[caption id="attachment_652" align="aligncenter" width="397" caption="People who live in the gray northerly areas are at relatively greater risk for vitamin D deficiency."][/caption] According to a 2009 study by Harvard and University of Colorado most of us do not have sufficient levels of vitamin D. The study was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine and cited: 70% of whites are vitamin D insufficient 90% of Hispanics are vitamin D insufficient 97% of blacks are vitamin D...

[This is an article by Kim Wilbur, operations manager for a local company. Kim's first entry can be read here - "Why Employee Drug Test? A True Story."] [caption id="attachment_646" align="alignright" width="150" caption=" "][/caption] As mentioned previously, I never thought about drug testing our employees. With such a small staff and no history of issues like the ones with Miss Perfect, it never crossed my mind. But after all of the time spent interviewing and training her, not to mention...

Of all the sports that have had doping or drug scandals in the past ten years, cycling is the one sport that seems unable to get over it. In the nineties, baseball taught us about creatine. A few years ago, Marion Jones taught us to remember that cheating in sports does have real consequences, as she headed off to jail after lying to federal agents about her steroid use. And today, top cyclist Alberto Contador reminds us that cycling just cannot shake its reputation as a doping-addled sport. At...

The DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) is ratcheting up their efforts against prescription drug abuse (see Yahoo News): We have reported on various aspects of the prescription drug problem before (see our blog entry on fraudulent prescriptions for example). The DEA's call for the voluntary removal of prescription medications that are no longer needed from folks' homes is not new, exactly - on a smaller scale, police departments have done this around the country. Last weekend marked a...

Although some may be tired of politics this time of year, we can't help but mention that Former President Bill Clinton was on Letterman last night, discussing among other things a non-political issue - heart health. The video below shows him talking about his heart problems and dietary efforts to combat heart disease. Amazingly, Former President Clinton has cut out all cholesterol from his diet. Did you know this was possible? Let's learn more about the diet that sources say was based on the...

Relaxing For Your Heart Health While there is still some ambiguity about the manner in which stress increases the risk factors for heart disease, the empirical data does indicate that stress and heart disease are correlated in some manner. It is sometimes hypothesized that stress does not lead to heart disease directly but it exposes the body continuously to the onslaught of hormones like adrenalin and cortisol. It also increases the frequency of unhealthy actions like smoking, becoming...