Best Stop-Diabetes Strategy

Exercising 20 minutes a day and dropping 14 pounds is tougher than popping a pill. But those changes delayed the onset of diabetes by 11 years compared with 3 years by drug treatment. And the cost was only a third of the drug regimen.

Source: University of Michigan Health System study of 3,234 prediabetics.

Starve That Fever from Aspirin

Researchers at the University of Maryland have publicly stated what Chiropractors and other vitalistic healers have been saying for a long time: Taking Aspirin or Tylenol for the flu may actually prolong illness.

Fever is the body's natural way of fighting infection and taking aspirin or acetaminophen (Tylenol) interferes with your body's natural healing process. "You're messing with Mother Nature," says Dr. Leland Rickman, an associate clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego. An elevated temperature "may actually help the body fight the infection quicker or better than if you don't have a fever." The Maryland researchers found that influenza sufferers who were treated with aspirin or acetaminophen extended their illness from five to eight days on average.

Information cited from Pharmacotherapy, December 2000.