AP - Zapping frozen meals in the microwave may be fast and easy, but it also can make you sick if it's not done properly.

AFP - China attempted Sunday to contain the fallout from the tainted milk scandal, announcing a new survey of dairy products showed no traces of melamine and promising to subsidise farmers hit by the scare.

HealthDay - FRIDAY, Oct. 3 (HealthDay News) -- With the Chinese milk products-melamine scandal generating fresh headlines, U.S. health officials on Friday unveiled what they consider acceptable levels of contamination with the industrial chemical.

Trainers and coaches say relaxation is crucial to a strong performance, and tension only serves to diminish an athlete's performance.

Can’t afford sick workers? In one Michigan town, small companies are paying more to keep them well.

Sharing adult meals with a baby and feeding them a range of foods encourages the child to be more adventurous at the table.

For arachnophobes, it's difficult to kill a spider as it scurries across the floor. Those who are scared to fly might not ever set foot on a plane. While nothing physically stops people with these aversions, a mental barrier can keep them from the task at hand. The same could be said for obese women when it comes to physical activity, according to research presented at the Obesity Society's Annual Meeting.

Genaera Corporation (Nasdaq: GENR) reported data from its second Phase 1 clinical trial of trodusquemine (MSI-1436), Genaera's lead drug candidate for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and obesity. MSI-1436 is a novel inhibitor of PTP1B, a validated molecular target that controls the function of both the leptin and insulin pathways to normalize glucose and decrease appetite.

When dining at Chinese Buffets, overweight individuals serve themselves and eat differently than normal weight individuals. This may lead them to overeat, according to a recent study by Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab. Compared to normal weight diners, overweight individuals sat 16 feet closer to the buffet, faced the food, used larger plates, ate with forks instead of chopsticks, and served themselves immediately instead of browsing the buffet.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC urge parents considering "nontraditional" pets to weigh the health risks those pets may pose to kids.

A CT heart scan may help predict the odds of dying over the next 15 years in people with suspected coronary artery disease, new research shows.

With a month to go before the election, health care took center stage in the presidential campaign as Barack Obama launched a major attack on John McCain's health care plan.

Apple is investigating a complaint that its pre-2008 Mac Pros emit fumes from the chemical benzene. One user told Apple that he noticed a strong smell when he unpacked his Mac last year, and that 10 days later, he developed nose and throat irritation, reports the French newspaper Liberation. (A clunky English translation of the report can be found here.) [More]

Studies have surfaced in recent months that certain plastic products we use every day could be interfering with our hormone systems. Approximately 100,000 synthetic chemicals are approved for consumer products and industrial processes--and certain classes of them, it seems, are dangerous to our health. One compound in the news, known as BPA, is of particular concern.

Only a handful of once approved substances have ever become banned or severely restricted, such as DDT, PCBs and benzene. What about the rest? Under existing laws, drugs must be shown to be safe and effective, pesticides must be tested to demonstrate that they are safe enough in a balance between risks and benefits, and synthetic food additives must meet a standard set in 1958 by the Delaney Amendment to the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. But many, many other substances remain untouched by safety regulations.

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Scientists know that addictive drugs can mess with the brain’s circuitry and hijack its reward systems, but a July 31 rat study in the journal Neuron shows that psychological factors may be more instrumental in causing these changes than a drug’s chemical effects are. Cocaine use triggers long-lasting cellular memories in the brain, the study found--but only if the user consumes the drug voluntarily.

A team led by Billy Chen and Antonello Bonci, both at the University of California, San Francisco, trained three groups of rats to press levers that delivered cocaine, food or sugar. The researchers injected cocaine into a fourth group. When they examined the rats’ brain tissue, they found an increase in synaptic strength within the reward center in those rats that had self-administered sugar, food or cocaine. These cellular memories were short-lived in the sugar and food groups, but in rats that had self-administered cocaine they persisted for up to three months after consumption had stopped. Most interestingly, the brains of rats that had consumed cocaine involuntarily did not show such imprints.

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