Germs

Women are less able to suppress hunger Faced with their favorite foods, women are less able than men to suppress their hunger, a discovery that may help explain the higher obesity rate for females, a new study suggests. Gene-Jack Wang of Brookhaven National Laboratory and his colleagues were trying to figure out why some people overeat and gain weight while others don't. They performed brain scans on 13 women and 10 men who had fasted overnight to determine how their brains responded to the sight of their favorite foods.

PLUM ISLAND, N.Y. -- To counter what the Clinton administration views as the growing threat of biological terrorism to America's food supply, the Agriculture Department is seeking money to turn the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, one-mile off Long Island, into a top security laboratory where some of the most dangerous diseases known to man or beast can be studied.The Agriculture Department already operates here at Plum Island, just across Gardiners Bay from the wealthy Hamptons, in a laboratory where such dreaded foreign animal diseases as foot-and-mouth and African swine fever are examined.

Q. I am appalled at the condition of the public restroom where I work. It is filthy, and I hate to get close to the toilet seats. I have osteoarthritis in my knees, so crouching above the toilet is very difficult.How effective are disposable seat covers? I have seen them in the pharmacy, but I don't know if they can really protect me from germs.A.Toilet seat covers are a good investment if they make you feel more comfortable and keep you from crouching. Research has shown that women who hover over toilets instead of sitting down are less likely to empty their bladders completely and may be more vulnerable to urinary infections or incontinence.

ONE OF the great joys of being a grandparent is baby-sitting. Loving, hugging, playing, feeding and changing for a set period of time is infinitely easier than being the one in charge on a daily, round-the-clock basis.One of the pitfalls is being exposed to a new round of kid germs. Who knew that lying beneath the surface of my little grandson's smiles -- and sneezes and running nose -- was a mixture of germ warfare so potent that it could put his grandma out of commission for three days.

GERMS BEWARE. Pupils and staff at Oklahoma Road Middle School are prepared to wage a battle.Beginning yesterday, pupils at the Eldersburg school will be offered a prepackaged hand wipe to use before eating lunch in an effort to prevent the spread of germs."

MANASSAS, Va. -- The vials of bubonic plague, anthrax and yellow fever sat in squat stainless steel vats, frozen in liquid nitrogen and padlocked in a truck that said "Office Movers." The germs whizzed down the Washington Beltway, trekking quietly through miles of suburbs where an unknowing public slept soundly.At the state line, Maryland state troopers handed off the convoy to Virginia, and a hazardous-materials team and a back-up truck rode alongside. It was a caravan of some of the world's most frightening germs, cruising around the capital city under a full moon on Friday the 13th.

In "As Good as It Gets," Jack Nicholson portrays Melvin, a germophobe whose medicine cabinet is stocked wall-to-wall with bars of soap. When washing his hands, Melvin opens a box, lathers up, then tosses out the barely used bar.But the compulsive behavior continues. He immediately grabs another fresh bar of soap, lathers up again, and throws that bar out, too.OK, Melvin's crackers, but he has the right idea when it comes to effective germ-killing. It's not so much the whole body as it is the hands -- especially nowadays as flu and cold run rampant.

At every summer concert you can find the terminally prepared girl who's ready for anything: rancid bathrooms, sticky seats, alien invasions."You always worship that girl who whips out the bag of Kleenex and hands it to you," says Jimmy Hanrahan, senior wardrobe stylist at MTV. "You can be that girl everyone loves."She's not Einstein in a halter top. She's just experienced. Here are the lightweight concert essentials she wouldn't dare forget:* Waterproof sunscreen. Obvious, yes. So obvious, that you may forget it. Don't, unless you want to be a rock lobster.

Ready or not, the entertainment season is upon you. The big Thanksgiving feast is less than two weeks away, and that begins more than a month of dinners and parties. On your planning checklist, you might add this: Try not to accidentally kill your guests.Because we're not cleaning properly, kitchen sinks, cutting boards and refrigerator handles are crawling with more germs, including fecal bacteria, than toilet seats or bathroom floors.According to this month's American Demographics magazine, people are spending much less time housekeeping than they used to; women, the primary cleaners, were down to 15 hours a week in 1995, vs. 27 hours in 1965.

FROM THE "To err is human" file comes this: A William Safire column on belated moves to honor former Maryland governor and U.S. vice president Spiro Agnew had a noticeable error when it was published on the op/ed page of Monday's New York Times.Mr. Safire, who often comments on others' flubs in his language dTC column in the Times, referred to Maryland's Democratic governor Parris Glendening as a Republican. In fact, Mr. Safire, a former Nixon White House speech writer, seemed to infer that it took a Republican governor to get Mr. Agnew's portrait hung in the State House along with previous governors, "something the last two Democrats refused to do," he wrote.

IN THE MIAMI AIRPORT -Against the advice of our vice president, I have braved the germ-infested world, forced into transit by prior commitments and surrounded by strangers who may not recently have washed their hands. My own, of course, are scabbed from repeated scrubbing through all four lines of "Happy Birthday to You," which, my epidemiologist-neighbor tells me, is how long you have to keep the soap on your hands to do any good. At this writing, I am sequestered in a small partitioned area of Miami International Airport.

Women are less able to suppress hunger Faced with their favorite foods, women are less able than men to suppress their hunger, a discovery that may help explain the higher obesity rate for females, a new study suggests. Gene-Jack Wang of Brookhaven National Laboratory and his colleagues were trying to figure out why some people overeat and gain weight while others don't. They performed brain scans on 13 women and 10 men who had fasted overnight to determine how their brains responded to the sight of their favorite foods.

Children in rainy areas may develop disorder autism Children in California, Oregon and Washington are more likely to develop autism if they lived in counties with higher levels of annual rainfall when they were 3 or younger, suggesting that something about wet weather may trigger the disorder, according to a study released last week. Among possible explanations: Bad weather could lead to more TV and video viewing, which in very young children have been linked to language-development problems.

The race for the White House is dirty business. Really. The campaign season that continues today with the West Virginia primary has been especially long, particularly for Democratic Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton -- a physical endurance test that includes thousands of germy handshakes, greasy chicken dinners, long hours and heavy reliance on the vocal cords. This is also the era of YouTube and 24-hour news channels to document every grimace, hacking cough and mental slip-up, and a time when baby boomers and young new voters expect their candidates to be pictures of agelessness, as many of them envision themselves.

I have a 3-year-old and am expecting a new baby in a few weeks. I hate to use harsh chemicals to clean our house and usually rely on good old soap and hot water, sometimes with vinegar or baking soda. I use bleach or Bon Ami sparingly for some things. I found a recipe for a home cleaner spray -- a simple mixture of white vinegar, water and a few drops of essential oil for fragrance. I spray this mixture everywhere, confident that I could eat it if I had to. It does a great job on the stainless kitchen sink, microwave, countertops and bathroom sink.

I want to thank you for the "sugar cure" column. I had a toe amputated more than a year ago and it still is not healed. I read your column about using sugar for wound healing and asked the doctor about it. She said: "Nothing else is helping, so go for it. It couldn't hurt." I mixed the sugar into Polysporin and applied it on a Friday afternoon, and by Monday afternoon the improvement was very noticeable. At my next appointment, the doctor was very impressed. We first found this old-fashioned approach in medical literature two decades ago (Southern Medical Journal, November 1981)

With flu season and the MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) staph infection upon us, we are urged to wash our hands frequently, usually "with warm, soapy water." My memories of Bacteriology 101 aren't clear, but I can't recall that warm water kills anything. Soapsuds, on the other hand, do carry nasty things away. Is there any science behind the "warm water" suggestion? You are absolutely right that warm water is no more effective than cold for removing germs. Soap and water don't kill germs, but only wash them off the surface of the skin.

Ohio State basketball coach Thad Matta recently shocked some germ freaks by invoking the legendary three-second rule during a game. After accidentally spitting out his chewing gum, Matta scooped it off the floor and popped it back into his mouth, explaining that it hadn't been on the ground long enough to be contaminated. But just how germy was that sticky gum? And was Matta better off because he picked up his gum in three seconds rather than five? Researchers who have actually looked into the three- to five-second rule say, "Nope, sorry."

Germ-conscious consumers are snapping up a new generation of products designed to reduce the risk of catching a bug. We're not talking about antibacterial soaps, chlorine bleaches and ammonia-based cleansers. They're old news. These days, you can minimize your health risks with antimicrobial pens and trashcans equipped with infrared sensors that trigger self-opening lids. Still, one household product that spreads infection hasn't changed much over the years: your kitchen sponge. But scientists say they've found a near-foolproof method for sanitizing even that old germ trap - make sure the sponge is wet, then nuke it in your microwave oven.

With more and more workers gulping down coffee and lunch -- sometimes even dinner -- at their keyboards, tens of thousands of germs can be found in nearly every corner of the office. They are lurking beneath the papers and files, on top of keyboards and computer mice and on telephones. One study found that the office desk has more bacteria on it than the average toilet. "The biggest revelation is that there is the awareness from the worker ... that office cleanliness is maybe not where it should be," said Gary Bauer, vice president of business services for janitorial services company ServiceMaster Clean.