Memory

You've heard about the "Wheat Belly" diet, right? Well, technically, it doesn't exist. Dr. William Davis points out that the word "diet" does not appear on either the cover of his bestselling "Wheat Belly" book published in 2011 or on the follow-up, "Wheat Belly Cookbook," which was published last month and already tops bestseller lists. And that omission is intentional, Davis said. "Wheat Belly" is about stripping your plate of a substance that contributes to heart disease, causes joint pain, inflammation, foggy thinking, bloating and much more, Davis said.

BALTIMORE - As long as there are 8-year-olds, there will be baseball. Bud Selig has produced revenue-sharing and value-escalation. He deserves much credit. The mothers of this country have produced a never-ending supply of baseball customers. They deserve more. Once upon a time - Sunday, actually - a grandfather accompanied his 8-year-old grandson to a major league baseball game. His granddaughter was there too, but she had a friend with her. If you are a 10-year-old girl, you cannot be seen in public at a baseball game with your grandpa and little brother without a friend along.

He had just made the final out in a city where his name is booed, his jersey is reviled, and his team had been swept. His power had disappeared, his swing was spotty, and his season was a wreck. Matt Kemp would have been excused for quickly disappearing through the dugout at San Francisco's AT&T Park on Sunday night and forgetting all about an earlier promise to third base coach Tim Wallach. “But that was the neat deal about it,” Wallach said. “He was standing there waiting for me.” PHOTOS: Greatest moments in Dodger Stadium history Kemp was waiting to cross the diamond to sign an autograph for a terminally ill Dodgers fan, waiting to summon the passion necessary to pass along the hope that he now found so precious.

Rosemary McClure's May 5 article on Avalon turning 100 was outstanding ["Still Shining"]. Another way for visitors to experience Avalon's golden days is to have breakfast or lunch at the Inn on Mt. Ada, [William] Wrigley's home, completed in 1921. By calling (800) 608-7669 up to one month in advance, you can book a breakfast for $25 or lunch for $33, both plus tax and tip. Guests are served their meals in the family dining room. All first-floor rooms are open to view. Upstairs is available only to overnight guests of the inn. The food is excellent, views spectacular, and for a short time you can live like a Wrigley.

No one wants to hear that he or she has Alzheimer's disease. But if the beta-amyloid plaques that are the disorder's key physical hallmark could be detected before memory loss and cognitive troubles were evident to all, would you want to know? And since no treatment currently works to stem the inexorable progress ofAlzheimer's, who would pay for a costly test to detect it early -- and why? Those questions are no longer hypothetical. Last week, the FDA approved an agent called Florbetapir F 18 injection (to be marketed as Amyvid)

Scientists are one step closer to understanding how to erase painful fear memories by successfully erasing them in a small group of people, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science. The intervention requires no drug, acting through behavioral intervention alone. The new report follows a series of studies in which researchers have made significant headway in understanding where such fear memories are processed in the brain, and how to erase them for good. Much of this research has been carried out in rodents, where researchers have shown that it is possible to erase fear memories by both pharmacological and behavioral means.

An omega-3 fatty acid plentiful in fish oil boosts the ability of healthy young adults, whose brains are already at their peak levels of speed and performance, to hold several items in memory for a short time, a study has found. The study is the first to suggest that fish oil might enhance cognitive performance in healthy people by boosting their working memory. The latest research adds to evidence of fish oil's beneficial neuropsychiatric effects: Supplementation with the docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)

Around the time of menopause, many women complain of mental slippage. But, as if to inflict some perverse trick upon them, cognitive scientists have found that they actually perform no more poorly than women who do not have such complaints. (Reassuring in a way: You're not losing your memory, but you may be losing your mind.) A new study finds that both the women who complain of memory problems and the cognitive scientists are right. These women haven't fallen behind -- not yet at least-- because their brains are working harder to keep up. The study, presented Sunday at the Society for Neuroscience's yearly confab -- held this year in Washington, D.C. -- recruited 22 healthy women with an average age of 57, all post-menopausal.

Upon reading about the difficulty in finding a proper memorial to the people who perished in the Oklahoma City bombing (April 19), may I suggest: Instead of a monument to the dead, why not put all those millions of dollars in a fund to establish day care centers throughout the city, which are so sorely needed. Each center could be named for a child who perished or was critically injured, thus perpetuating his or her memory and benefiting thousands of children and working parents.

It came with us always. First the old upright, then the Baldwin, then the Steinway grand, no matter how often we moved, or how far - she'd no more have left it behind than she'd have left me. There was, in those days, much shouting and storming about, the screeching of tires as my father sped off in the night. When I was 10, they split up for good, and we landed near Palo Alto, where my mother was left, a single mother in the suburbs, in her 40s, in the 1950s, a decade that did not take kindly to divorcees.

The first time my mother made leg of lamb, she never connected the two events. The second time, she thought it was a coincidence. The third time, she knew it was a curse. Every time she prepared leg of lamb, my father was laid off a few days later. The first time it was for a few weeks; the second time for a few months; the third time for more than a year. My father had a union job at a film-processing lab, and layoffs - and eventual rehirings - were common during the 1960s. He was laid off a few more times, but never after eating leg of lamb.

A judge ruled on Thursday that The Times could not be stopped from reporting on testimony from the top manager of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in a deposition for an open-government lawsuit. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Luis A. Lavin said that in asking the court to deny Times reporters access to the testimony and a prohibition against articles about it, the commission sought “essentially a gag order.” “This is a public matter,” Lavin said of the lawsuit brought against the commission by The Times and a 1st Amendment group, Californians Aware.

Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center improved slightly from an F to a D in a national hospital safety report released Wednesday, while Cedars-Sinai Medical Center stayed at a C grade. Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit healthcare quality organization, based the scores on an analysis of infections, injuries, medication errors and other problems that cause patient harm or death. The organization publicizes the scores in an effort to inform patients and reduce safety problems, said Leah Binder, its president and chief executive.

Mahalo nui loa ("thank you very much") for the Special Hawaii Issue [April 21]. Fabulous memories of several visits to the islands in paradise were made vivid by the stories, pictures and maps of Oahu, Molokai and the cruise with stops at the Big Island, Kauai and Maui. One bit of cautionary advice: Limit each visit to Hawaii to no longer than five days. By Day 7, island fever sets in and your vacation turns into "Paradise Lost. " Aloha. Dan Anzel Los Angeles Fast passport renewal Regarding "Fast … and Safe" [On the Spot, by Catharine Hamm, April 21]

White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles has agreed to pay $14.1 million to settle allegations that it paid illegal kickbacks to physicians to get their patient referrals. The settlement announced Friday by the U.S. Justice Department stemmed from a whistle-blower complaint filed under seal in 2008 by two Los Angeles doctors who objected to the hospital's practices. The two internal-medicine physicians, Hector Luque and Alejandro Gonzalez, will share $2.8 million as their portion of the settlement.

In a landmark case that could fundamentally alter how therapists do their jobs--and could increase their liability--a Napa Valley Superior Court jury ruled Friday that two Orange County therapists implanted false memories of child abuse in a patient and wrongly harmed her father. The jury decided on a 10-2 vote that therapist Marche Isabella, Dr. Richard Rose, chief of psychiatry at Western Medical Center in Anaheim, and the hospital were negligent in their treatment of Holly Ramona, now 23.

Forgotten how to do something you just learned yesterday? Consider the possibility that last night's sleep was punctuated by mini-awakenings, robbing you of the ability to commit that new skill to memory. You might have gotten eight hours of sleep, and may not even feel tired. But when sleep is interrupted frequently--as it is in a wide range of disorders, including sleep apnea, alcoholism and Alzheimer's disease--the ability to learn new things can be dramatically impaired, says a new study conducted on mice.

One girl gasps as the grainy black-and-white footage rolls: Women are screaming, thrusting their babies at soldiers boarding a helicopter. In the next scene, hundreds of refugees packed in the belly of a rickety boat rock in the ocean, desperately trying to flee their homeland after the fall of Saigon. Gathered in a Garden Grove office, young adults who grew up in the shadow of war watch the images, only tasting the horrors their parents and relatives endured when South Vietnam fell to Communist forces 38 years ago. For many in immigrant communities like Orange County's Little Saigon, the memory of April 30 - "Black April" to those who lived through it - has been passed on only through photographs, stories or rough video clips.

WACO, Texas - With the flag-draped coffins of 12 first-responders before him, President Obama  lauded the courage of the volunteer firefighters who rushed toward the scene of a massive fertilizer plant explosion and gave their lives trying to help their neighbors. “No words adequately describe the courage that was displayed on that deadly night,” he said at a memorial service Thursday. “What I can do is offer the love, the support and the prayers of a nation.” Last week's blast, which was caused by a fire, killed 14 people, nearly all volunteer first-responders.