SCIENCE
January 9, 2013 | Melissa Healy
After all those well-intentioned New Year's resolutions have yielded to the force of habit, many of the nation's 79 million obese adults will have a day of reckoning with their primary care physicians. Lose weight and get active, the doctor will order, or risk developing diabetes. Then the MD will scribble a prescription. For most patients, the prescribed treatment will not be a pill. It will be a 12-week program aimed at preventing Type 2 diabetes by getting obese adults to shed as little as 10 pounds and exercise for a little more than 20 minutes a day. That regimen -- the Diabetes Prevention Program -- may soon become the blockbuster prescription medicine you've never heard of. In 2013, it is poised to become the envy of pharmaceutical companies, a new rival to programs such as Weight Watchers, and a target of opportunity for healthcare entrepreneurs.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
September 27, 2012 | By Anna Gorman, Los Angeles Times
On one side of the Los Angeles Sports Arena on Thursday morning, doctors treated patients for swollen feet, breathing problems and high blood pressure. On the other side, county health workers began enrolling them in a free coverage program in preparation for the federal healthcare overhaul. Many of the 4,800 people seeking care at the annual massive free clinic this weekend will become eligible for health insurance in 2014 when the national law takes effect. Organizers said raising awareness about the healthcare changes is crucial.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 11, 2012 | Steve Lopez
I began worrying more than seven years ago, when I first brought him the violins donated by readers. Would they make my new friend, a Juilliard-trained musician who'd suffered a breakdown 35 years earlier, less safe on the streets of skid row? Would he be attacked by thieves? And that was just the beginning of the worries. As I got to know Nathaniel Anthony Ayers better, I fretted not just about whether I could protect him, but also about how to help him. Time passes; the worries never do. Uncertainty lingers constantly when you have a relationship with someone who has a severe mental illness, and watching the video this week of the Kelly Thomas beating was a reminder of how quickly things can go horribly awry.
IMAGE
January 29, 2012 | Chris Woolston
Vin Diesel has embraced his baldness. And it's doubtful Michael Stipe spends much time browsing for toupees. But not all of the 40 million American men with follicularly challenged scalps are going quietly into that bald night. They're raging -- with Rogaine, among other things. Men who want to hang on to their hair have many options, including medications and surgical transplants, says Dr. Marc Avram, hair transplant surgeon and clinical professor of dermatology at Weill-Cornell Medical College in New York City.
WORLD
January 23, 2012 | By Jeffrey Fleishman and Zaid al-Alayaa, Los Angeles Times
Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh left his battered nation Sunday for medical treatment in the U.S., asking his countrymen to forgive him for years of turmoil and vowing to return to the Arabian Peninsula state he has ruled for decades. It was not immediately evident what effect Saleh's absence from Sana would have on a government weakened by protests, resurgent Al Qaeda militants, secessionist rumblings in the south and a rebellion in the north. The president's departure was characteristic of his brash, often unpredictable nature that has long kept his friends and enemies off balance.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
July 13, 2011 | By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times
Tucson shooting suspect Jared Lee Loughner can refuse anti-psychotic medication until his appeal of the treatment prescribed by prison doctors is decided, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. Loughner, who has been deemed mentally ill and incompetent to stand trial in the Jan. 8 shooting rampage that killed six and injured 13, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, is in custody at a federal prison medical center in Missouri. Doctors there began treating him against his will with psychotropic drugs a month ago, prompting his lawyers to ask the courts to halt the forced medication that they said could irreparably harm or even kill the 22-year-old suspect.