Guidelines

Plantar fasciitis. If you haven't had to deal with it personally, just ask around. Chances are you know lots of people who can describe it in great detail: stabbing heel pain and agonizing steps followed by a frustratingly slow recovery. Plantar fasciitis - an inflammation of the plantar facsia, a thick band of tissue that runs along the arch from the heel to the toes - has become so ubiquitous that podiatrists can practically make the diagnosis before a patient even sets foot in their office.

WASHINGTON - President Obama said Thursday he was troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may "chill" investigative journalism and said he had asked Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. to review Justice Department guidelines for going after reporters or their records. "Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs. Our focus must be on those who break the law," Obama said, referring to those who leak secret information. The statement seemed to mark a departure for the president, who has been particularly determined to investigate those in his administration who leak national security information to reporters.

Michele and Russell Poland's credit was shot, but they managed to buy their suburban dream home anyway. After a business bankruptcy and a home foreclosure, they turned to a rare option in this era of tightfisted banking - a subprime loan. The Polands paid nearly $10,000 in upfront fees for the privilege of securing a mortgage at 10.9% interest. And they had to raid their retirement account for a 35% down payment. Most borrowers would balk at such stiff terms. But with prices rising, the Polands wanted to snag a four-bedroom home in Temecula near top-rated schools for their 5-year-old son. By later this year, they figure, they'll be able to refinance into a standard loan.

Citing recent evidence that HIV infections are best managed when treated early, an influential panel of medical experts has finalized its recommendation that all people ages 15 to 65 be screened for the virus that causes AIDS. The recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force seeks to address one of the key challenges in the fight against HIV/AIDS: The window during which patients respond best to treatment is also the time when symptoms of the disease are least noticeable.

It's a good thing dietary guidelines aren't laws. If they were, just about all of us could be found guilty. Even if you load fruit onto your whole-grain cereal and pile greens on your sandwiches, chances are you're regularly falling short on one or more nutrients. Many people take multivitamins to fill in these gaps, but since everyone's different, how do you pick the right pill? You can't buy a multivitamin with your name on it, but you can buy one aimed at your gender.

Guidelines for diagnosing Alzheimer’s — the memory-stealing disease — have been updated for the first time in 27 years. The new guidelines recognize the disease as a continuum, not a single stage, according to a release Tuesday by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer’s Assn. In 1984, Alzheimer’s was defined as having a single symptom — dementia — and the diagnosis was only confirmed at autopsy by the abnormal amounts of proteins forming plaques and tangles in the brain.

Essential tremor is the most common type of tremor disorder. The trembling of the hands, head or voice can be insignificant and require no treatment. But other people have severe symptoms and can benefit from medical intervention. New guidelines published Wednesday by the American Academy of Neurology should help doctors explain treatment options to their patients and spur more research into the condition, which affects an estimated 10 million Americans. The condition, which usually starts after age 40, can be treated with the high blood pressure drug propranolol and the seizure drug primidone.

The U.S. Department of Transportation doesn't want you tweeting on Twitter, poking on Facebook, or giving a "thumbs up" to new music on Pandora when you're behind the wheel -- unless your car is parked. And to that end, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced on Thursday the "first-ever federally proposed guidelines to encourage automobile manufacturers to limit the distraction risk for in-vehicle electronic devices. " Translated, LaHood and the Transportation Department are calling for an end to distractions caused by our in-car infotainment systems, which are increasingly relying on touch screens to operate and bringing navigation, music and even social networking apps into the cabin of our rides.

I know a guy who's an actor on a cable TV show. Our kids attend the same school and sometimes our paths cross at track meets and other events. He can slip by unbothered in public for a long while — until someone steps forward and violates an unwritten code of L.A. life by shouting out the name of the character he plays. Suddenly a kind of feeding frenzy begins. The poor man is surrounded by autograph seekers, and cameras are pointed in his direction. Seeing this, I shake my head and think: A real Angeleno would never do that.

The commissioner's office has provided the Oakland Athletics with tentative guidelines for a potential move to San Jose, according to three people familiar with the matter but not authorized to discuss it. The existence of the guidelines does not necessarily mean the A's will move to San Jose soon, or at all. However, if the A's can satisfy the concerns of the league office, Commissioner Bud Selig could let club owners decide whether to approve the...

Dear Travel Writer: Welcome to the cornerstone of what we do. What follows is the most important information contained in these several pages. The Los Angeles Times values honesty, fairness and truth. We understand the difficulties of the profession, but we also know that our reputation - and yours - rests on ensuring that our readers receive the best information possible. These guidelines are from our own code of ethics, constructed over many months and with much care.

Solitary confinement in immigration detention centers across the nation is often overused and arbitrarily applied. According to data obtained by the National Immigrant Justice Center, as many as 300 immigrants, or about 1% of all detainees in the 50 largest facilities in the country, are confined to small cells on any given day, even though many pose no security risk. In many cases, they're held there for 23 hours each day without a break, often for weeks. The use of solitary confinement is troubling enough in regular state and federal prisons, where inmates held in such conditions for prolonged periods are at risk for severe mental illness and suicide, according to medical experts.

Laboratories performing exome or genomic sequencing tests that help physicians diagnose and treat disease should routinely look for a welter of unrelated genetic variations that are known to be associated with illness and should tell physicians if they've found them, a first-of-its-kind set of guidelines recommends. The new guidelines, released Thursday by the American College of Genetics and Genomics, represent a first effort to navigate the ethical challenges of new genomic technology and offer patients, doctors and laboratories a framework for making decisions about what information should be shared when genetic scans are performed.

The controversial practice of motorcycle lane-splitting is legal in California. Or at least it's not illegal. Motorists may hate it, and critics may say it's unsafe. But the California Highway Patrol recently posted guidelines suggesting they condone the practice. According to them, though, there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. The agency's guidelines rest on a fundamental rule: a motorcycle is allowed to pass between cars in adjoining lanes of traffic as long as it does so safely.

The commissioner's office has provided the Oakland Athletics with tentative guidelines for a potential move to San Jose, according to three people familiar with the matter but not authorized to discuss it. The existence of the guidelines does not necessarily mean the A's will move to San Jose soon, or at all. However, if the A's can satisfy the concerns of the league office, Commissioner Bud Selig could let club owners decide whether to approve the...

JERUSALEM -- Rocked by a scandal involving birth-control treatments for Ethiopian Jews, Israel's health ministry issued new guidelines on the use of the injections known commercially as Depo-Provera. In a recent letter to the country's four HMOs reported Sunday , Ron Gamzu, director general of the health ministry, instructed gynecologists against renewing prescriptions in cases where the patient does not fully understand the treatment's implications. The ministry's new policy comes in response to a controversy exposed last month by local investigative journalist Gal Gabbay, who reported that Jewish Ethiopian women awaiting emigration to Israel in transit camps in Ethiopia were coaxed into the treatment with little medical explanation and led to understand this was a condition for moving to Israel.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued long-awaited guidelines Friday to prevent political interference in science and promote transparency at federal agencies, a move that drew cautious praise from activists in the scientific community who had been dismayed by an 18-month delay. The guidelines are a major step in a lengthy process that had left some of President Obama's allies questioning his commitment to reversing what some considered a hostile environment toward science under the George W. Bush administration.

WASHINGTON--Advertisers and food and beverage industry officials called the government's new guidelines for advertising directed toward children a "reckless" maneuver in light of today's fragile economy. After Congress asked the Federal Trade Commission, along with three other federal agencies, to develop a strategy to target childhood obesity, the FTC released a set of guidelines in April. They call on advertisers to encourage children to choose healthy foods and to limit the amount of saturated fat, trans fat, added sugars and sodium in food marketed to children.

California's top cop has issued guidelines on what steps software developers should take to protect the privacy of consumers on mobile devices. Until recently, the data collection practices of mobile apps makers -- and the rest of the mobile ecosystem such as advertising networks and data brokers -- have been loosely regulated. But last year, California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris began a campaign to extend privacy protections that are commonplace on the Web to smartphones and tablets.

On a blustery winter morning this week in Santa Monica, the scene in Palisades Park was a modern-day California postcard: Mothers were power-walking strollers past sweatbands, yoga mats, hand weights and resistance cords. One boot camp group was bouncing through plyometrics and another was stretched out on their bellies like Superman. A band of stair walkers marched up and down the steps connecting the park to the beach below. The park, as it is most days, was a giant outdoor gym, and one with stunning ocean views.