Your Health

By Janice M. Horowitz

GOOD NEWS

THE CABBAGE CURE If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Eat your fruits and vegetables! Now there's a new reason to do so. Five servings a day may reduce the odds of ischemic stroke by 25%, and 10 servings--swallow hard--by 31%. Fruits and veggies seem to help prevent the formation of dangerous blood clots associated with strokes. The best of the bunch: cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cabbage, as well as citrus fruits.

HATS OFF! It's only a first step, but scientists may be a hair closer to a cure for baldness. Using injections of a gene--nicknamed the Sonic hedgehog--they have been able to awaken hair follicles from a resting state and force them into an active one. Alas, that's just in mice. Whether the therapy works on human pates remains to be seen. One potential problem: the Sonic hedgehog gene is linked to basal-cell carcinoma, a common, treatable skin cancer.

BAD NEWS

DOG DAYS Pig's ears, beef jerky and smoked hooves may not be all that appetizing to everyone, but to dogs they're the cat's meow. Beware, though: the FDA is warning that pet chews, as they're known, may be contaminated with Salmonella infantis, a bacterium that won't harm man's best friend but can cause vomiting, nausea and abdominal pain in healthy humans--and be life threatening to those with compromised immune systems. What to do? After tossing a chew to Rover, wash your hands thoroughly--and have your kids do the same.

FLU FLASH No one can predict just how bad this flu season will be, but worrisome signs are cropping up. Among them: folks' getting sick earlier in the year. Six flu outbreaks occurred this summer, in contrast to just the occasional one in summers past. And though it hasn't spread, a new kind of flu virus has appeared in Hong Kong that current shots don't protect against. Be sure--starting around now--to get vaccinated anyway, particularly if you're elderly.

--By Janice M. Horowitz

Sources--Good News: JAMA (10/6/99); Journal of Clinical Investigation (10/99). Bad News: FDA; CDC