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 St. Luke’s Hospital and Health Network in Bethlehem, Penn., announced this week that as of May 1 it will only hire non-smokers, The Morning Call of Allentown reported.

The hospital is the second-largest employer in the region, with over 7,000 employees.

“While some may view this as a bold move, our organization feels strongly that promoting a healthier workplace benefits everyone,” said Bob Zimmel, Senior Vice President of Human Resources at St. Luke’s. St. Luke’s is the first business in the region to institute the no-smokers policy.

Starting May 1, applicants to St. Luke’s will be screened for nicotine, much like some employers screen for illegal drugs. Applicants who test positive for nicotine will be ineligible for employment until they can retest with a negative result and will receive information on getting help kicking the habit. Employees already working at St. Luke’s will not be affected by the policy.

Pennsylvania is one of 20 states in which no-nicotine hiring policies are legal.

Doug

CDIstaffing.com

Now that the health care overhaul is law, when will you start to see a difference? Some changes kick in immediately, but the rest trickle out over the next few years, with a few provisions not taking hold until the end of the decade. While you’re probably aware of some of the bill’s major changes, we’ve sorted through the nitty gritty details to help you start planning. Here’s a look at some of the key measures that you can — and should — prepare for in the coming months and beyond.

The study, published in the Nature Neuroscience journal, found that when rats consumed a lot of high-fat, high-calorie food, it led to compulsive eating habits – similar to a drug addiction, CNN reports.

Here’s how it works: Both drugs and these kinds of fatty foods send a rush to the pleasure centers in your brain.  However, the rush is short-lived and is followed by a “crash.”  It will now take more and more of the substance to achieve the same “high,”  Paul J. Kenny, Ph.D., an associate professor of molecular therapeutics at the Scripps Research Institute, told CNN.

“People know intuitively that there’s more to [overeating] than just will power,” he told CNN. “There’s a system in the brain that’s been turned on or over-activated, and that’s driving [overeating] at some subconscious level.”

A potential ban on the use of tanning beds by people under 18 was among the recommendations Thursday by U.S. health advisers who said more measures are needed to protect consumers — especially teens — from skin-cancer risks posed by the devices.

The panel of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration also recommended that the agency add bolder warning labels to tanning beds, change how they are regulated by the FDA, and require parental consent, the Associated Press reported.

“Given the absence of any demonstrated benefit, I think it’s an obligation for us to ban artificial tanning for those under 18,” said panelist Dr. Michael Olding.

Doug

CDIstaffing.com

According to a US study of 34,000 women, an hour a day of moderate exercise is needed to fight the flab.

Overweight women need to diet as well as exercise, a Harvard team reports in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Doug

CDIstaffing.com

The federal government is preparing a safety warning about baby slings — those infant carriers that parents can sling around their chests to carry their babies. The concern: Infants can suffocate, and at least a few have.

The head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Inez Tenenbaum, said Tuesday her agency would issue a general warning to the public, probably this week.

Kidney donors fare just as well as non-donors over the long term, according to a new study.

Researchers compared survival rates of kidney donors to healthy adults who were not kidney donors and found kidney donation did not affect long-term survival rates.

“Regardless of what physiologic changes might occur in a healthy adult after kidney donation, our findings of similar long-term survival between donors and healthy comparison patients suggest that these physiologic changes do not result in premature death,” write researcher Dorry L. Segev, MD, PhD, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and colleagues in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Although kidney donors face a higher risk of death in the 90 days immediately following surgery because of the risks inherent in major surgery, researchers say the findings confirm that the practice of live kidney donation should continue to be considered a reasonable and safe alternative to using deceased donor organs.

The use of live kidney donation has increased dramatically in recent years due to a major donor organ shortage in the US. An estimated 6,000 people undergo the surgery to remove one of their kidneys for donation each year.

The study followed more than 80,000 people who underwent kidney donation surgery between 1994 and 2009 and compared them to a matched group of 9,364 healthy participants in a nationwide health survey for an average of about six years.

The results showed there were 25 deaths within 90 days of live kidney donation surgery, with the risk of death being 3.1 per 10,000 donors compared to a death rate in the comparison group of 0.4 per 10,000 people during the same time period.

Doug

CDIstaffing.com

Basic Food Flavors Inc., the Las Vegas company at the center of a recall of more than 100 food products, continued to make and distribute food ingredients for about a month after it learned the bacteria salmonella was present at its processing facility, according to a Food and Drug Administration report.

The FDA last week recommended companies recall products, from chips to soups, that contain a commonly used additive made by Basic Food Flavors that tested positive for salmonella. The additive is mixed into foods to give them a meaty flavor.

FDA officials inspected Basic Food’s plant for about two weeks starting in mid-February and found the company didn’t adequately clean equipment and store foods to protect against the growth of contaminants such as salmonella, according to the inspection report.

The report comes as the number of products being recalled has expanded to over 100, including vegetable dips made by McCormick & Co. and honey mustard pretzels sold at CVS Caremark Corp. drug stores and Safeway Inc. grocery stores.

Doug

CDIstaffing.com

Medications can reduce the level of the AIDS virus in the blood to zero, but HIV doesn’t disappear and often roars back when patients stop taking their pills. Now, research is giving scientists new insight into how the virus manages to hide and avoid the killing powers of medicine.

In a new study, researchers report that the virus lurks in certain bone marrow cells and “reawakens” only under certain circumstances.

The research provides a new target for scientists, but it also presents new challenges because killing off bone marrow cells is a dicey proposition.

Overall, the findings provide “a better understanding of how HIV hides in the body” and could lead to better strategies to kill or control it, said study co-author Dr. Kathleen Collins, an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan.

Doctors have long known about the ability of HIV — the AIDS virus — to avoid being killed off completely by medications. Drugs may prevent the virus from infecting new cells, “but they don’t get rid of cells that contain the virus and have potential to make new viral particles,” Collins said.

This helps explain why HIV isn’t curable. The immune systems of patients may be able to control the virus for a time but later fall victim to a renewed attack and, ultimately, to AIDS.

“A patient cannot be cured of HIV until all sources of infection are eliminated,” said Jerome A. Zack, director of the UCLA Center for AIDS Research in Los Angeles.

Doug

CDIstaffing.com

- In the United States, colorectal cancer is the fourth most common cancer in men, after skin, prostate and lung cancer. It is also the fourth most common cancer in women, after skin, breast and lung cancer. It’s also the second leading cause of all cancer deaths.

The risk of colorectal cancer increases with age. Other risk factors include a high fat intake, a family history of colorectal cancer and polyps, the presence of polyps in the large intestine, and chronic ulcerative colitis.

The colon is the part of the digestive system where the waste material is stored. The rectum is the end of the colon next to the anus. Together, they form a long, muscular tube called the large intestine or bowel. Tumors of the colon and rectum are growths that start on the inner wall of the large intestine.

Doctors are certain that colorectal cancer is not contagious – a person cannot catch the disease from a cancer patient. Symptoms of colorectal cancer include fatigue, weakness, shortness of breath, change in bowel habits, narrow stools, diarrhea or constipation, red or dark blood in stool, weight loss, abdominal pain, cramps or bloating.

Doug

CDIstaffing.com