At 2 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 1, Daylight Savings time comes to an end. Set your clocks back one hour before turning in Saturday night and enjoy the extra hour of sleep.
But before you do, take a few minutes to check the smoke detectors in your home. (And if you don’t have any, shame on you! A trip to your local hardware store this weekend is a must.) If your detectors are battery operated, change the batteries even if they’re still working. And push that little test button to make sure the unit is functioning properly.
The U.S. Fire Administration says that more than 3,000 people die in house fires in the U.S. each year, and more than 16,000 are injured. Kids under age 5 are especially vulnerable. Protect your family, and you’ll enjoy that additional 60 minutes of shuteye even more on Sunday morning.
Women who are pregnant and have significant symptoms of depression could be at greater risk of complications from the flu, an Ohio State University study released yesterday suggests. Researchers had 22 pregnant women complete questionnaires about their depressive symptoms, then took blood samples after the women had received flu shots. They found the women with the most severe symptoms of depression had double the response to the vaccine as those who weren’t depressed.
A pair of studies out this week on keeping those extra pounds at bay offer some standard – and sometimes surprising – advice.
It’s 2 a.m., you’ve been coughing all night and you are pretty sure you’ve developed a fever. You don’t feel sick enough for a trip to the ER, you don’t have the energy to navigate your healthcare provider’s telephone triage voice mail loop, but you’d still like some advice.
While concern over the H1N1 pandemic flu floods the media, the vaccine supply is coming in at a relative trickle. Over the weekend, President Barack Obama declared the H1N1 pandemic a national emergency. And this morning Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made the rounds on network news programs to try and reassure the public that vaccine is on the way.
If your kids don’t like their vegetables, maybe it’s because they never learned to. That’s how Alan Greene, M.D., sees it anyway. “Taste preferences are not an accident,” explains the Stanford University professor and author – most recently of Feeding Baby Green 
It’s tough when you feel as if you’ve tried everything – and still no baby. I’ve talked with more than one couple about this during my years as a health writer, and heard their desperation as they search for reliable information and answers. To help light the way, I decided to run a few common fertility myths by Lisa Masterson, M.D. She’s an OB-GYN and fertility specialist on staff at Cedars Sinai and UCLA, and a co-host of the popular daytime television show 
Giving preventive doses of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, to dampen infants’ fever after immunizations could keep the body from producing a full immune response to the vaccines, a study from the Czech Republic found.
I’ll bet you parents remember Casper. He’s still around (he turns 60 this year!), but Halloween has changed a bit since your last trick-or-treat. Here are some updated safety rules from the Friendly Ghost himself (with help from an expert or two):
Think of this as the book report that became a book of its own. Eight-year-old Tessa Mae Hamermesh wanted to tell her second-grade class about her grandmother’s book I Can Do This: Living With Cancer, Tracing a Year of Hope. 
