"The easiest way to prevent skin cancer is to protect your skin with clothing," said board-certified dermatologist Zoe D. Draelos, MD, FAAD, consulting professor at Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, N.C. "Keep a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses near your door so you can put them on before you go outside…
While slaying vampires and saving the world may be her area of expertise, television and movie star Sarah Michelle Gellar said she was slightly overwhelmed when she had to tackle a subject she previously knew little about: children’s health care. Gellar is a mother to 3-year-old daughter Charlotte and son Rocky, who was born in September, and she said keeping them healthy has been one of the trickiest aspects of being a parent. “Someone told me when they start pre-school, they’ll be sick within the first six months,” said Gellar, who is famous for portraying Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the cult TV series of the same name.  “And sure enough, when my daughter started pre-school, she was sick for pretty much six months straight.  I thought that I would have a chair at the pediatrician’s office with my name on it, I had been there so much.” One daunting task for Gellar was delving into the world of childhood vaccinations and trying to understand the safest and most effective options for her kids.  Now having learned about the health dangers that face small children, Gellar has made it a priority to get her entire family vaccinated against pertussis – a serious illness, also known as whooping cough, that has been on the rise in the United States. While her family’s health is her chief concern, Gellar also wants others to follow her example.  Hoping to raise awareness about the importance of getting vaccinated, Gellar has teamed up with the Sounds of Pertussis Campaign, a crusade launched by Sanofi Pasteur and the March of Dimes that focuses on the dangers of pertussis and what parents can do to prevent their children from getting this potentially deadly disease. “I’m just like everyone else out there,” Gellar said.  “I’m a mom trying to keep my kids healthy, but I also have access to so much information that I can then go through it all and make it easier for people to understand.  You’re talking about an illness that doesn’t have to exist.  The only way to help fight against it is to get the vaccine, and that’s a simple way.” A serious respiratory illness, pertussis presents in infants and children like a common cold, with symptoms of a runny nose or congestion and sneezing.  But if left untreated, the disease can progress into severe coughing that forces air out of the lungs – causing pertussis sufferers to inhale with a large “whooping” sound.   According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, America is experiencing one of the largest outbreaks of pertussis cases within the past 50 years, with more than 41,000 cases and 18 deaths reported in 2012.  Infants younger than 1 year of age are particularly vulnerable to the outbreak, since they do not begin receiving their own vaccinations until they are 2 months old, and they aren’t fully protected from the disease until they have received at least three doses.  This danger is compounded by the fact that infants with pertussis are often in need of hospitalization, and some can go on to develop life threatening pneumonia.   Gellar said this is why it is just as important for parents and teenagers to stay up-to-date on their vaccines in order to eliminate the possibility of passing pertussis on to small babies. “You look at the statistics, and they can track it back,” Gellar said.  “Eighty percent of the children who came down with it, they can track it back to a family member that brought it in, and 50 percent were the actual parents.  I know there’s nothing worse as a new parent than you thinking that you got your child sick…It’s a simple vaccination for an adult to get every five years, and that’s it.  It’s the only safe way to prevent the child from getting the disease.” To help families keep track of their necessary vaccinations, the Sounds of Pertussis campaign has created a Facebook application called The Breathing Room, which shows which individuals among a person’s friends and family have pledged to get vaccinated. As for the concerns that some parents have regarding the safety of vaccines, Gellar said it is important for people to do the necessary research and talk with the right people before making any judgments.  Gellar, along with many health care professionals, maintain there are minimal side effects when it comes to getting the shot. “I think there’s a lot of misinformation out there about vaccines,” Gellar said.  “People are scared, and I think that if you can bring (information) in a way that people understand the importance, and how simple it actually is, I think people will be more prone to do it.” To learn more about getting vaccinated against pertussis, visit the Sounds of Pertussis website and the campaign’s Facebook page.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/11/buffy-star-sarah-michelle-gellar-hopes-to-slay-pertussis-through-vaccine/
By substituting healthy vegetable fats — such as olive and canola oils, nuts, seeds and avocados — for animal fats and carbohydrates, men with the disease had a markedly lower risk of developing lethal prostate cancer and dying from other causes, according to the study. The research, involving nearly 4,600 men with non-metastatic prostate cancer, could help with the development of dietary guidelines for men with the disease. While prostate cancer affects millions of men around the world, little is known about the relationship between patients’ diets following their diagnosis and progression of the disease…
Bernard Yang Kim never wanted to be a bodybuilder. The 31-year-old currency trader simply wanted to look chiseled—like an underwear model, he jokes—which is why he found it odd to be staring up at a 315-pound barbell.  He had never benched so much weight in his life; few men ever do. But his usual trainer was out, and his gym had set him up with a substitute—one who, as it turns out, was not only overzealous but also a terrible spotter.  “The bar crashed onto my chest, tearing my pectoral muscle,” said Kim, who ended up in the ER. “It was excruciating.” While extreme, Kim's experience is not uncommon. There are roughly 230,000 personal trainers in the United States, a number that has jumped 44 percent in the last decade. Indeed, personal training is one of the few professions to not only blossom during a recession but also grow afterward as people turn to it for a second job and even a second career. And it's easier than ever to get certified: You can go online, take a course, and start training clients within a month. “It's a buyer-beware market,” Mike Boyle, certified athletic trainer and owner of Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning in Massachusetts, said. “Getting hurt might be rare, but you can easily waste your time with someone who is ineffective at best and dangerous at worst.” In short, knowing how to recognize bad advice is more critical than ever. Read on for six of the worst fitness tips we've ever heard (like these 4 Moves Smart Trainers Hate), and six ways to get back on track. (For an easy-to-follow workout you can do at home, check out our Speed Shred DVD series, which will help you incinerate fat and uncover your abs in just 82 days!) Bad advice: “Go big or go home.” “There's this idea that you have to train to failure to trigger growth,” Boyle said. “But 'go big or go home' is a slogan for a meathead's T-shirt and a prescription for injury, not an effective training strategy. The truth is precisely the opposite—'slow and steady wins the race.'”  Not convinced? Talk to Bernard Yang Kim. The key to success in the weight room is to make consistent, incremental gains that ultimately add up to the body you want. Better move: Train to technical failure.  ”You want to do as many reps as you can with perfect form,” Boyle said. “Once you can't do a perfect rep, the set is over—no negative reps, no spotter assistance, no using momentum to crank out one more.”  When you can complete your goal reps for every set—three sets of 10, for example—you're ready to move up in weight. “Throw another five pounds on the bar or grab the next heaviest pair of dumbbells,” Boyle said. “It might not sound like much, but think about it this way: Even if you only go up five pounds every two weeks, you'll still add 130 pounds to your lift after a year.” Bad advice: “Push through the pain.” A little bit of soreness isn't a bad thing. It just means you've pushed your body harder than usual, causing microtears in muscles that ultimately lead to gains in size and strength.  ”But there's a big difference between soreness and pain, and ignoring pain is a ticket to the disabled list,” Boyle said. “I regularly ask my clients, 'Does the exercise make any of your joints hurt?' I don't care if the pain diminishes after they warm up—if they answer yes, that's the end of the exercise.” (Know what symptoms warrant a trip to your doctor: Learn the 7 Pains You Shouldn’t Ignore.) Better move: Find a pain-free alternative that works the same muscles.  “Just because the barbell bench press causes you shoulder pain doesn't mean you have to stop working your chest,” Boyle said. “Try using dumbbells, do incline presses, or switch to pushups.”  Changing your grip, angle, or movement pattern alters the load and positioning of your joints, allowing you to build muscle without breaking your body. Bad advice: “Protect your spine with crunches and sit-ups.” There's no denying that crunches and sit-ups can help you sculpt a six-pack, but they come with an inherent flaw: repeated spinal flexion, which can increase your risk of developing a back problem and aggravate existing damage.  Bottom line: By recommending crunches and sit-ups, some trainers facilitate the very injuries they're trying to prevent, Tony Gentilcore, certified strength and conditioning specialist, a trainer at Cressey Performance in Massachusetts, said. Better move: Do stability exercises.  “Stability, or resisting unwanted motion, is the true function of your core, and exercises that reinforce that function protect your spine,” Gentilcore said.  Try the Swiss ball rollout: Sit on your knees in front of a Swiss ball and place your forearms and fists on the ball. Slowly roll the ball forward, straightening your arms and extending your body as far as you can without allowing your lower back to “collapse.” Use your abdominal muscles to pull the ball back to the starting position.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/09/most-dangerous-fitness-advice/
A young man who drank a quart of soy sauce went into a coma and nearly died from an excess of salt in his body, according to a recent case report. The 19-year-old, who drank the soy sauce after being dared by friends, is the first person known to have deliberately overdosed on such a high amount of salt and survived with no lasting neurological problems, according to the doctors in Virginia who reported his case. The case report was published online June 4 in the Journal of Emergency Medicine. Too much salt in the blood, a condition called hypernatremia, is usually seen in people with psychiatric conditions who develop a strong appetite for the condiment, said Dr. David J. Carlberg, who treated the young man and works as an emergency medicine physician at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C. Hypernatremia is dangerous because it causes the brain to lose water. When there is too much saltin the bloodstream, water moves out of the body tissues and into the blood by the process of osmosis, to try to equalize the salt concentration between the two. As water the leaves the brain, the organ can shrink and bleed, Carlberg said. After the man drank the soy sauce, he began twitching and having seizures, and the friends took him to an emergency room. That hospital administered anti-seizure medication, and he was already in a coma when he was taken to the hospital where Carlberg was working, the University of Virginia Medical Center, nearly four hours after the event. “He didn't respond to any of the stimuli that we gave him,” Carlberg said. “He had some clonus, which is just elevated reflexes. It's a sign that basically the nervous system wasn't working very well.” The team immediately began flushing the salt out of his system by administering a solution of water and the sugar dextrose through a nasal tube. When they placed the tube, streaks of brown material came out. Within a half hour, they pumped 1.5 gallons (6 liters) of sugar water into the man's body. The man's sodium levels returned to normal after about five hours. He remained in a coma for three days, but woke up on his own. For several days afterward, a part of his brain called the hippocampus showed residual effects from the seizures. But a month after the event, he showed no sign of the overdose: He was back at college, and doing well on his exams, doctors reported. A typical quart of soy sauce has more than 0.35 pounds (0.16 kilograms) of salt, the researchers said. Most cases of sodium overdose happen more gradually. In the 1960s and 1970s, doctors actually gave salt to patients suffering from poisoning, to initiate vomiting, until they realized its harmful effects. Though it's rare in the United States, consuming excess salt was a traditional method for suicide in ancient China, according to the case report. Carlberg said he believes the young man survived because the team got his sodium levels down so quickly. “We were more aggressive than had been reported before in terms of bringing his sodium back down to a safer range,” Carlberg said. Reducing sodium levels more slowly has had poor or mixed results in the past, he said. Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/07/soy-sauce-overdose-sends-man-into-coma/
U.S. health advisers voted on Thursday to recommend relaxing market restrictions on GlaxoSmithKline's diabetes drug Avandia, the former blockbuster at the center of one of the biggest drug controversies in recent years. The vote, by a divided Food and Drug Administration advisory committee of outside health experts, could modestly enlarge the market for Avandia in the United States and lay the groundwork for further research into the drug's health risks. FDA will now take the vote into consideration for a final decision on how the pill also known by the generic name rosiglitazone can be used. The committee did not consider a specific change in protocol. But 13 experts on the 26-member panel who backed modification said current restrictions that require prescribing physicians and pharmacists to be certified should be relaxed or eliminated after a reexamination of Glaxo safety data settled longstanding concerns about the danger of death from cardiovascular disease. “In general, this drug doesn't look any different than any other diabetes drug,” said Dr. William Hiatt, a cardiologist from the University of Colorado, who was among seven experts who backed lifting restrictions altogether. Five committee members favored keeping the current sales restrictions, while one voted to withdraw Avandia from the market altogether. Glaxo, which no longer plans to promote Avandia, issued a statement saying the company would work with FDA as it considers its decision. “We continue to believe that Avandia is a safe and effective treatment option for type 2 diabetes when used for the appropriate patient and in accordance with labeling,” Dr. James Shannon, Glaxo's chief medical officer, said in a statement. The British drugmaker's stock closed nearly 1.5 percent lower in London trading before the committee voted. Avandia was once the world's best-selling treatment for type 2 diabetes, with annual sales of $3.2 billion. In 2010 its use in the United States was heavily restricted and it was withdrawn from the market in Europe because of the possibility of increased risk of heart attack and stroke. Only 3,000 people in the United States take it today, down from about 120,000 just before the restrictions were put in place. Much of the advisory committee's two-day meeting focused on a Duke University reexamination of a Glaxo safety study known as Record that confirmed initial findings of no significant increased heart risk from the drug. That reassured some experts that earlier concerns with the quality of the research had been unwarranted and encouraged support for the restrictive protocols, while retaining continued guidance on potential dangers for patients and care providers. A departing train But others said the original data was incomplete and compiled through a flawed study design, while other research pointed to the possibility of significant increased risk of cardiovascular death. “When you look at the overall totality of evidence, it is not sufficient enough to either implicate or exonerate rosiglitazone versus cardiovascular risk,” said advisory panel member Dr. Sanjay Kaul of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute. Several committee members endorsed suggestions for a major new clinical trial to determine precisely the drug's risks in the face of a growing worldwide diabetes threat. But other experts concluded that years of negative publicity made funding major research unfeasible except for new diabetes treatments now in the pharmaceutical pipeline. “The train has left the station,” said Gerald van Belle, director of the Clinical Trials Center at the University of Washington. Experts including the advisory committee's chairman, Dr. Kenneth Burman of the Washington Hospital Center, favored the creation of a registry to monitor the health of patients who currently take the drug if major studies into safety and efficacy were not an option. Some experts view Avandia as a potential alternative to other diabetes treatments, including insulin, that could become more important as the incidence of obesity and diabetes grows, bringing with it a host of costly chronic ailments ranging from heart and kidney disease to blindness and dementia. “When treating diabetes we really do need drugs that lower blood sugar without causing hypoglycemia, and there's not a lot that's available,” Dr. Ellen Seely of Harvard Medical School. “When you're dealing with individual patients, you come up often against dead ends on what you can do. And it's important to have options,” she said. But panel members agreed the market potential for Avandia may never again be large. Glaxo has settled lawsuits filed by tens of thousands of U.S. patients who had taken Avandia and claimed Glaxo failed to inform them about safety risks. Several thousand other cases remain pending. The drugmaker last July agreed to pay $3 billion to settle what U.S. officials called the largest case of healthcare fraud in U.S. history. The agreement resolved allegations that Glaxo failed through 2007 to provide the FDA safety data on Avandia and that the company improperly marketed other drugs.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/07/fda-panel-votes-to-relax-avandia-restrictions/
Case numbers in Africa's meningitis season this year were the lowest in 10 years thanks to a cheap new vaccine designed to treat a type of the disease common in the so-called meningitis belt, the World Health Organization said on Thursday. The vaccine, called MenAfriVac, was developed with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation specifically for use against meningitis A, a type which causes regular epidemics in Africa. Detailing data for January 1 to May 12, the United Nations health agency said that just under 9,250 meningitis cases, including 857 deaths, were reported in 18 of the 19 African countries under enhanced surveillance for meningitis. Epidemics of meningitis A occur regularly in Africa's “meningitis belt”, a band of 26 countries stretching from Senegal to Ethiopia, and are particularly devastating to children and young adults. Bacterial meningitis, known as meningococcal meningitis, is a serious infection of the thin lining surrounding the brain and spinal cord. It can cause severe brain damage and is fatal in 50 percent of cases if untreated. According to the non-profit Meningitis Vaccine Project (MVP), which helped develop the MenAfriVac vaccine, the seasonal outbreak of meningitis across sub-Saharan Africa in 2009 infected at least 88,000 people and killed more than 5,000. The WHO said the falling numbers this year were due to the introduction of the newly developed vaccine. MenAfriVac costs just 50 U.S. cents a dose and has been progressively introduced in Africa since 2010, starting in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. “The introduction of this first meningococcal vaccine available for preventive purposes in Africa has enabled the immunization of over 100 million people from 10 countries in the meningitis belt in the past three years,” the WHO said. “The reduced case load and epidemic activity observed this year adds to the evidence on the impact...of this vaccine.”source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/07/new-vaccine-drives-africa-meningitis-cases-to-lowest-in-decade/
Despite the well-known advantages to breast milk and vigorous campaigns around the world championing breast as best, Mexican mothers say the bottle is better. In a dramatic decline over the past six years, today only one in seven mothers in Mexico breast-feeds exclusively in the first six months, the standard recommended by the World Health Organization. That leaves Mexico with nearly the lowest level of breast-feeding in Latin America. Experts call it a public health crisis for a country where millions still live in extreme poverty, dirty water threatens the health of many families and education is poor. Mother's milk is richer in nutrients and antibodies that protect newborns from infections. Mexico has the highest infant mortality rate among the world's 40 largest economies. Between 2005 and 2010, breast cancer deaths increased twice as fast as Mexico's female population, with some experts blaming declining rates of breast-feeding; studies show it cuts a woman's risk of cancer by 50 percent or more. Officials blame an invasion of baby food ads, little regulation of formula companies and the failure of doctors to promote breast-feeding for an overreliance on formula. “Mexico has become the example of what not to do. It's the strongest case of a setback in breast-feeding,” said Marcos Arana Cedeno, a child nutrition expert and health adviser for the state of Chiapas. Feeding newborns with breast milk can save lives in developing nations, where children have higher chances of dying from diarrhea and pneumonia. The WHO has recommended for the past decade that infants be given only breast milk for the first six months. The percentage of Mexican moms who nurse their babies that long fell from 22 percent in 2006 to 14 percent last year, according to a Health Department survey. Only the Dominican Republic has a lower rate of breast-feeding in the region, at 8 percent. Other nations have improved their numbers, led by Brazil and Colombia, which in the past two decades more than tripled the percentage of mothers breast-feeding - to 47 percent in Colombia and 39 percent in Brazil. For many mothers drawn into the urban workforce, nursing a baby while juggling a job is too difficult. “I had to go back to work and I wasn't going to be able to breast-feed him for long. That's why I chose formula,” said Ruth Gonzalez, a clothing company manager. Gonzalez nursed her baby boy, Luis, only at night, after work. He drank formula during the day, and went off breast milk completely after a month. “Formula was just easier,” she said. Yet, even in traditional rural areas, the trend is downward. Breast-feeding fell by half in poor, rural areas, where babies are exposed to more sanitation problems, according to the Health Department survey. Nutritionists complain that Mexico has not adopted laws to meet guidelines adopted by WHO in 1981, which asked countries to restrict companies from providing free samples of formula or approaching new mothers to push their product. “It really is a tragedy,” said Teresa Gonzalez de Cossio, a nutritionist who researches breast-feeding at the National Institute of Public Health. “There is no one making sure we are following international codes. The country is not setting any goals regarding breast-feeding.” Countries such as Brazil and the United States have long stressed the importance of breast-feeding. The U.S. has improved its rate of mothers who exclusively breast-feed for the first six months to 16 percent in 2012 from 11 percent in 2007, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most New York City hospitals no longer hand out promotional samples of formula and ask new mothers to participate in talks on why human milk is better. Portland, Maine, started a campaign asking businesses to make mothers feel welcome to breast-feed wherever they want. Brazil reversed a decline in breast-feeding in the 1980s by strictly limiting advertising by baby food companies and airing prime-time informational spots with national celebrities to dispel myths, such as that women with small breasts were incapable of nursing. Mexico lets companies self-regulate on following the WHO guidelines. It has rules that say hospitals and doctors should guide new mothers through breast-feeding, but it doesn't enforce them. Dr. Rufino Luna Gordillo, the Health Department's deputy director of maternal and newborn care, said Mexico is renewing periodic checks of breast-feeding practices at public and private hospitals, a policy born in the early 1990s that had fallen by the wayside. “It's clear that these efforts have not been enough to get to the ideal breast-feeding levels,” Luna said in a written statement. “We need to debunk many myths about breast-feeding, limit the abuse of infant formula makers ... and award companies that offer nursing rooms.” Some new mothers say they didn't receive any help on breast-feeding after giving birth and say nurses, without seeking permission, offered formula to newborns at the nursery. In addition, with half of the babies born in Mexico via cesarean-section, many mothers struggle to nurse in the first hours and days after surgery. With little government promotion of breast-feeding, myths proliferate: sagging breasts do not provide healthy milk, or that nursing babies will spoil them. Pediatricians also hear women say that they want to stop breast-feeding so they won't lose their perky breasts. “In Mexico, breast-feeding is not a normative behavior,” said Chessa Lutter, the Pan American Health Organization's regional adviser for food and nutrition. “You are going to see probably walking down the street in Mexico City a lot more bottle-feeding than you are breast-feeding.” Advocates for breast-feeding say big business is to blame. They claim doctors are plied with gifts by formula makers to get them to help introduce infant formula to newborns. Elia Rangel, mother of a 9-month-old girl, Samantha, said a family physician told her not to breast-feed after six months. “We don't have information that is up to date,” she complained. “I came across a doctor at a public hospital who asked me how old Samantha was. She was 7 months. He told me, `Breast milk is no good; it can even harm her.' I was like, `Wow, where did you get this information?'” The government says it discourages the unnecessary use of formula, but Mexico's own Social Security Institute, whose logo shows a mother breast-feeding, provides formula to women even without a medical need if they present a doctor's note. As long ago as 1993, a study warned that Mexico needed to review that policy because of the high cost in both financial and health terms. The government still pays about $35 million a year on cans of infant formula from the Swiss-based food company Nestle, which receives more than 96 percent of the public money spent on formula. Nestle and the U.S.-based Mead Johnson, the two main baby food companies in Mexico, responded in statements that they support the WHO's code for breast-milk substitutes and comply with the law. They say they don't advertise food for babies less than 1 year of age or discourage mothers from breast-feeding. Nestle said it “does not give free supplies of infant formula to hospitals” and cited a 1992 “self-regulatory agreement” that the industry signed with Health Department to end the provisions of formula samples to Mexico's hospitals and doctors. Chris Perille, spokesman for Mead Johnson, said the company tells health professionals about the benefits of their products but doesn't break the rules. “Our work with these experts is conducted in accordance with the highest standards of ethics and integrity, and in compliance with all applicable laws, professional requirements and industry guidelines,” Perille said in a statement.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/06/public-health-crisis-in-mexico-as-breastfeeding-rates-drop-experts-claim/
When a child enters puberty earlier than expected, doctors are often at a loss to explain why. But now, researchers have discovered a genetic mutation that they say causes some cases of early puberty. In the study, the researchers in Brazil screened the genomes of 32 people with early puberty from 15 families. (Some cases of early puberty run in families.) Mutations in a gene called MKRN3 were found in 15 people from five of the families. In all of these cases, the mutated MKRN3 gene was inherited from the father, the researchers said. Early puberty, also called precocious puberty, is puberty that occurs before age 8 in girls, or age 9 in boys. Some cases are caused by brain tumors or thyroid problems, but in many cases, a cause is not identified. The average age of puberty onset for those with mutations in the MKRN3 gene was about age 6 for girls, and age 8 for boys. It's not clear exactly how MKRN3 plays a role in puberty, but it may be involved in releasing the “brake” that normally prevents puberty from starting, Dr. Ieuan Hughes, of Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, wrote in an editorial accompanying the study. Puberty begins when the brain starts producing higher levels of a hormone called gonadotropin-releasing hormone. Mutations in the MKRN3 gene may trigger an increase in levels of this hormone at an earlier age, the researchers said. To further investigate the role of MKRN3 in puberty, the researchers studied the brains of mice. They found that levels of MKRN3 gene expression were highest when the mice were young, and reached a low point at the start of puberty, which provides more evidence to tie this gene to puberty. The study is published online June 5 in the New England Journal of Medicine. Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/06/early-puberty-may-be-caused-by-gene-mutation/
Geoff Soza was celebrating his 30th wedding anniversary in Yellowstone National Park when the 64-year-old man learned the hard way that his seemingly healthy breakfast habit of mixing thawed berries with Greek yogurt had exposed him to a national outbreak of hepatitis A. Dozens of illnesses have been reported, and federal officials have recalled a frozen berry mix sold by Costco and Harris Teeter in seven states. Soza, a semi-retired contractor, was resting at his Encinitas home this week after an ordeal that threatened to put him on a liver transplant list. He hadn't felt right in the weeks before leaving for Yellowstone on May 29 -- but his lack of appetite and disorientation didn't merit canceling the trip. “I thought, `I'm getting something. I'm coming down with something' and I thought I'd just ride it out and live with it,” he said. His wife, Rita, said he doesn't complain much as “a very active, tough kind of person,” but he seemed lethargic when they flew to Salt Lake City and rented a car to drive to the park. On the second night of their trip, the Sozas called paramedics who examined Geoff and recommended he visit St. John's Medical Center. They didn't think a medical evacuation was necessary. They thought they could wait until morning, but after a few hours, Rita drove three hours on dark rural roads to Jackson, Wyo. Doctors initially thought Geoff Soza's gall bladder needed to be removed after finding signs of inflammation and stones. But general surgeon Dr. Michael Rosenberg halted the surgery, scheduled for June 1, because of Soza's elevated liver enzymes. After more tests, Soza was diagnosed with hepatitis A, Rosenberg said. Soza could have suffered liver damage or excessive bleeding if the surgery had gone ahead as planned, Rosenberg said. Doctors told Soza they could treat him, but if it didn't go well, they would have him taken to a regional liver transplant center in Utah. “That's when it really struck me, like, `Really? Liver transplant?' ” Geoff Soza said. Luckily, such measures are rarely, if ever, necessary for hepatitis A, Rosenberg said. Hepatitis A can be spread by the ingestion of a microscopic amount of fecal matter from an infected person, typically a food worker who hasn't washed their hands. Symptoms include fever, fatigue, loss of appetite, abdominal pain and jaundice -- a yellowing of the skin or eyes. There is no specific treatment. The ill can feel sick for weeks -- or up to six months -- as their body heals itself. Healthy and health-conscious, the Sozas always inspect their foods and select organic produce. They were surprised to learn that some of the fruit from Townsend Farms of Fairview, Ore., was from outside the United States. The Centers for Disease Control said the recalled berries included products from Argentina, Turkey and Chile, in addition to the United States. But the packaging convinced the Sozas the fruit was all-American because it bears the slogans “Grower. Processor. Distributor.” and “Field to Farm to Family, since 1906.” “It was our distinct impression that these are raised under U.S. standards, especially organic food standards,” Rita Soza said. Geoff Soza said he chose the berries to have for breakfast for about 6 months. The Sozas are fairly adventurous eaters who like to experiment with new foods. Frozen berries were the last thing he thought would make him sick. “I would have thought it would be from fish or something like that, but not ever from fruit, especially berries,” Soza said. Rita Soza said after she learned of the berries, she was upset by Costco's response, saying she unsuccessfully tried to call the number on her membership card for information -- but she couldn't get a live person on the phone. She returned home to find a message on her answering machine Tuesday. Costco Vice President for food safety Craig Wilson said the company contacted 240,000 members with information about the outbreak and received more than 10,000 calls over the weekend. Some of those sickened by the berries have filed lawsuits seeking medical costs and damages, and at least one suit filed in Los Angeles this week seeks class action status. The Sozas say they haven't decided to take legal action.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/06/california-man-fights-hepatitis-after-eating-tainted-berries/