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Daily Rounds: Seniors Screwed; Get Off That Treadmill! Wii For Your Grandma; Big Fat Dangers; Contacts Recalled

Plan To Cut Deficit Would Sock Seniors On Medicare | WBUR & NPR "John Rother, executive vp for the AARP, criticized the plan in a statement. The co-chair's proposal would lead to "dramatic cost shifts in the Medicare program, with most beneficiaries experiencing significant increases in cost-sharing," he said." (WBUR | 90.9 FM)

What's the greenest way to exercise in the winter? - By Brian Palmer - Slate Magazine "Treadmills are, by far, the most popular machines in the club, but they're also the most prodigious consumers of energy.On average, a treadmill uses between 600 and 700 watts of energy. That's the equivalent of watching three or four 46-inch LCD televisions or leaving 50 compact fluorescent light bulbs burning, for the duration of your workout. If you ran for two-and-a-half hours per week—the government's recommendation for ordinary adults—generating electricity for the treadmill would emit about 110 pounds of carbon dioxide annually.* (That's about 1 percent of the annual CO2 emissions of the average car.)" (Slate)

Why Wii Fit is Best for Grandparents - NYTimes.com" A representative case study published last year found that an 89-year-old woman with a balance disorder and a history of falls significantly improved her scores on a series of balance tests after six sessions of Wii Bowling, an encouraging outcome given that, as the study authors point out, falls remain the leading cause of injury-related deaths in the elderly. A broader study presented last month at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego produced similar results."  (ell.blogs.nytimes.com)

How Dangerous Is Being Fat? New Data On The Meaning Of Body Mass Index : Shots - Health News Blog : NPR "If your body mass index is between 20 and 24.9, you're golden. You won't live forever, but your chances of living longer than those with other BMI values are statistically better, according to an analysis of 1.46 million adults in this week's New England Journal of Medicine."  (npr.org)

Half a million contact lenses recalled - Health - msnbc.com (MSNBC) "Johnson & Johnson, which has been beset by product recalls, on Wednesday confirmed that it recalled nearly five times as many contact lenses as the 100,000 boxes it announced in August due to eye stinging."

This program aired on December 2, 2010. The audio for this program is not available.

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