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Forget the best thing since sliced bread, because it turns out sliced bread is actually the worst thing ever—okay, not ever, but it is the worst in terms of sodium content. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention compiled the list of the top 10 sources of sodium in our diet, and bread and rolls came in at the number one spot. The ten foods on the list are responsible for a whopping 44 percent of the sodium we consume on a daily basis. More »
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It's pretty clear that we, as a country, are more overweight than we used to be, but exactly how bad is the problem? Are we in the midst of an unchecked obesity epidemic that is going to cause us to burst at our seams? Or is this whole thing overblown? Luckily, we have some new, high-quality data from the CDC to shed a little bit of light into what's been going on. The data, which comes from 2009-2010 installment of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, shows that obesity, after soaring in the 1980s and 1990s, has finally hit something of a plateau. More »
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We tend to think that most old people sit around quietly at home, sipping tea and watching the news, but it turns out they're up to something a little more rowdy: getting hammered! A new report on binge drinking from the CDC found that the 65+ age group binge drank most often. Grandma, you sneaky little tippler! More »
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Who doesn't love a new study about drinking? You can feel superior to all those other sloppy drunks, until you read the fine print and realize that what you think of as a normal glass of wine actually counts as five drinks or whatever. Here to make you feel briefly good about yourself and then bad again are five fun facts from the CDC's freshly-released study on Americans' binge-drinking habits. More »
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Government officials are agog at the results of a survey that found that 1 in 5 women have been victims of rape or attempted rape, and that the number of rapes reported to authorities are dwarfed by the actual number of rapes that occur. Did none of the shocked attend a freshman anti-rape seminar in college? More »
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In an important step in the right direction, a CDC panel has recommended that boys as well as girls be vaccinated against HPV. More »
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Remember when it used to be funny to make jokes about getting the whooping cough? Well, it's not anymore — thanks to Jenny McCarthy, scientist, and thousands of other parents who have opted not to vaccinate their kids, this country's experiencing a retro disease craze more powerful than 1,000 lava lamps. One columnist thinks that only Barbie can save us now. Wait, what? More »
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A CDC official and her boyfriend been charged with child molestation after allegedly forcing a six-year-old boy to participate in sex acts with them. The official has also been charged with bestiality. More »
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The CDC is telling hospitals to step up their breastfeeding support. Apparently only four percent of hospitals are doing enough, which the CDC says would include allowing "rooming in" (babies can sleep with moms), providing follow-up support, and avoiding formula feeding unless medically necessary. The AAP lists numerous health benefits to both mothers and babies; this is, of course, controversial. More »
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The Centers For Disease Control's attempt to utilize late '90s technology to spread health information is probably well intentioned, but all they taught us is that the folks who work there are passive-aggressive busybodies. More »
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This morning we told you about Kelly Rutherford, the Gossip Girl grande dame who is still breast feeding to lose weight. But recently, Salma Hayek told Oprah that she didn't lose a damn pound nursing. More »
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This morning, CNN, Fox News and Bloomberg News are all reporting that teen pregnancy is on the rise after a 15 year decline. The CDC statistics they used sounded awfully familiar, so I hopped into the Jezebel wayback machine and discovered that the "new" teen pregnancy statistics they're bemoaning were actually released in November, 2007, and merely re-released last week as part of a larger report called "America's Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being 2008." That report has all sorts of other information about teenagers — how much they're smoking, how frequently they're injured — and yet, CNN, Fox and Bloomberg all decided to go with the teen pregnancy statistics as their headlines and initial paragraphs. More »
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A couple of major news outlets, including CBS and CNN have been reporting that several deaths and different major ailments have been "linked" to the Gardasil vaccine. One girl got pancreatitis, according to CNN, while CBS has reported on a girl with seizures and another who suffered from paralysis after getting Gardasil. Feministe calls bullshit on these fearmongering reports, pointing out that while 15 deaths had been reported to the FDA after the Gardasil vaccination was administered, CNN's article "immediately looses its steam when we realize that none of those deaths have been linked to Gardasil" by the CDC. However, "The CDC is looking into whether or not Gardasil could be related to 10 confirmed cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare autoimmune disease." The takeaway: don't panic yet, my pets. Gardasil has been distributed 26 million times so far with very few incidences. [CBS, CNN, Feministe] More »
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The childhood obesity rate has leveled off, according to a new study by the CDC. "The prevalence of overweight and obesity among American schoolchildren has plateaued at about 32%," reports Time, and the magazine attributes the lack of obesity increase to national efforts to combat the problem, like fitness programs and healthy eating education. The CDC argues that more time and data collection is needed to truly prove that the obesity epidemic has halted in its tracks. Still, 32% is quite high, and an editorial published alongside the CDC study in the Journal of the American Medical Association points out, "Without substantial declines in prevalence, the public health toll of childhood obesity will continue to mount." [Time] More »
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Mere months after pundits bemoaned the Juno effect following the release of statistics showing that teen pregnancy was on the rise in 2005-6, the CDC released a slew of new statistics yesterday reporting that teen pregnancy rates are falling drastically. What gives? Well, the first set of statistics were just for the years 2005 and 2006, whereas the figures released yesterday were gathered from 1990-2004. In 2004, only 12% of total births were to teenagers; in 1990 the rate was 15%. As for the upswing in teen pregnancies after 2004, CDC researcher Stephanie Ventura says, "It's way too early to know if this is the start of a new trend, but given the long-term progress we've witnessed, this change is notable." More »
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Want your daughter to do better in school? Tell her to work out! The CDC reports that attendance in phys. ed. classes might be related to higher academic achievement for elementary-age school girls. (Oddly, no such correlation was found for boys.) But not all girls are lucky enough to even get the chance to take P.E. class: Amnesty International has released a new report that many girls in developing countries are skipping school, fearing abuse from teachers and other officials. Even in the U.S., 83% of girls have experienced sexual harassment of some kind while at school. Maybe a further argument for single-sex education? [USA Today; Guardian] More »
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A new release from the CDC reports that nearly a quarter of American women and 11.5% of American men have experienced some kind of intimate partner violence during their lifetimes. According to Reuters, the CDC defines "intimate partner violence" as "threatened, attempted or completed physical or sexual violence or emotional abuse by a spouse, former spouse, current or former boyfriend or girlfriend or a dating partner." Not only does the abuse cause immediate damage, but the CDC has found that victims of abuse are much more likely to suffer from other long-term health problems as a result of partner violence. To wit: Abused women are 80% more likely to have a stroke, 70% more prone to heart disease and arthritis, and 60% more asthmatic than the rest of the female population. Not to mention the mental repercussions: Reuters reports that abuse victims are "twice as likely to report that their activities are limited by physical, mental or emotional problems." More »
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A new study claims that there's a "recipe" that raises the odds of a teen becoming sexually active early — and the more ingredients (low self-esteem, not feeling close to parents, lots of TV), the more likely a teen is to have sexual relations by the age of 15. Janet Shibley Hyde, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-author Myeshia Price conducted a two-year study of 273 children and used anonymous surveys."By 15," they write, "one out of five boys had participated in oral sex and about one in 10 said they'd had intercourse; the numbers were somewhat lower for girls. (Because the teens were mostly middle class and white, they had lower rates of sexual experience than the U.S. average.)" More »
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The Centers For Disease Control today warned that gonorrhea is becoming dangerously resistant to Cipro, leaving sufferers with just a single class of injection-only antibiotics capable of curing it. More »
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