A hilarious ad in my morning New York Times headlines e-mail made me laugh out loud even though I’m in a bit of an early-morning stupor at the moment. I don’t want to reproduce it here because of copyright issues, but here’s the setup: two hippos standing shoulder deep in water, with just their faces and their backs showing. One is walking toward the camera, with the second slightly behind. The caption reads, “Fred, stop standing so close. I might get fat.”
How could you not click on that? So of course I did.
And I found a funny blog post at …read more

New findings released by the NIH and published in a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine characterize obesity as being “socially contagious.” Translation: The more fat friends you have, the more likely you are to become fat. The same is true for slim pals.
At first I thought, “Well, people tend to gather in like groups, so these must be faulty findings. But this quote in a press release from UC San Diego set me straight: “It’s not that obese or non-obese people simply find other similar people to hang out with,” said Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD, a …read more

Actress Sally Field is going to plotz when she hears about this new once-a-year treatment to prevent osteoporosis. It makes her beloved once-a-month Boniva (ibandronate sodium) look like a pile of poo.
Ivanhoe Newswire reported earlier this month that annual doses of zoledronic acid (brand name Reclast) have been clinically proven to demonstrate a 70% reduction in risk of vertebral fractures and a 41% reduction in risk of hip fractures over a 3-year period in postmenopausal women age 65-89 years. Other types of fractions were also reduced considerably.
In the study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, participants received …read more