The Power of Gratitude to Cultivate Happiness

Neurodegenerative Disease and the Coming Epidemic

The New Placebo: Prescribing Positive Expectations with Real Drugs

Safety and Distribution of the H1N1 Influenza Vaccine
Know What to Do About the Flu is a webcast series launched by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to hlep distribute timely and accurate information about the flu. Their goal is to distribute the latest facts and medical guidances so we can all be more effective in combating the spread of the flu and be better prepared should our families, our communities or our workplaces become affected. In this edition, moderator Lark McCarthy discusses the level of testing prior to the H1N1 influenza A vaccine distribution and the subsequent monitoring that’s planned during and after the phases of distribution wit

Health Highlights – October 30th, 2009
Health Highlights is a biweekly summary of particularly interesting articles from credible sources of health and medical information that we follow & read. For a complete list of recommeded sources, see our links page. Journal of Participatory Medi

Details of Critically Ill Patients with H1N1 in Mexico and Canada
Two studies, which are available online as early release articles and will be published in the November edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), detail the characteristics, treatment and outcomes of critically ill patients with H1N1 in Mexico and Canada [1-2].

Book Review: The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness
Many people believe that the brain is hardwired in childhood and, as we grow older, cognitive decline is inevitable; we becoming more forgetful, less inclined to seek new experiences and more set in our ways. During the late 1990s, the work of early childhood advocates to focus on learning during the first three years of life had a dramatic impact public opinion and social policy that has lasted almost a decade. Indeed, the importance of learning during a child’s first three years of life was widely accepted as a fact of early neurological development. Unfortunately, advocacy efforts actually countered what neuroscientists were discovering about the brain and its development

Chromosome Telomeres and the Nobel Prize for Medicine
The 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was announced earlier this week. The prize was awarded to three U.S. scientists for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase. Two women, Elizabeth H. Blackburn, age 61, at the University of California in San Francisco, and Carol W. Greider, age 48, at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore along w