Misinformation is nothing new, but our 24-hour news cycle and social media have made things worse than ever. Falsehoods were 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than the truth, according to one study.
Some basic tips: Never share anything if you’ve only read the headline. And if you’re unsure if an article is accurate, don’t share it. Here’s what else to know about health misinformation.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest applauds the California state legislature for passing AB-1341, a bill that would ban the sale of over-the-counter diet pills and weight-loss supplements to minors in California.
Magnum XXL 9800, Jaguar Power, Kangaroo Intense Alpha 3000. Those are just a few of the tainted dietary supplements that, until recently, were sold on walmart.com and other websites.
Among other reforms, Senator Murray's bill requires companies to publicly list their supplements in an FDA database for the first time, improves oversight of high-risk supplements, and expressly prohibits products fraudulently marketed as dietary supplements.
“In short-term clinical trials looking at changes in blood pressure and blood vessel dilation, cocoa flavanols looked promising, and reductions in cholesterol and inflammatory markers were also seen in some trials,” says JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
The COSMOS-Mind trial was funded by the National Institute on Aging to see if cocoa flavanols or multivitamins could help people stay mentally sharp as they age.
