Results tagged “health”

One Issaquah woman surely didn't get the injection's worth of wrinkle-free beauty that she bargained for, after discovering the Natural Beauty salon in Bellevue had used a fake Botox material on her face. The woman reported the salon to authorities after her face became inflamed, swollen and hard, and needed to be treated by a plastic surgeon. Sexy! Shortly thereafter, Feds busted into the Bellevue salon arresting three workers, including Xin "Faith" He, who administered the bogus injections without a license. The fake solution turned out to come from a non-FDA approved vial with Chinese characters. Now Faith could be looking at three years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

THE CHILDREN ARE OUR RALLY: Friends of Children’s Hospital, your friendly neighborhood Fearey Group-promoted advocacy group for Seattle Children's Hospital is taking it the steps of City Hall. The rally is to show support for Children's after Laurelhurst Community Club protested Children's proposed expansion and won the city hearing. Few moments in life offer the moral high ground of this rally, and it should be a great way to meet hot nurses and doctors. noon-1:30 p.m. // City Hall's west side steps, 600 4th Avenue // FREE

Turns out the King County Health Department might want to see those dead crows, because of West Nile Virus concerns. So report those dead birds, citizens! There's an online dead bird reporting form right there for your use.

Last year at this time, we were spouting off about KCTS running, for a fundraiser, Dr. Daniel G. Amen's "self-produced show, 'Change Your Brain, Change Your Life.'" Charitably, Amen's claims were not always fully supported by conventional medical wisdom, and we wondered at PBS being wiling to do real damage to its brand for the sake of gulling aging baby-boomers with promises of eternal middle age.

...try the bill for treatment for ingesting levamisole. Blog belltownpeople pointed us to the King Country Public Health Office notice that alerts the cocaine set that someone's been cutting their happy powder with an animal antibiotic (originally used as a de-wormer) that knocks out your immune system: "One individual needed extensive surgery, and another resulted in a hospitalization cost that exceeded $100,000." Paranoid but health-conscious drug users are warned to trust the government about this dangerous development, and be on the alert for cocaine that makes them feel like they're gonna die--but, you know, in a bad way--or if their worm infestation suddenly vanishes.

With a steady stream of information and misinformation about the current outbreak of swine flu swirling about, the UW Department of Global Health has put together a panel discussion, "Update on the Evolving Swine Influenza Outbreak," set for Monday, May 4, at 5:30 p.m. in Hogness (no kidding) Auditorium in the Health Sciences Building. Directions can be found here.

Public officials in the U.S. and around the world are issuing warnings about an ongoing outbreak of swine flu that has pandemic potential. Centered in Mexico, this outbreak has already spread to the United States and Canada. Forty cases have been reported in U.S. in New York, California, Texas, Kansas, and Ohio.

The drug-resistant infection MRSA--a potentially deadly "superbug"--had to face the bacteria-fighting Washington legislature on Monday, as they unanimously passed a bill requiring Washington hospitals to screen (via nasal swabs) for MRSA in high-risk patients. The MRSA bill now awaits Gov. Chris Gregoire's signature. If passed, hospitals would begin screening on January 1, 2010. Washington would become the fifth state to mandate MRSA nasal swabbing...err, testing.

CHOCOLATE ACADEMY: We're not sure if these credits transfer, but tonight is Theo Chocolate's CHOC 102 seminar--"Sinful and Good for You?" taught by instructor Dr. Andy McShea, Theo Chief Operating Officer and Head Scientist. He'll examine recent claims about chocolate’s antioxidant health benefits, while giving guidelines for healthy chocolate consumption. You'll see a vivid scientific demonstration of the chemical oxidation process and enjoy a tasting of foods high in antioxidants. To register call 206-632-5100 and dial option 2 to speak with a Theonista, or email info(at)theochocolate.com with the subject line "CHOCOLATE ACADEMY."

It seems like we're always bemoaning the lack of critical, patient-advocating mental health coverage locally, so we wanted to point out that Psychology Today has interviewed Seattle's Furious Seasons, and the result is a really illuminating summary of almost everything that investigative reporter Philip Dawdy has been up to the past few years, from critiques of the rates of bipolar and ADHD diagnosis in children, to uncovering pharmaceutical misdeeds ("the worst corporate behavior I have ever seen in my 15 years as a reporter") and the failure of FDA oversight and regulation.

Today lot of people who don't spend much time wondering what other people think about them would be feeling pretty proud if they did because the Washington state House and Senate have both adopted resolutions "honoring individuals with autism" (HB 4627, SB 8629).

The Seattle Times discusses how the planned Senate budget cuts "roll back much of the party's agenda." Publicola has four "angry press releases" on behalf of service workers, NARAL, low income housing, and childen's health. And Schmudget lays out the cuts in the areas of education and health, pointing out that some cuts are so deep, they effectively cut twice, by losing access to federal recovery funds.

...is not even a remotely true headline, but we can't resist a pop cultural allusion. However, if you rearrange the words a bit, suddenly the truth snaps into focus, like a section of sagittal tissue on a microscope slide: the Wired story is about the brain-mapping going on at Paul Allen's Brain Institute. Science writer Jonah Lehrer takes you on a tour of the facility, explaining the "brain atlas" concept that maps what we know about the brain, from "gene expression to a cellular level." Also, there are robots, working day and night on mouse brains. It's pretty ingenious, but for all our sakes, we hope they never get loose.

This is fascinating, and thanks to the Big Blog's Scott Sunde for bringing it up: UW researchers have discovered that people with autism have a more intense response to looking at faces than the average Joe. The more social impairment, in fact, the more intense the response to someone's face.

• Oh no! That horrible flu everyone seems to have been getting lately has hit the schools, KOMO reports.
• In the most unsurprising news item of the day, West Seattle Blog reports that a high school has been vandalized.
• Lake City finally got its day in the sun when the Stranger wrote about the neighborhood's effort to clean up and fight crime. Lake City Live has the details.

Eww...Somehow we haven't ever before considered the potentially toxic chemicals in such seemingly innocuous every-day items as baby bottles, but now we're eying all the plastic around us with new suspicion. The chemical in question today is bisphenol A, or BPA, which the state House just voted to ban from baby bottles, sippy cups and water bottles sold here. How timely--today, six of the largest manufacturers of baby bottles announced they're not even going to make BPA-contaminated products anymore, according to the Washington Post.

Happy Seattlest reader Tim sent us a note yesterday about the contrast on the covers of Seattle's glossies, Seattle Magazine and Seattle Metropolitan. The two get dinged for not being distinguishable, but this month at least they have their editorial sights set on vastly different horizons. Yet maybe we can see an underlying similarity still: Seattle Mag seems to be feeling anxious and looking for relaxation, while Seattle Met is dealing with anxiety by turning to a huge fucking cookie. Just out of curiosity, where's the Seattle glossy that gets anxious and fixates on sex? Or is that huge fucking cookie just a stand-in?

No, but seriously--this is good news. In February, all over Washington, dentists are offering free dental care to low-income children, including screenings, cleanings, X-rays and fillings (where possible), and referrals if things have gone further south than that. Because dental care is generally so expensive, it's the kind of thing that low-income parents have to skip when it comes to their kids' health. Washington Dentists Care (we know it might not seem like when they're coming at you with that drill, but they do) is sponsored by the WSDA, whom we applaud because your teeth have to last your whole life.

Here is a partial list of free care offered this month. Please call for an appointment:

Continue reading "Trust Us, You Don't Want Low-Income Gums, Kids"

The voter-approved Death With Dignity act, known as Initiative 1000 in November 's election, means that hospitals now have to figure out how to implement the new law--or if they want to offer the option at all. So far, Harborview and the UW Medical Center are the two major hospitals in Seattle who have decided to participate, meaning their physicians would provide the life-ending medication and would be present during the dose administration. It looks like many of the state's hospices will not be formally participating, but would still work with patients and their families who could obtain the prescription elsewhere before and after the act itself.

Over at the Slog, the ECB has interrupted the usual stream-of-pop-cultural-consciousness with some actual health news: "According to a new analysis, plastic products marketed for infants or labeled "microwave safe" (including those stamped with "safe" plastic numbers 1, 2, and 5) leached out potentially toxic levels of a chemical called bisphenol-A (BPA) when heated in a microwave." The worst offender was Enfamil baby formula, which is like a kick in the gut, as BPA is an endocrine disruptor and especially unsafe for kids. So you can go ahead and throw that shit out. And by "that shit," we mean of course the FDA.

The state has finally caught on to the truth, thanks to dogged and brave investigation from the Seattle Times: MRSA, a potentially fatal, antibiotic-resistant strain of staph scourging the nation's hospital patients and other sufferers at exponentially increasing rates, is a big deal and pretending it's either inevitable or non-existent won't make it go away. We're not sure why it took so damn long for this to become a rule, but the Times announces that it is at last now mandatory for Washington hospitals to report MRSA incidences.

According to the recently released "F as in Fat" report, almost 25% of Washington residents are obese. However, according to another recently released study, we are also the 12th healthiest state in the nation overall. Despite 24.5% of the state's population being considered obese, Washington is only the 32nd most obese state in the country. Surprising no one, Mississippi is the most overweight state in the country (can you say fried everything?) and Colorado is the trimmest. The dueling reports make us want to go for a jog, with a stop at Ezell's on the route home.

In the wake of a brutal tussle between car and bicycle last weekend, it's good that New Belgium Brewing's Tour de Fat, the "traveling celebration of all things bicycle," arrives in town on Saturday, opposite the carbon-spewing, combustion engine worship-fest that is Seafair, what with the supersonic jets and souped-up motorboats.

Last night we flipped on the tee-vee, and stumbled on a KCTS fundraiser: Dr. Daniel G. Amen in his self-produced show, "Change Your Brain, Change Your Life." If you missed it, you're in luck: it's showing fifteen more times locally.

We sent special Killer Bugs correspondent Roger van Oosten to Town Hall last night to catch Richard "Hot Zone" Preston's talk. Post-decontamination, here is his report.

Okay, the good news is, we didn't have sunstroke and don't have to hand in our secret, California-native Golden Bear flag lapel pin. Whew. The bad news is, there's a pretty contagious, extra-strength bug going around town. We don't see anything on the Department of Health website yet, so we must, as usual, be trendsetters.

Thank goodness for a Congressional committee looking into misleading pharmaceutical ads to detail the shady saga that is pseudo-jock Dr. Jarvik.

Riding the bus to work the other day, our heart skipped a beat when we noticed signs taped to the window heralding the arrival of new spring schedules (they're blue!). Once we'd calmed down, we realized how silly it is to get excited over the prospect of a slight change to our bus schedule. It was the kind of self-deprecating experience we figured would make a good lede for a post informing you, gentle reader, of the coming changes.