Sometimes we just have to put several interesting health news items together to save time and space–or they are interesting but not worth an entire article. And today is one of those days! So let’s get started.

Item 1: Childhood obesity to overtake child hunger

Maybe some of you remember this… back in the 80s and 90s when childhood hunger was such a pressing concern. There were commercials about Ethiopia and giving 5 cents a day to feed starving children. People adopted kids from Asia just to make sure they were fed.

No doubt these problems exist, and maybe we hear less about them, but if things keep going the way they are, we might be adopting kids so we can put them on a diet.

A report in the Canadian paper, Macleans, finds that worldwide, which children being underweight is steadily declining (which is great!), the rate at which children are obese is steadily rising at roughly the same rate. By about 2022 (only 5 years!), there will be more obese children worldwide than underweight children.

Pharmaceutical companies take advantage of the elderly

What? How dare you! The pharmaceutical industry has our best interests at heart, right? And targeting the elderly… well that’s unconscionable!

Turns out the $13 billion/year industry doesn’t get all that money by honest means! Shocking isn’t it?

There is a pill called Nuedexta, which is distributed by the pharma giant, Avanir, and it is intended to treat people with uncontrollable laughing or crying. This condition affects less than 1% of Americans, and usually those people are multiple sclerosis or Lou Gehrig’s disease patients.

A shocking CNN report found, however, that Avanir had been paying doctors to prescribe it to elderly people suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s, taking special steps to target people living in nursing homes. In less than 4 years, sales of Nuedexta jumped by 400% to $300 million in sales.

If you have family in a nursing home, please make it a point to know what drugs they are being prescribed.

Another reason to go au natural

Ladies, listen (a man is writing this right now). We like your hair the color it already is. Brunettes, blondes, redheads. They’re all great.

“But I do it for myself, not you.”

Ok, fine, we get it.

But how about this? New research has found a link between hair dye and breast cancer.

I’m tempted to say, “No duh!” Because most synthetic product you use on your skin, hair, or ingest is toxic and what causes cancer? Toxicity causes cancer!

Anyway, this news comes out of Princess Grace Hospital in Central London. Researcher and cancer surgeon, Kefah Makbel, found a 14% increase in incidences of breast cancer in women who dyed their hair between 2 and 5 times a year.

Makbel says (and I vehemently agree), if you’re going to dye your hair, go for products with natural dyes (like beetroot) rather than the synthetic stuff.

The power of zinc

Zinc has long been a staple of naturopathic and holistic medicine practitioners. And it’s been used as a cure for minor illnesses since at least 140 B.C.

You could find it in OTC cold and flu remedies, perhaps most notably in that dissolvable tablet, Airborne, that was designed to help you not get sick on a plane ride. It’s also a common supplement by itself.

Of course nowadays, in a culture soaked in pharmaceuticals, most people would laugh at you for suggesting that something naturally-occurring would help with your health and tell you to go grab something off the shelf at the Walmart pharmacy. Sudafed for you sinuses. Nyquil for your cough. Ibuprofen for your headache… and you’re all set!

My answer for that would be to push them to a Cochrane review of the use of zinc to fight a common cold.

Researchers found 199 people with colds. 102 of them were given zinc lozenges. 97 of them were given a placebo. By day 5, 70% of those who took the zinc lozenges considered themselves to have recovered from the cold. However, only 27% of those who were given the placebo had recovered.

By Day 11, ALL of those patients who were given the zinc were recovered, but it took until Day 15 for all of those who were given a placebo to recover. That’s some pretty solid evidence.

After doing the math, researchers concluded that taking zinc during a cold triples your recovery rate.

Take that, Nyquil.