Random Wednesday - Did you know?

Cell Phones - Hazardous to Your Health?
[I found this article in Prevention (May 2011)]
Could your cell phone give you brain cancer? Now that we've been using them long enough to study their effects, it looks like they could. Apparently the tiny amount of electromagnetic radiation they produce affects your brain after prolonged exposure. What a surprise, another cancer causing, man-made device.
Suggestions to prevent damage:

• hold phone away from your head or better yet, text when you can
• save long conversations for the home phone
• stay off it when you're traveling long distances (reconnecting to other towers gives it a surge)

Here are a few interesting medical breakthroughs in the works [Consumer Reports (June 2011)]

• personalized prescriptions, down to the genes
• blood substitutes - real fake blood! to tide someone over until a good match can be made (that is awesome!)
• robot surgeons, without a doc at the controls! (are we getting closer to AI here?)

And here is the skinny on popular diets [Consumer Reports (June 2011)] (Sorry about the pun!)

1. Jenny Craig - excellent ratings in all categories, support is key
2. Slim-Fast - good and excellent ratings, but without support the dropout rate is not good
3. Weight Watchers - much food high in sodium and weight loss is average
4. the Zone - nutrition is ok, weight loss is marginal
5. Atkins - poor for nutrition but good for weight loss, more for short term

I hate diets! The only way I have ever lost weight was writing down what I ate in a modified Atkins diet. I counted carbs, but fruits and veggies were "free." Now I try to treadmill or walk each night and cut down on the snacks. I'm not trying very hard, maintaining is fine for now.