when it didn’t happen naturally, resorted to IVF treatment in India (Canada apparently has a cutoff age of 50). I’m sorry but having twins at 60 sounds more like a nightmare than a blessing. Keeping up with one infant would be hard enough but two? Even a thirty year old might have problems doing that.
Second up, the baby faced 13 year …read more

Craigslist is used by thousands of people to search for cars, jobs, furniture, electronics, etc. Some, according to this ABC article, are even using Craigslist to look for a kidney.
There are people looking for a kidney…

Are you A or O blood type? Nun -Sister Theresa in need of a kidney!

And people wanting to give their kidney away…

I want to donate my kidney. Blood: A+

And as usual, there are those who just don’t know when to stop.

best of craigslist : I will give you a KIDNEY for 2 OBAMA Tickets for tonights speech! via kwout

I wonder what this person …read more