Health

Most people can count calories. Many have a clue about where fat lurks in their diets. However, fewer give carbohydrates much thought, or know why they should. But a growing number of top nutritional scientists blame excessive carbohydrates ? not fat ? for America's ills. They say cutting carbohydrates is the key to reversing obesity, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and hypertension. "Fat is not the problem," says Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Men, it's your health and happiness or hers. Women, it's your health and happiness or his. At the end of the day, if there's housework to be done (and there's always housework to be done) and you’re both employed (as almost 52% of married couples with children younger than 6 are), there's only one winner. Grim, yes. But that is the finding of a study published recently in the Journal of Family Psychology , and conducted by researchers from the University of Southern California.

Whenever I hear about some amazing way to boost resting metabolism, my male-bovine-droppings detector goes berserk. Take the perennially popular one stating that 1 pound of muscle burns an extra 50 calories a day while at rest — so if you gain 10 pounds of muscle, your resting metabolic rate (RMR) soars by an extra 500 calories each day. Awesome! And also drivel. I'm more likely to believe bears use Porta-Potties and the pope is a Wiccan. Though its origins are uncertain, any number of fitness magazines have made the "50 calories per pound of muscle" statement.

Artist Katherine Sherwood was just 44 when a hemorrhage in her brain's left hemisphere paralyzed the right side of her body — forever changing her artwork. Before the stroke in 1997, her mixed-media paintings featured strange and cryptic images: medieval seals, transvestites, bingo cards. Reviewers called her work cerebral and deliberate. Creativity, says the UC Berkeley professor, was an intellectual and often angst-filled struggle. After the stroke, she could no longer paint on canvases mounted vertically, so she laid them flat, moving around them in a chair with wheels.

When Catherine Middleton walked down the aisle of Westminster Abbey on Friday — a willowy vision in white — she appeared noticeably thinner than she had in previous months. Her weight loss sparked rumors that she was on the Dukan diet — what appears to be a French spin on the high-protein Atkins diet — after Middleton's mother, Carole, acknowledged using the plan to shed pre-wedding pounds. Suddenly, the diet that sold 4 million copies in France was making headlines in the States, with its promise of instant weight loss without hunger, portion control or counting calories.

"Oh, you mean the guy with the 70-year-old head and the 20-year-old body-builder body? That picture has got to be Photoshopped." Dr. Jeffry Life smiles when I tell him about the general reaction I get about the famous picture of him with his shirt off, the shot that turned a mild-mannered doctor in his mid-60s into a poster boy for super-fit aging and controversial hormone replacement Appearing in medical-clinic ads in airline magazines and...

If you live in Los Angeles or other fashion-forward places where people are eager to try new things, you have seen them: people running around in shoes that look like gorilla feet, modern ninja footwear or high-tech surf booties. They are the newest twist on the oldest walking technology on Earth: feet. With major shoe companies releasing a slew of these so-called barefoot shoes onto the market this spring, what began as a small movement among hard-core runners is edging into the mainstream.

Times are tough enough for Californians; they're even tougher for Californians' teeth. "One-quarter of all adults and 28% of children in California have untreated dental caries [cavities]," says Len Finocchio, a senior program officer at the California Healthcare Foundation, a health advocacy group. "Our research tells us that many people in California have been avoiding routine care that might have cost about $100 for a checkup and cleaning, and then find themselves in the emergency room, where they get only an antibiotic, a bill that can average over $600 and instructions to see a dentist."

A federal appeals court Tuesday lambasted the Department of Veterans Affairs for failing to care for those suffering post-traumatic stress disorder and ordered a major overhaul of the behemoth agency. Treatment delays for PTSD and other combat-related mental illnesses are so "egregious" that they violate veterans' constitutional rights and contribute to the despair behind many of the 6,500 suicides among veterans each year, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said in its 2-1 ruling.

Southern California, long the epicenter for customizing cars and motorcycles, is now also the go-to place for made-to-order food trucks. The food truck craze has revived one of the region's classic postwar businesses — catering trucks — breathing new life into the companies that sprang up decades ago to make the vehicles that frequent construction sites, factories and movie shoots. Hopeful gourmet truck entrepreneurs come from all over the country to get retired vehicles transformed into gleaming, rolling emporiums that dish out everything from comfort food to exotic fare.

Smart phones have already supplemented the doctor’s office and personal computers as sources of health advice — and now it appears car companies are driving into the on-the-go consumer health market. Ford is developing a way to display pollen counts and other allergen levels to drivers using its existing link to smart phone apps, the car company announced Wednesday. Ford has also made a prototype to synchronize glucose monitoring devices via Bluetooth. The car displays glucose levels and sounds an alert if they fall too low. A statement from Ford explains how this technology can help diabetics and allergy sufferers: “For people with diabetes and their caregivers, constant knowledge and control of glucose levels is critical to avoiding hypoglycemia or low glucose, which can cause confusion, lightheadedness, blurry vision and a host of other symptoms that could be dangerous while driving.

In what is being hailed as the biggest breakthrough since the 1960s in treatment for latent tuberculosis — noninfectious TB without symptoms — researchers said Monday that weekly doses of a cocktail of antibiotics can cure the infection in only three months as effectively as the standard treatment of daily drugs for nine months. By reducing the number of pills and shortening the time required for therapy, the new regimen increased the proportion of patients who completed treatment from 69% to 82%. By increasing the success rate of therapy, the regimen should reduce spread of the disease and the risk of inducing resistance to TB drugs, experts said.

Glendale and Burbank officials are touting their new "smart meters" project as an exciting technological advancement that will help the utilities and customers track real-time water and electrical use. But a small group of residents is resisting, saying they're worried about the health effects of the radio waves emitted by the meters. They also say the utilities' ability to view electricity and water usage as it occurs is intrusive and could change the rate structure. When a contractor arrived to install a smart meter at Erik Bottema's residence, the technician was ordered off his property.

A new state department would be formed to manage California's violence-plagued mental hospitals under a proposal in the governor's Monday budget revision. The push to create a Department of State Hospitals — and eventually do away with the Department of Mental Health, which now oversees the facilities — comes as lawmakers and employee unions press for changes to address increasing patient assaults on fellow patients and staff. The budget document, known as the May revise, also includes $9.5 million for security teams at three of the facilities and an alarm system at Napa State Hospital, where a psychiatric technician was strangled in October.

Television crime shows have helped popularize autopsies, but in reality these postmortem exams are becoming rarer every year. Today, hospitals perform autopsies on only about 5 percent of patients who die, down from roughly 50 percent in the 1960s. That's unfortunate, say experts, because details about the cause of death can be illuminating for both families and hospitals, even if they don't turn up an undiagnosed ailment or other new information about the cause of death. Kristine Johnson's father, Nathan Johnson, developed early-onset Alzheimer's disease and died last August, five years after having received that diagnosis at age 52. He worked as a lineman for a power company near the family home in Waterford, Conn., and had on occasion been injured by powerful jolts of electricity, says Kristine, who is 36. She hoped that an autopsy would provide some answers, possibly related to injuries he sustained on the job, about why he developed Alzheimer's at such an early age. (Most people who develop Alzheimer's do so after age 65; only about 5 percent of cases are early-onset.)

Whenever I hear about some amazing way to boost resting metabolism, my male-bovine-droppings detector goes berserk. Take the perennially popular one stating that 1 pound of muscle burns an extra 50 calories a day while at rest — so if you gain 10 pounds of muscle, your resting metabolic rate (RMR) soars by an extra 500 calories each day. Awesome! And also drivel. I'm more likely to believe bears use Porta-Potties and the pope is a Wiccan. Though its origins are uncertain, any number of fitness magazines have made the "50 calories per pound of muscle" statement.

Many patients receive repeat colonoscopies more quickly than are recommended by screening guidelines, increasing the risk that they will have rare, but significant, adverse outcomes from the tests, researchers reported this week. In a separate study, another group of researchers showed that many elderly who are sick or debilitated from other illnesses receive colonoscopies despite the fact that the procedures are probably not beneficial and may cause problems. Colonoscopies involve inserting a telescope-like instrument through the rectum to examine the interior of the small and large bowels so that doctors can look for polyps that are a precursor of colorectal cancer.

Fifteen years ago, Dr. Lawrence H. Diller, a pediatrician from Walnut Creek, ignited a national debate over the steep rise in children being diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and treated with stimulant medication. Diller's 1996 book, "Running on Ritalin," suggested that ADHD was being over-diagnosed, and that Ritalin, and the many formulations of amphetamine-like drugs that would follow, was being prescribed in many cases to children who would respond well to family therapy and tailored programs and routines at home and at school.

"Donor Unknown" Met Film and Redbird Tribeca Film Festival, April 23 premiere The premise In this documentary, JoEllen Marsh is a 20-year-old woman who has never met her father. For most of her life, he was known only as sperm donor 150 from the California Cryobank, a large sperm bank based in Los Angeles. Marsh turns to a website called the Donor Sibling Registry and eventually discovers she has more than a dozen half-siblings with the same anonymous father.

Props like this Pilates ring can help spice up your workout by challenging muscles in new ways. To add intensity to your obliques (side abdominal muscles) and adductors (inner thigh muscles), try this new move. Sit upright on a mat or a padded, level surface with your feet flat on the floor, hip-width apart, and your knees bent. Place a Pilates ring between your thighs, just above your knees, and gently squeeze the ring with your inner thigh muscles. On an exhalation, contract your abdominals, bringing your navel to the spine, and lean back slightly.