Spicing Up Your Holiday Meal

Holidays are tempting times and while you do not need to deprive yourself of the culinary joys of the season, the key is moderation…and spice.

Holidays are tempting times, full of company parties, seasonal get-togethers, and those family meals where we gorge on large amounts of food. Add in the sweet treats, and we find ourselves shopping for larger clothes at the year-end sales. While I don't think you should deprive yourself of all the culinary joys of the season, the key is moderation and…spice.

Spicing up your food can be done in a variety of ways:

• Spices: cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, mustard, saffron
• Herbs: thyme, sage, tarragon, basil, cilantro
• Heat: chipotle peppers, curry powder, horseradish, andouille sausage

These types of ingredients are the key to cooking healthier and enjoying it. No need to sacrifice flavor for calories. Cutting down on, or eliminating altogether, ingredients such as cream, butter, and salt are more easily done than you might imagine.

Forget rubbing down that turkey with slabs of butter, dousing veggies with cream sauce, and adding marshmallows to your canned yams. A nice olive oil and herb rub makes for a tasty turkey, as well as flavorful gravy. Those traditional holiday mashed potatoes are just as tasty when whipped with chicken broth and a smidgen of butter. Add in a few garlic cloves, or some prepared horseradish or chopped chives when whipping and you bump up the flavor another notch.

And if beef is your game, consider a leaner cut, such as a nice tenderloin. It's easy and quick to cook and can be rubbed, crusted, or sauced in such a way that will make you the chef of the hour. (See recipe below.)

You can also borrow from other cultures and cuisines when preparing your holiday meal. Go Cajun with a spice rub on the turkey and stuffing made with bell peppers, onions, celery, carrots, and a bit of andouille sausage.

Pop open a can of smoky chipotle peppers in adobo and go Latin. You can puree one or two to add to the gravy or mix with fat-free sour cream to top off boring baked potatoes. You can also purchase a chipotle dry rub for your beef roast or turkey.

My husband's family has Middle Eastern roots and bakes the leg of lamb on a bed of fragrant rosemary, while preparing their rice pilaf with cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.

The point is that if you bump up the flavor, you will never miss those additional calories. You can eat healthier and wiser by stocking up on herbs and spices.

To start you off, try this recipe for a Horseradish Crusted Beef. It will only take you about 10 minutes to prepare, cooks up in less than an hour, and serves 8. A no-muss, no-fuss main dish that can be complemented by your favorite potato, vegetable and a salad (forgo the hot rolls, your waistline will appreciate it!). This particular recipe is low in fat and sodium, and tasty enough for the fanciest of dinner parties or holidays. Top it off with a creamy horseradish sauce.

Horseradish Crusted Beef

4 tablespoons prepared horseradish
2 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
3-4 pounds beef tenderloin
2 teaspoons kosher salt
3 teaspoons freshly ground pepper

Creamy Horseradish Sauce: Mix 1 1/4 cups reduced-fat sour cream, 1/3 cup prepared horseradish, 1 teaspoon kosher salt and 1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper. Refrigerate while meat cooks to let the flavors meld.

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Combine horseradish, oil and mustard in a small bowl.

Wipe off tenderloin with paper towels. Rub tenderloin with salt and pepper, and then coat with the horseradish mixture.

Transfer to a roasting pan.

Roast until a thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the tenderloin registers 125°F for medium-rare, 35 to 45 minutes. Add 5 to 10 minutes for meat to be well done.

Transfer to a cutting board; let rest for 10 minutes. (This is important, so please try to wait.) Slice and serve.

Note: Portions of this cut of meat should equal 1/3 to 1/2 pound per person prior to cooking. For a table of 6, you should buy 2 to 3 pounds, for a table of 8, buy 3 to 4 pounds.

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Saving Lives: Healthline to Debut Drug Notebook Social Platform

Want to know if anyone else has had an adverse reaction to a medication? If other consumers have side effects similar to your own? Healthline’s new Drug Notebook just may be the website to help you find answers.

Finding out more about your medication, as well as the experiences of others using the same prescriptions, just got easier with Healthline’s new Drug Notebook social platform. No longer will you need to rely solely on your pharmacist or prescription flyer side effect information. Now you can compare notes with thousands of others to find out drug interactions, side effects, helpful instructions, and more.

Healthline, one of the fastest growing online health services, is announcing today that they have formed a partnership with First Life Research, a social media search company, to add Social Search to the Healthline Drug Notebook, a suite of drug information applications that includes Drug Interaction Checker, Pill Identifier, Drug Comparison, and more.

Healthline is a consumer site that reaches over 100 million consumers each month in partnership with Yahoo, AARP, and Aetna, among others. In addition to providing information on the latest research in medicine, Healthline offers Health Learning Centers, a disease information database (Disease A – Z), a symptom checker (Symptoms A – Z), 3D Body Maps, videos and slideshows,

To add to their already burgeoning databases, they are adding a much improved user experience by integrating social media into their Drug Notebook. Healthline’s Social Search, which will employ First Life’s Treato platform, will map more than a billion posts from health forums and blogs around the web.

This new tool will cover more than 11,000 drug brands, providing multiple perspectives and insights into drug information that consumers want—and need—to know. Consumers can filter conversations by popular topics, related drugs and interact with graphical summaries to view the most popular topics and drill down into specific threads.

By clicking on the “See What Others are Saying” links throughout the Drug Notebook, consumers can search social media and forum discussions about the medications they take and compare conversations about side effects, therapy switching, interactions with other medications, costs and effectiveness.

“Health care is inherently social, and technology that builds from social connections, and encourages collaboration and conversation will lead to a better patient experience and improved outcomes,” said West Shell, III, Chairman and CEO, Healthline Networks. “Drug information is one of the top treatment topics consumers search for—this new social search we created with the Treato platform will allow consumers to better understand their medications, as well as other choices, side effects and effectiveness straight from current user conversations.”

The Drug Notebook social platform will provide detailed information on specific medications including:

Easy Navigation: Each drug has its own Drug Notebook home page that provides quick information and links to available social data

Comprehensive Search: A broad list of available data to search, including side effects, interactions, safety alerts, clinical information, commentary from other consumers using the drug and images

Find Common Drug Names: The top 10 brand and generic names used for the drug will be listed for consumers to easily identify the medications for which they are seeking more information

Narrow Searches via Topic filters: Ability to filter by topic area on each specific drug, allowing users to easily narrow their search

Visual, Graphical summaries: Illustrations showing the most popular topics associated with the drug, frequency of posts on a specific topic and more

Sharing Options with Social Media Tools: Links for users to share any Healthline Social Search content

This is a great tool for anyone currently taking prescription medication, or caring for a loved one who is doing so. Because patients often have multiple doctors, who do not always share notes, prescriptions can be written for medications that negate the effects of those you are already on, or could cause often harmful side effects. Be safe, know all the medications you are taking, and make sure that all your doctors are kept in the loop should you change or discontinue any prescription drug.

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Tiniest U.S. Preemies Thriving Despite the Odds

Weighing less than ten ounces at birth, two severely premature infants are today thriving, with little to no side effects despite their very early delivery.

Both Madeline Mann, born in 1989 with a birth weight of just 9.9 ounces—the world record at the time—and 7-year-old Rumaisa Rahman, born weighing just whose 9.2 ounces at birth, continue to thrive despite their chances for survival at birth.

Madeline is now in college and is an honors student majoring in psychology, while Rumaisa is just getting underway with her education in first grade.

Since 1989, two other babies have been born who weighed less than Madeline, and another born in Germany had a birth weight equal to hers. However, Rumaisa continues to hold the record for the world’s tiniest baby born who has managed to beat the odds.

Dr. Jonathan Muraskas of Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Illinois is the miracle worker who managed to resuscitate the young ladies as infants at a suburban Chicago hospital. In a medical report on the girls that was recently published online in the journal , he cautioned that although these preemies managed to survive, that they are not models of hope for medical technology, but remarkable exceptions to nature’s rule.

Sadly, even with the most advanced medical care, most babies born so small do not survive. Muraskas noted, “These are such extreme cases,” and are by no means “a benchmark” for measuring success in efforts to save such tiny babies.

The question as to the real age of viability (ability to live) remains to be one of heated debate. While the report authors pointed out that the majority of newborn specialists consider the age of viability to be after 25 weeks of gestation, some American doctors attempt to save infants at 22 weeks. In fact, doctors in Japan actually consider the age of viability to be 22 weeks of gestation.

A normal pregnancy lasts on average 40 weeks. The age of viability determines when medical intervention will occur to keep the baby breathing. The report suggests that babies younger than 25 weeks are considered to be in a gray zone of viability in which the determination whether or not to provide intervention is not clearly defined. Muraskas says the report emphasizes that gestational age is even more critical for survival than size.

In the cases of Madeline and Rumaisa, both babies were delivered over one month early via cesarean section due to their mothers having developed dangerously high blood pressure linked with pregnancy—a condition known as severe pre-eclampsia.

Their mothers were given steroid drugs prior to the birth of the babies to aid in accelerating growth of the lungs of the fetuses. Immediately following birth, the infants were put on breathing machines with the use of spaghetti-sized tubes.

At birth, both babies were the average size of an 18-week-old fetus although they were several weeks older ,with Madeline at almost 27 weeks at birth, and Rumaisa at nearly 26 weeks. Because of this, their organs, including their lungs, were at a stage of development that allowed for the possibility of survival, although both infants required intensive medical intervention.

They both remained on the breathing machines for approximately two months, and required hospitalization for about four months.

In addition, both Madeline and Rumaisa were treated for retinopathy, an eye condition that commonly occurs among preemies, and known to cause blindness in severe cases. Madeline also suffered mild brain bleeding, but with no lasting effects. Interestingly, Rumaisa actually has a twin who was born at more than twice her size.

At age 20, Madeline had become a petite young woman at a height of 4 feet 8 inches, and weighed about 65 pounds. Now 22, she is a senior at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. The only lasting effect of her premature birth appears to be asthma.

Rumaisa was 3.5 feet tall and weighed 33 pounds at age 5, which put her at being smaller than about 90 percent of other children her age. She currently attends first grade in suburban Chicago.

Since 1936, 124 preemies weighing under a pound (less than 14 ounces) have been recorded on an online registry of the world’s tiniest babies that is maintained by Dr. Edward Bell, a University of Iowa pediatrics professor. By Bell’s estimate around 7,500 babies born in the United States each year weigh less than a pound, with about a 10 percent survival rate. However, not all survivors are included in this estimate, as the registry information is based on voluntary reports from doctors.

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Studies May Have Overestimated Cell Phone Crash Risk

A new analysis of past studies shows that previously reports of increased risk of car accidents attributed to cellphone use may have been overestimated.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Increased risk of having a car crash attributed to cellphone use may have been overestimated in some past studies, a new analysis suggests.

So-called "distracted driving" has become a big public health issue in recent years. The majority of U.S. states now ban texting behind the wheel, while a handful prohibit drivers from using handheld cellphones at all (though many more ban "novice" drivers from doing so).

But studies have reached different conclusions about how much of an added crash risk there is with cellphone use.

In the new report, Richard A. Young of Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit finds that two influential 

studies on the subject might have overestimated the risk.

The problem has to do with the studies' methods, according to Young. Both studies—a 1997 study from Canada, and one done in Australia in 2005—were "case-crossover" studies.

The researchers recruited people who had been in a crash, and then used their billing records to compare their cellphone use around the time of the crash with their cell use during the same time period the week before (called a "control window").

But the issue with that, Young writes in the journal Epidemiology, is that people may not have been driving during that entire control window.

Such "part-time" driving, he says, would necessarily cut the odds of having a crash (and possibly reduce people's cell use) during the control window -- and make it seem like cellphone use is a bigger crash risk than it is.

The two studies in question asked people whether they had been driving during the control windows, but they did not account for part-time driving, Young says.

So for his study, Young used GPS data to track day-to-day driving consistency for 439 drivers over 100 days.

He grouped the days into pairs: day one was akin to the "control" days used in the earlier studies, and day two was akin to the "crash" day.

Overall, Young found, there was little consistency between the two days when it came to driving time. When he looked at all control windows where a person did some driving, the total amount of time on the road was about one-fourth of what it was during the person's "crash" day.

If that information were applied to the two earlier studies, Young estimates, the crash risk tied to cellphone use would have been statistically insignificant.

That's far lower than the studies' original conclusions: that cellphone use while driving raises the risk of crashing four-fold.

And, Young says, the results might help explain why some other studies have not linked cell use to an increased crash risk.

A researcher not involved in the work said that the two earlier studies may well have overstated the crash risk from using a cellphone.

But that doesn't mean you should feel free to chat and text away at the wheel, according to Fernando Wilson, an assistant professor at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth.

A number of other studies, using designs other than case-crossover, have suggested that cellphone use—and particularly texting—is hazardous on the road, Wilson told Reuters Health.

"In wider policy, I don't think this study is going to change the conversation about distracted driving," Wilson said. "Most of the conventional thinking is that we need to do something to reduce it."

In his own study published last year, Wilson looked at information from a government database that tracks deaths on U.S. public roads. He found that after declining between 1999 and 2005, deaths blamed on distracted driving rose 28 percent between 2005 and 2008.

And the increase seemed to be related to a sharp rise in texting. ("Distracted driving" refers to anything that takes the driver's attention off the road, from fiddling with the radio to talking to other people in the car.)

Other studies, Wilson noted, have used mounted cameras to show that drivers' behavior becomes more risky when they are using cellphones.

All of those studies have limitations, and cannot pinpoint just how big a risk driving-while-texting (or talking) might be. Wilson said the current study highlights a limitation in case-crossover studies.

But the new study, itself, has shortcomings. Applying the GPS findings from this study to the two earlier ones -- done with different drivers, in different countries -- is tricky, both Young and Wilson point out.

"It's possible that the (earlier) study findings were overstated," Wilson said, "but it's difficult to know by how much."

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, about 450,000 Americans were injured in crashes linked to distracted driving in 2009. Another 5,500 were killed.

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