I have two health-related items to share with you today.
The first is about the sun. Yesterday was the Solstice — that’s the day with the most sunlight all year (in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway) — and many people are engaging in outdoor activities. Sunscreen is vitally important if you are going to be outside during daylight hours, and that advice applies to kids as well as adults. Unfortunately, not all sunscreens are created equal, and some “either fall short of their claims or contain unsafe ingredients….” So what is a sun-conscious consumer to do? We already read labels and look for protection against both UVA and UVB, we look at the active ingredients, yet the label may be wrong!
Luckily, there is a new website in town that has done the important work of figuring out what the labels actually mean, and what the products actually do. You can find their summary here.
The second item is about new reports showing that hormone treatments for menopausal women maybe aren’t as bad for you as was feared a few years ago, and there are new guidelines reflecting that thinking. One thing that I will point out that I suspect you will not see mentioned elsewhere is that what modern medicine calls “Hormone Replacement Therapy” or HRT is actually Hormone Substitution Therapy. If you want the super long with a hundred pages of footnotes version, you’ll want to read this book. The 60-second summary is that human hormones can’t be patented, so drug companies make synthetic hormones out of things like horse pee that they can patent, except it’s not quite as good for you. If there is an interest in some middle ground of additional info, leave a comment and I will reply with some web resources.
In closing: Larry Kudlow is not better than Ezra; by way of follow up, Hillary and the Left; an article connecting the dots between the USDA, big Agriculture, and our ever bigger butts; a petition from Candlelighters; new CAFE standards (which aren’t law until the President signs them so keep your fingers crossed) would require both cars and SUVs to get 35 MPG by… say they didn’t mention a year; it looks like Dick Cheney thinks he’s above the law, Congressman replies Are Not! (ok, he puts it nicer than that); results of the Schneier movie plot contest; who knew Sci-Fi Heaven was in Riverside, CA; and Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs is kind enough to give us the 50 best anime of all time.