3 Small Appliances Worthy of Your Counter Space

Forget one-job wonders:  These countertop appliances give you multiple ways to whip up healthy food.

Electrolux Masterpiece Collection Blender

Photo: Will Styer

High-speed blenders are now a must-have; nearly half of Europe’s Michelin-starred restaurants use ones from Electrolux. This new, relatively quiet machine offers four blending and three speed options plus a power-burst button, along with six titanium blades (stronger than stainless steel). Both the jar and blades have a unique, five-degree tilt, helping gravity pull in ingredients and giving a more consistent blend. ($349; electroluxappliances.com)

Cuisinart Prep 9 9-Cup Food Processor 

Photo: Will Styer

There may be fancier machines on the market, but this model gets high marks from pros and consumers. It features the brand’s signature extra-large feed tube, which means minimal pre-chopping. It comes with three blades—for slicing, shredding, and chopping and mixing—and works with other Cuisinart specialty blades. The powerful motor has a 10-year warranty, longer than most at this price level. ($140; amazon.com)

Hamilton Beach Easy Reach Convection Oven 

Photo: Will Styer

Not your mama’s toaster oven! This workhorse can bake a 12-inch pizza (or toast six slices of bread) and has a convection setting; other models with both features cost two to three times as much. The smart roll-top door takes up hardly any space and makes it easier to remove food, so there’s less mess. Set it at 150°F to keep food warm, or up to 450°F to bake or broil. ($60; amazon.com)

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Study Links Flu Vaccine to Short-Term Drop in Stroke Risk

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Oct. 15, 2015 (HealthDay News) — With flu season underway, many people will choose to be vaccinated, in the hopes of warding off a debilitating bout of fever, sneezes, coughs and aches.

But a new British study suggests they may end up getting a bonus protection they hadn’t even considered: a drop in their short-term risk for stroke.

According to a team of scientists from the University of Lincoln, the flu shot seems associated with a reduced risk for stroke by about one-fifth over two months. However, the study did not prove that the flu vaccine causes a drop in stroke risk.

Exactly why there seems to be an association between the two remains unclear.

Study co-author Niro Siriwardena said that evidence of the flu vaccine’s impact on stroke risk does not come as a complete surprise, since earlier research has shown a similar link.

“The main surprise about the finding,” he said, “is that the flu vaccination is given every year to prevent respiratory complications of flu like pneumonia, rather than to prevent stroke.”

Siriwardena, a professor of primary and pre-hospital health care with the Community and Health Research Unit at the University of Lincoln, and his team reported the finding recently in the journal Vaccine.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates the number of flu-related deaths at between 3,000 and 49,000 each year. An estimated 80 percent to 90 percent of those occur among people 65 and older.

To explore the possible association between the flu vaccine and stroke risk, the investigators pored over the health records of nearly 18,000 adult patients in the United Kingdom who had experienced a stroke sometime between 2001 and 2009.

All the patients had received a flu vaccine. But because the vaccine has a maximum effectiveness of just six months, the study team was able to compare the number of strokes occurring within the 180 days following inoculation to the number of strokes that occurred after 180 days.

The team observed an immediate 55 percent plunge in stroke risk over the first three days following vaccination. And though stroke risk rose gradually over the following days, it remained 36 percent lower between days four and seven; 30 percent lower between days eight and 14; 24 percent lower between days 15 and 28, and 17 percent lower between days 29 and 59.

What’s more, patients who were vaccinated relatively early in the flu season — between Sept. 1 and Nov. 15 — garnered the most benefit in terms of stroke risk reduction, the researchers said.

The upshot: Those for whom the flu shot is recommended should get it, and get it sooner rather than later. Since a move toward “universal vaccination” in 2010, that basically means all Americans over the age of 6 months are recommended to get the shot.

Siriwardena noted that it remains to be seen whether the benefit of the flu vaccine might be lesser or greater, depending on a patient’s particular risk profile for stroke.

Dr. Gregg Fonarow, a professor of cardiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that “while those at higher risk for stroke may derive the greatest benefit in terms of stroke risk reduction, given the devastating impact that strokes can have, even modest reductions in stroke risk [are] worthwhile.”

More information

There’s more on the flu and the flu vaccine at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Antibiotic Resistance Could Threaten Surgery, Chemo Patients

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Oct. 15, 2015 (HealthDay News) — More people will die from common surgical procedures and cancer treatments if dangerous bacteria continue to develop resistance to widely used antibiotics, a new study warns.

Patients rely on antibiotics to protect them from potentially deadly infections after undergoing chemotherapy, pacemaker implantation, cesarean sections or countless other medical procedures, said study senior author Ramanan Laxminarayan. He is director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy, a public health research organization in Washington, D.C.

The new study, published Oct. 15 in The Lancet, estimates that as many as half of infections after surgery and more than a quarter of infections after chemotherapy are caused by organisms already resistant to standard antibiotics.

If antibiotic resistance increases by just 30 percent in the United States, the tougher-to-treat bacteria could cause 6,300 more deaths a year and 120,000 more infections in patients undergoing either chemotherapy for cancer or 10 common surgical procedures, the researchers projected.

“Anytime you’re going to need a surgery or a transplant, you’re going to need effective antibiotics. It’s something that affects all of us,” Laxminarayan said.

Concern over antibiotic-resistant bacteria is growing. Earlier this year, the Obama administration released a national action plan to combat antibiotic resistance.

Also, the “superbug” MRSA was in the headlines this week after causing a serious infection in the ankle of New York Giants tight end Daniel Fells, prompting speculation the NFL player might need a foot amputation.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that at least 2 million people a year become infected by antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and at least 23,000 die from these infections.

But most of these worries focus on the ability to treat existing bacterial infections, and ignore the widespread use of antibiotics to prevent infections after surgery or chemotherapy, said Dr. Joshua Wolf, an assistant member of the infectious diseases department at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.

“We know that kids with cancer have extremely high risk of bacterial infection that can be life-threatening. If resistance rates rise, those antibiotics will become less effective,” said Wolf, who wrote an accompanying editorial in the journal. “Surgery will become less safe, and cancer treatment will become more difficult.”

To estimate the hazard posed to modern medicine by antibiotic resistance, the researchers reviewed hundreds of clinical trials between 1968 and 2011 that examined the effectiveness of antibiotics in preventing infection after chemotherapy or 10 common surgical procedures.

Those procedures included hip fracture surgery, pacemaker implantation, surgical abortion, spinal surgery, hip replacement, C-section delivery, prostate biopsy, appendectomy, hysterectomy and colon surgery.

Based on their review, the researchers estimate that between 39 percent and 51 percent of surgical site infections and 27 percent of post-chemotherapy infections are caused by bacteria already somewhat resistant to antibiotics.

Using a computer model, the study authors were able to show that with a 10 percent increase in antibiotic resistance, there would be at least 2,100 more infection-related deaths a year and 40,000 more infections following surgery or chemo.

A 70 percent increase in resistance would lead to an additional 15,000 deaths annually and 280,000 infections, they said.

“It’s a large enough number that it should be of concern,” Laxminarayan said.

He added that the number would be even higher if the estimate included all procedures that require antibiotics, which range from simple root canals to organ transplants.

“Antibiotics are the one medication that everyone will get at some point in their life,” Laxminarayan said.

The development of new antibiotics will not help if effective antibiotic controls are not in place, Wolf said.

“Our experience has been that when we introduce a new antibiotic, we see resistance develop fairly quickly,” he said.

Doctors and hospitals can help by limiting use of antibiotics to cases that truly need them, said Dr. Henry Chambers, chief of infectious diseases at San Francisco General Hospital.

Also, Chambers would like to see tough mandatory controls put in place. Currently, he said, “in hospitals, pretty much anybody can order an antibiotic.”

Consumers can play a role, too, Wolf added.

“They can say no to antibiotics for coughs and colds. They can ask for an antibiotic alternative, if it’s available. And they can ask for meat that’s antibiotic-free,” Wolf said.

More information

For more on antibiotic resistance, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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7 Moms Look Back on Their Infertility Struggles

Photo: Getty Images

Earlier this week, Chrissy Teigen announced on Instagram that she and husband, John Legend, are expecting their first child. (Yipee!) The announcement was extra special given that it came very soon after Teigen spoke out about her struggle with infertility, which she said spanned years.

 

“John and I are so happy to announce that we are pregnant,” she wrote in the photo’s caption. “As many of you know, we’ve been trying to have a baby for a while now. It hasn’t been easy, but we kept trying because we can’t wait to bring our first child into the world and grow our family. We’re so excited that it’s finally happening.”

I mean, how could you not be happy for these two?

Teigen, who has been applauded for sharing her story and raising awareness, is of course not the only woman to deal with the long road of infertility. In fact, the latest numbers from The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that more than 7 million American women have sought treatment for it.

We asked several women who’ve been through the entire process to share their stories, what they took away from the experience, and what they wish others understood about infertility. Here’s what they had to say.

RELATED: What Pregnancy Does to Your Health

“He was totally worth the wait.” — Jen Matz, 33, medical editor

After struggling to get pregnant for close to two years, Matz will never forget the moment she first held her now 3-year-old son.

“The moment my son was born was hands down the best moment of my life. I cannot properly describe what I felt in that moment because it was so surreal. The goal was never ovulation, a positive pregnancy test, a beating heart on an ultrasound, or reaching full-term. The goal was this moment: when a perfect, crying baby was placed on my chest. My baby.”

“I knew my pregnancy journey would not be like most women’s.”— Leslie Goldman, 39, women’s health writer

Goldman, whose first daughter was conceived via in vitro fertilization (IVF) after two years of trying, was of course happy to hear the news that she was pregnant—but one thing that surprised her was that the stress didn’t necessarily get better once it actually happened.

“I was certain the worrying and pain of infertility would vanish—Poof!—the moment we got our positive result. [But] my concerns simply shifted from ‘Will I ever get pregnant?’ to “Will this pregnancy last?'”

“At the risk of sounding like a crazy person,” she continues, “I managed to convince myself in my first trimester that I had doomed our pregnancy by, in no particular order, eating blue cheese, skipping with my toddler niece, inhaling nail polish remover, and having a sex dream about Shaquille O’Neal that resulted in an orgasm.”

“I got strangely more protective of my family.” — Julia Warrender, 40, freelance writer and community manager

Though she got pregnant with her first child, a daughter, with no problem, Warrender and her husband struggled with secondary infertility, which is a difficulty to conceive or carry a pregnancy to full term after a first or second child.

After struggling for a year, the couple saw their doctor for help, and before long she found out she was pregnant with twins. But this awesome news was shortly followed by a devastating loss—one of the babies didn’t make it.

Warrender says that shock changed her perspective forever, for better or worse. “The joy finally came, but the fear lingered on. It still does. Even though I know it to be completely irrational, deep down I feel like our son who came from fertility treatments is somehow more fragile than his sister. It makes no sense, especially because he’s 2.5 and strong as an ox, but it’s there,” she explains.

RELATED: Trying to Get Pregnant? 10 Proven Sperm Killers

“People who knew about my struggle put a lot of pressure on by expecting me to be thrilled all the time.” —Nikki Baker, 42, administrative assistant

After trying for a year to conceive on their own, both Baker and her husband were diagnosed with non-specific infertility, which doctors explained meant that there was no apparent medical problem.

The couple sought help from a fertility specialist and were able to get pregnant, only to lose the pregnancy at 12 weeks. Then, just six weeks later, Baker conceived naturally. She was incredibly grateful, but she wished friends and family understood she needed to vent, just like every other pregnant woman.

“When puking my brains out I was not allowed to say, ‘Wow pregnancy kinda sucks!’ like all other pregnant women get to because the response was ‘Well, at least you’re pregnant now.’ I was thrilled to be pregnant, but felt that was the only emotion I was permitted by others to share.”

“We were pretty tired after 3 years of charting, timed lovemaking, doctors, heartbreak.”—Susan Simkin, 51, psychologist

Teigen shared that the constant questions about when she and John were going to have children was one of the hardest parts of her struggle. Simkin told us that sadly, the invasive questions don’t stop after one baby.

“People have finally stopped asking why I don’t have more children, [and] that is the other thing that stabs at the heart of women/couples facing infertility,” she explains. “My husband and I would have loved to have more children, but we also felt strongly that we were not going to mortgage her college fund to give her a sibling.”

“I was proud of my body” — Jillian Farrow, 33, Master’s student

Before Farrow finally got pregnant, she and her husband had been through multiple failed treatments and were running out of money. But just as they were about to give up (and go broke), the final treatment worked. Nine months later she delivered a beautiful and healthy daughter. The one emotion she remembers most? Pride.

“[My body] had failed me for so many years, it had betrayed me over and over by not performing such a basic function. Then I saw her. We did it—my body and I delivered a perfect baby girl.”

RELATED: 10 Ways to Boost Your Odds of Getting Pregnant

“In retrospect, I wish I had gotten to know more couples going through what we did.”— Alecia Ramsay, 40, program manager for IBM

After trying for three years, Ramsay gave birth to healthy boy, who’s now a happy, athletic 10-year-old. Today, she finds comfort in sharing her infertility story—and wishes she’d done it sooner.

“No one from the outside would dream that we went through infertility and had to do IVF and ICSI [a procedure in which during IVF, sperm is injected directly into the egg] to get pregnant before I turned 30. In fact, even though we went through all of this, we were still one of the younger couples in our birth class group … My husband felt more like it didn’t really matter anymore how we got pregnant, but I found that sometimes I really wanted to talk about it,” she said.  “I’m usually rewarded when I do share our story, though, because often the other person shares a story of their own struggle or the struggle of someone close to them.”

“Two summers ago our clinic had a picnic at our local zoo and invited all the families they’d helped to have babies. It was amazing to see all the children who’d been created through their parents’ dedication, medical science, and great doctors and nurses. We could barely fit into a giant group photo!”

RELATED: 15 Factors That Affect a Woman’s Fertility

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Hospital Care for Nonfatal Gun Wounds Costs $679 Million a Year

THURSDAY, Oct. 15, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Hospitalization costs for nonfatal gunshot wounds in the United States totaled $9 billion between 1998 and 2011, a new study reveals.

That’s $679 million a year just for inpatient care, the researchers said. Not included were doctor fees, lost productivity, expenses borne by families and society, or fees for gunshot victims who do not go to a hospital, according to the report published in a recent issue of Family Medicine and Community Health.

“While most of the media and public focus has understandably been on fatalities, less attention has thus far been paid to the economic burdens and costs to the health care system associated with nonfatal firearm-related injuries,” researchers led by Jason Salemi, of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said in a journal news release.

Their analysis of trends, prevalence and health care costs associated with gunshot injury-related hospitalizations also found the following:

• The average hospital stay for a gunshot wound victim was nearly seven days at an average cost of $22,000.
• About 60 percent of gunshot injuries occurred during assaults, 23 percent were accidental, 8 percent were self-inflicted and 2 percent were associated with police.
• Accidental injuries were particularly common among children younger than 14 (nearly 50 percent), whites (34 percent) and people in rural areas (48 percent).
• Handguns caused more than three-quarters of the injuries, shotguns accounted for nearly 18 percent and hunting rifles more than 5 percent.
• Twice as many gunshot injuries occurred in cities as in rural areas, and the highest risk of hospitalization for a gunshot wound was in the West.
• Gunshot injuries were most common among older teens and young adults aged 18 to 24, poor people, and black and Hispanic males in cities.

Each year, tens of thousands of Americans are killed or injured by guns. In 2013 alone, more than 32,000 people were killed by guns. In 2009, there were an estimated 310 million guns in the United States — not including military-owned weapons — which works out to more than one gun for every citizen, according to the researchers.

More information

The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence offers gun violence statistics.

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FDA Warns of Hazards From Imported Supplements

THURSDAY, Oct. 15, 2015 (HealthDay News) — You may be putting your health at risk if you use imported products such as dietary supplements or nonprescription drugs that are sold at ethnic or international stores, flea markets, swap meets or online.

So says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in a warning issued Thursday.

Health product scammers often focus their marketing on people who shop at nontraditional locations. They also target consumers with limited English language skills and poor access to health care services, according to Cariny Nunez, a public health adviser in the FDA’s Office of Minority Health.

“These scammers know that ethnic groups who may not speak or read English well, or who hold certain cultural beliefs, can be easy targets,” she said in an FDA news release.

Many health product scammers also include the word “natural” on their products because they know it appeals to certain groups of people. But, that doesn’t mean such products are safe or don’t contain hidden drug ingredients, Gary Coody, national health fraud coordinator for the FDA, said in the news release.

These products may also be contaminated or contain potentially harmful chemicals, the FDA said.

Fraudulent health products are often advertised in ethnic publications and stores, flea markets and swap meets, radio and TV infomercials, and online. They can claim to be from specific countries or regions, such as Latin America or Asia, the FDA noted.

“It’s not surprising that people are more comfortable with familiar products that claim to come from their home country or are labeled and marketed in the consumer’s native language, whether they buy them at a U.S. market or get them from friends and family who have brought them from home,” Nunez said.

In other cases, products that claim to be made in the United States (to reassure consumers) aren’t actually made here, the FDA reported.

Under current law, companies that make dietary supplements don’t need FDA approval before selling their products to Americans.

“Remember, dietary supplements are not drugs,” Coody said. “They are not substitutes for the drugs your health care professional prescribes. And you should let your health care professional know what supplements you are taking, because they may interact in a harmful way with prescribed medications or keep a prescribed drug from working.”

There are a number of ways to reduce your risk from fraudulent health products, the FDA said. Be wary of any product that claims to cure a wide range of diseases, or those that make astounding claims such as “lose 30 pounds in 30 days” or “eliminates skin cancer in days.”

The FDA cautioned that products touted as a miracle cure are likely fake. Any real cure for a serious disease would be in the news and prescribed by doctors.

Don’t believe personal testimonials in ads — which are easy to make up — and don’t trust “all natural” claims. The FDA has discovered that some of these products contain hidden and dangerously high doses of prescription drug ingredients.

Dietary supplements that claim to be FDA-approved are misleading. Such products do not receive FDA approval, the agency explained.

Always check with your doctor or other health care professional before you buy an unproven product or one with questionable claims, and check the FDA’s website to see if the agency has taken action on it.

More information

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has more on the latest consumer updates.

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Enterovirus D68 No Deadlier for Kids Than the Common Cold: Study

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Oct. 15, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Enterovirus D68 made headlines in 2014 when it sickened scores of kids across North America, but a new study says the aggressive virus proved no more deadly than other common cold germs.

The virus was more aggressive, spreading quickly and causing understandable alarm, said Dr. Dominik Mertz, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of infectious diseases at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.

Children who came down with enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) also were more likely to have serious difficulty breathing, compared to kids who caught other viruses, Mertz and his colleagues found.

But children with EV-D68 didn’t have a greater risk of death than kids with other viral infections, the researchers found. Youngsters with the virus were also not significantly more likely to need admission to an intensive care unit (ICU), the study authors reported.

“They came in sicker, but the disease didn’t progress to a critical level more frequently than with other strains,” Mertz said. “In hindsight, looking at our data, we would say that this virus seemed slightly more aggressive, but the fact is we see kids with rhinoviruses and enteroviruses needing hospitalization and needing ICU [intensive-care unit] admission every year.”

The findings were published Oct. 13 in the CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

The common cold is caused by rhinoviruses, and enteroviruses also cause mild cold symptoms in most infected people, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Researchers first identified EV-D68 in 1962, but last year was the first major outbreak of the virus. Most kids were vulnerable to the bug because their immune systems had never been exposed to it, so they never had a chance to develop immunity against the bug, Mertz said.

The first cases of the virus began appearing in mid-August, and the outbreak lasted through October, according to the study authors and the CDC.

The CDC documented about 1,150 cases, nearly all in children. However, the agency estimates there were likely millions of mild EV-D68 infections for which people didn’t seek medical care.

To test whether kids with EV-D68 were worse off than kids with other viruses, Mertz and his colleagues compared 87 kids treated for EV-D68 at McMaster Children’s Hospital with 87 kids who caught a rhinovirus or some other enterovirus at the same time.

Kids with EV-D68 were three times more likely to suffer from shortness of breath or labored breathing than the youngsters with other viral illnesses, the researchers found. Kids with EV-D68 were also more likely to be admitted to the hospital for treatment, the study said.

Children admitted to the hospital with EV-D68 were more likely to have a family history of allergies or asthma, the study found.

“It’s probably an interaction between the fact that if you have allergies, you have less resources when you have an infection and your airways get tighter much faster,” Mertz said. “That’s the usual explanation we have why asthmatic kids are more likely to end up in hospital if they get a respiratory infection.”

But EV-D68 patients were not admitted to pediatric ICUs more frequently than other sick kids. And, they didn’t have a higher death rate, the researchers concluded.

The CDC documented 12 deaths related to EV-D68. That means the virus has an estimated death rate of 1 percent, the study authors said.

“When EV-D68 was capturing news headlines a year ago, there was a lot of doom and gloom,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior associate at the Center for Health Security at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “This study shows that when you drill down and look at the data more closely, this was not a more deadly strain of enterovirus than others.”

Around the same time of the EV-D68 outbreak, about 120 children in 34 states developed muscle weakness or paralysis, according to the CDC. Experts suspected these cases were linked to EV-D68 at the time because polio — an infectious disease that can cause paralysis — is also an enterovirus.

However, the CDC said it still doesn’t know what caused the recent paralysis cases. And, none of the children in Mertz’s study developed paralysis or muscle weakness.

The CDC noted that about two-thirds of the children who suffered paralysis or muscle weakness have reported some improvement in their symptoms. Only two have fully recovered, the CDC said.

More information

For more about enterovirus D68, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Here Are the 5 New Lipsticks You Need in Your Beauty Arsenal

Do you have a drawer full of lipsticks you tried on once and never wore again? You’re not alone. That’s why we tested the latest lipsticks, balms, and glosses to determine the best formulas to keep lips soft and color-fade free.

You want: High shine, and no stickiness

Photo: Sephora

Try:  A tinted lip oil. Color-infused and made with essential oils like jojoba, it leaves lips glassy, not tacky.

We Like:  Sephora Collection Oil Infusion Color & Care ($14; sephora.com).

RELATED: 5 Ways to Make Lipstick Last

You want: A long-wear tint that’s not drying

Photo: Amazon

Try: A liquid lipstick. The super-saturated fluid looks wet when applied—almost like a gloss-but sets satiny, sans flaking or smearing.

We Like: Wet n Wild Mega Last Liquid Lip Color (starting at $3; amazon.com).

You want: The perfect pink

Photo: Amazon

Try: A self adjusting shade. It goes on clear, then adapts to your pH to create a hue that flatters your coloring. See the results from our test.

We Like: E.l.f. Gotta Glow Lip Tint ($16; amazon.com).

RELATED: Your Official Guide to Getting Red Lipstick Right

You want: A wearable matte

Photo: Sephora

Try: A soufflé formula. The whipped consistency is butter-smooth, delivering opaque color that won’t settle into creases or cracks.
We Like: Bite Beauty Cashmere Lip Cream ($28, sephora.com).

You want: Moisture with pop

Photo: Ulta

Try: A balm stain. It offers the hydration of your go-to salve, plus Popsicle-stained color.

We Like: Laura Geller Love Me Dew Moisturizing Lip Crayon ($16; ulta.com).

RELATED: Lipliners You Can Use With Any Lipstick

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NFL Player Will Pay for 53 Mammograms, One for Each Year of His Mom’s Life

Photo: Getty Images

Every October, the NFL asks players to don a very non-uniform color—pink—for Breast Cancer Awareness month. For Pittsburgh Steelers running back DeAngelo Williams, you don’t have to ask him twice.

His mother, Sandra Kay Hill, passed away from breast cancer in May 2014, and he’s glad to have the opportunity to honor not only his mother but also four of his aunts, who sadly died of breast cancer as well. This year, he even asked his bosses at the NFL if he could continue to wear pink shoes or wristbands throughout the year.

But the NFL’s vice president of football operations Troy Vincent said no, citing uniform rules.

RELATED: 22 Ways to Help a Friend With Breast Cancer

When asked what it felt like to get that response, he told ESPN’s Lisa Salters: “The same way it made you feel after you heard it—like, man. He told me no.”

But shortly after, he announced that he will pay for 53 mammograms at a hospital in Pittsburgh, and in Charlotte, North Carolina; one mammogram for every year of his mom’s life. Insurance covers mammograms, but people without insurance must pay out of pocket, making it quite an expense for many.

RELATED: 25 Breast Cancer Myths Busted

And while the NFL covers equipment and merchandise in a hot, magenta pink every October (and only for October), purportedly to raise money for breast cancer research, they’ve come under fire recently about how much of that money actually goes towards cancer research—and how much goes straight back to the NFL.

Just think what could be accomplished if every NFL player donated a few mammograms this month instead of just wearing pink?

Still Williams’ commitment to that awareness color is heart-warming. To that end, he actually already has a workaround for wearing pink every month, regardless of the NFL rules: he can dye his hair. “It’s part of the uniform from the standpoint of being tackled, but it’s not specific on what color it has to be or if it has to match the uniform,” he told ESPN’s Stalter.

This is dedicated to my mom, my aunts & women everywhere affected by Breast Cancer. I love you. #WeAreInThisTogether https://t.co/bAwaanlfzV

— DeAngelo Williams (@DeAngeloRB) October 11, 2015

 

In the above NFL video, he summed it up with this: “Pink is not a color, it’s a culture for me. I’ll wear the color pink on the field for the rest of my career.”

RELATED: 15 Worst Things You Can Say to Someone Battling Breast Cancer

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Artificial Skin Could Bring Sense of Touch to Prosthetics

By Amy Norton
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Oct. 15, 2015 (HealthDay News) — In a step toward giving prosthetic limbs a sense of touch, scientists have developed an artificial skin that can “feel” pressure and send those signals to brain cells.

Reporting in the Oct. 16 issue of Science, researchers say the plastic skin mimics the ability of human skin to tell the difference between a firm handshake and the dead-fish variety. It can then transmit that information to cells of the central nervous system.

So far, the principle has only been tested using brain cells from mice, and much work remains before it could be useful for people with prosthetic limbs.

“But, we know what we need to do to move this forward, and I’d estimate this could be available in three to six years,” said researcher Alex Chortos, a doctoral candidate at Stanford University, in California.

Recent years have seen major advances in the function of prosthetic limbs, and the “robotic aspects” of modern prosthetics are quite good, Chortos said.

What’s remained elusive, he said, are prosthetics that can provide the sensory feedback that real limbs do.

That’s partly because the interaction between human skin and the brain is so complex. “One hand has roughly 17,000 sensors in it,” Chortos said. And those sensors pick up different types of information.

At this point, the artificial skin developed by the Stanford team replicates one aspect of touch: the skin’s ability to detect pressure differences. The ultimate goal, Chortos said, is to develop an array of sensors that can “feel” temperature, textures and other sensations.

The artificial skin consists of two layers: The top layer is a waffled plastic that contains carbon “nanotubes,” which conduct electricity when pressure is placed on the plastic. The bottom layer acts as a circuit that receives those electrical impulses and translates them into biochemical messages that nerve cells can read.

In this study, the researchers proved that the sensory signals could be transferred to brain cells from mice.

But if the skin were to be used with prosthetic limbs, how would sensory signals reach the human brain? Chortos said the goal is to essentially allow the prosthetic to “plug in” to the nervous system.

“We see it being able to stimulate nerves that are left over after the limb amputation,” Chortos explained. “Then those signals will go to the brain.”

The current findings represent an important step toward that, said Polina Anikeeva, an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Mass.

But it’s just part of the “puzzle,” she added.

“Right now, we still don’t have a technology that could feed the pressure signals back into the peripheral nerves within the remaining limb of an amputee,” said Anikeeva, who co-wrote an editorial published with the study.

“So even if we can sense touch with an electronic device,” she explained, “it is challenging to create a communication interface between this device and the nerves.”

Ultimately, Anikeeva said, any widespread use of such prosthetics would depend on people’s comfort with them.

As it is, people often opt for relatively simple prosthetic arms, she said.

That’s because more-advanced prosthetics are still “no match” for a natural limb, Anikeeva added. Similarly, a prosthetic with artificial skin would likely have to meet a high bar.

“In order to make a prosthetic ‘comfortable’ for people, it would need to be able to feel in a way that mimics the sensation in an actual limb,” Anikeeva said.

More information

The Amputee Coalition of America has more on prosthetic limbs.

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from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1OFMyeq