Health Experts

Nilo Amier massages Bag Balm into her chapped hands. Formulated 100 years ago to soften the udders of milking cows, the salve works just as well on people, said Amier, who tends a half-acre mini-ranch in Tarzana, Calif.Feed dealers Odie Fox and his son, Jerry, swear by Flex Free, a pricey supplement for easing stress and strains in horses. One dissolves a pinch of the bitter powder in his orange juice. The other sprinkles it on breakfast cereal."It really works," said Jerry Fox, claiming it counters aches from slinging 120-pound hay bales.

A growing body of research underscores that pesticides impact not just public health but also the Chesapeake Bay ("Report finds widespread contaminants in the bay," Jan. 22). A recent federal report, created in response to the same presidential executive order that created the current Chesapeake Bay restoration plan, also noted serious data gaps about pesticides widely dispersed in the bay. The 2013 Maryland Pesticide Information Act addresses the essential need for state and health experts to have access to important basic information on when and where potentially toxic chemicals are applied by pesticide applicators.

WASHINGTON -- Government projections that as many as 1.9 million Americans could die in a global flu epidemic amount to a guess that could prove to be highly inaccurate, several public health experts say. "The problem with all the numbers is that nobody knows," said Dr. Arnold S. Monto, a University of Michigan epidemiologist who specializes in infectious diseases. "I try to avoid coming up with these numbers as much as possible. I know they are based on imperfect information, extrapolating from the past."

A state task force studying gun access laws for people with mental illnesses has proposed authorizing police to seize firearms from individuals deemed a credible threat to themselves or others. Such seizures, the panel said Wednesday, would take place after law enforcement "substantiated" reports from mental health providers, social workers and other professionals. The proposal is among nine recommendations by a task force convened months before December's mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school that sparked a nationwide debate on gun control and access to mental health services.

Just back from a trip to Australia, Jeffrey Lloyd staggered into his doctor's office in January with chills, fever, breathing problems and a strange tingling in his extremities. Stumped, his Annapolis physician prescribed an antibiotic - but the symptoms grew worse.Red spots appeared on his upper torso, then spread to his toes. His face turned a disturbing shade of red, and his eyes became painfully sensitive to light. The 30-year-old Annapolis man spent three days in the hospital, but specialists there were puzzled.

Daniel Shykind told two mental health experts he impersonated a United Airlines pilot as a cover for his activities as a CIA spy, the doctors testified yesterday.Shykind, 30, is the subject of a three-day hearing in Montgomery County Circuit Court in Rockville that will determine whether he is mentally competent to stand trial on charges he bilked 14 airline employees and friends of $30,700.Assistant State's Attorney Suzanne Schneider said Shykind used a pilot's uniform to help persuade people to invest in a foreign currency exchange scheme.

In what could become the largest legal settlement in history, cigarette manufacturers agreed yesterday to pay $368 billion over 25 years, drastically restrict advertising and help smokers quit to resolve lawsuits on behalf of millions of Americans sickened or killed by tobacco.The "agreement in principle" between the tobacco companies and their adversaries was hailed by some as a milestone in the battle against smoking. It marks an abrupt turnaround in the industry's four-decade refusal to recognize the health damage caused by its products.

Do you have a health question?Phone it in to one of the To Your Health experts, who will answer your question in their columns.* Call SUNDIAL at 783-1800 (268-7736 in Anne Arundel County), then punch in one of the four-digit codes listed:From Tots to Teens:Drs. Modena Wilson and Alain Joffe. Code: 7902.On Call:Dr. Simeon Margolis. Code: 7904.* Or write to any of the To Your Health experts at The Baltimore Sun, 501 N. Calvert St., Baltimore 21278.

A state task force studying gun access laws for people with mental illnesses has proposed authorizing police to seize firearms from individuals deemed a credible threat to themselves or others. Such seizures, the panel said Wednesday, would take place after law enforcement "substantiated" reports from mental health providers, social workers and other professionals. The proposal is among nine recommendations by a task force convened months before December's mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school that sparked a nationwide debate on gun control and access to mental health services.

Do you have a health question? Phone it in to one of the To Your Health columnists.* Call SUNDIAL at 783-1800 (268-7736 in Anne Arundel County), then punch in one of the four-digit codes listed:From Tots to Teens--Drs. Modena Wilson and Alain Joffe. Code: 7902.On Call (general health)--Dr. Simeon Margolis. Code: 7904.* Or write to any of the To Your Health experts at The Baltimore Sun, 501 N. Calvert St., Baltimore 21278. The doctors will answer your question in their columns.Features EditorJan WarringtonHealth EditorSheila DresserReporterGerri KobrenFor information on editorial content call 332-6156.

Your smart phone is often thought of as unhealthy. It can make you anti-social, be a danger while driving and probably makes you fat (doesn't everything?). But hundreds of health experts are gathering in Prince George's County this week to discuss how a mobile device can make you healthier. The mHealth Summitt is talking about a lot of intriguing stuff including house calls via video chat, using games as teaching tools and apps that monitor blood pressure to prevent strokes. Yet a lot of the focus of this year's conference is on using mobile devices as health tools in developing countries.

When police accused an Edgemere man of having sex with a 13-year-old boy, most of the charges were straightforward: soliciting a minor and a related sexual offense, which together could carry up to 30 years in prison. But Baltimore County prosecutors also accused Steven Douglas Podles of knowingly attempting to transmit the HIV virus to the boy - a seldom-used, and often controversial, charge that carries an additional three years behind bars. Even as prosecutors prepare their case against Podles, the effectiveness of such laws is being debated by legislators and public health officials from Maryland to California.

Edwin Charles Saiontz, a highly-regarded health care expert and co-founder of SHR Associates Inc., died Thursday of multiple organ failure at his Boynton Beach, Fla., home. The longtime Pikesville resident was 77. The son of a lawyer and a homemaker, Edwin Charles Saiontz, who was known as Ed, was born in Glen Rock, Pa., and raised in Woodmoor. After graduating from Forest Park High School in 1953, he worked for Nation-Wide Check Corp. in Glen Burnie while studying at night at Baltimore Junior College and later at the University of Baltimore, where he earned a bachelor's degree in business.

Both sides have rested in the murder trial of Mary C. Koontz, accused of killing her husband a year ago. The judge presiding over the case, Thomas J. Bollinger Sr., sent the jury home for the long weekend after the last witness testified Friday morning. He asked them to return on Tuesday, when they will hear closing arguments before they begin deliberations. Two mental health experts, one for the defense, the other for the prosecution, provided dueling assessments Thursday of the sanity of the 60-year-old defendant.

To Alma Roberts, Maryland's grim statistics on infant mortality affect more than babies. They serve as an indicator of the state's overall health. And she's alarmed. Maryland has struggled for a decade with infant death rates above the national average - it ranked 31st in 2005 statistics - and figures released last month showed the problem getting worse. In 2007, the infant mortality rate increased, and the racial disparity in infant deaths widened. Last year, 14 newborns died per 1,000 live births, and black infants were three times as likely as white infants to die within their first year.

Eat your vegetables. Everyone has heard it, from a mom, a teacher or a commercial. Yet, years after a concerted effort to boost consumption of healthful foods, Americans eat the same paltry amounts that they did in 1985, when the government first recommended two servings of fruit and three servings of vegetables daily. The bad eating habits cross all socioeconomic levels. Researchers say those with higher incomes might eat out frequently and consume more fried foods than salads, and those with lower incomes could find fresh produce too pricey at their corner market.

IT'S past time for Americans to start treating the AIDS epidemic more like a deadly disease and less like a political problem.The worldwide AIDS epidemic is outstripping all predictions by health experts at the World Health Organization and the U.N. AIDS program.A costly epidemicEven in the United States, where more than $600 million has been spent on federal prevention programs, the rate of new infections has stayed at 40,000 or so per year. A new, alarming study reports that four of 10 Americans infected with HIV refuse to tell their sexual partners that they are carriers of the deadly human immunodeficiency virus.

WASHINGTON -- Many older Americans who have receive free influenza shots for the last four years under an experimental Medicare project could go unprotected during the coming flu season, health experts say.The government and private health experts said they feared that if people 65 years old or older who have been protected by the vaccinations are not immunized this year, more of them could contract the flu.Older people are at higher-than-normal risk of...

For this month's Make Over My Meal came a novel subject -- the man who never eats in. "I eat out 21 meals a week, 52 weeks a year, year in and year out," real-estate lawyer Stuart Kaplow wrote to us. "And no, I never do takeout." Working hard and playing hard are firmly in Kaplow's repertoire. But cooking? Not so much. He says he doesn't generally bring food into his Brooklandville home. Nor does he set foot in grocery stores. Late-night munch-ies? Because he likes to be ready to wake up early, that's not a problem.