Dodgers send more than 20 players home due to flu outbreak

PHOENIX – An outbreak of illness in a major league clubhouse looks something like this:

Dodgers pitcher Brock Stewart wore a surgical mask as he walked to his locker at Camelback Ranch. A quartet of air filtration devices designed to prevent the spread of germs lined the room. Strength and conditioning coach Brandon McDaniel administered vitamins to the healthy. Matt Kemp exaggerated a cough as he staggered to his locker.

“If you’re sick, go home!” closer Kenley Jansen said. There wasn’t much of an audience for his message. The clubhouse was mostly empty. The Dodgers were either eating breakfast or lifting weights or huddling in a quarantine or not even in the building.

A virus causing chills, fatigue and other flulike symptoms overtook the Dodgers on Wednesday. The number of affected totaled 24 or 25, manager Dave Roberts said. The team sent the ill home. The medical staff hoped the symptoms would subside in one to three days, Roberts said.

“I haven’t seen anything like this,” Roberts said.

The illness caused widespread changes to Roberts’ lineup for Wednesday’s game against San Diego. Hyun-Jin Ryu was scratched from his start and replaced by Wilmer Font. The list of affected position players was extensive: Cody Bellinger, Yasiel Puig, Austin Barnes, Logan Forsythe, Enrique Hernandez, Kyle Farmer and Trayce Thompson were all listed on the initial travel roster, but weren’t included in the lineup.

Josh Fields was slated to pitch a session of live batting practice with Rich Hill. Instead, the Dodgers sent Fields home. Hill reported no symptoms – although the team did place a filtration system next to his locker. Alex Wood joked the device was necessary to protect Hill, who at 38 is the second-oldest player on the roster.

Ellen DeGeneres Has Children’s Hospital Room Dedicated To Jimmy Kimmel’s Son

Ellen DeGeneres has honored Jimmy Kimmel and his son Billy by dedicating a room on the Heart Institute floor at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles to the child, the daytime talk show host announced Monday.

Kimmel has been vocal about Billy’s battle with congenital heart disease since he was born last May. Billy had emergency open-heart surgery when he was 3 days old, and had a second operation late last year.

Kimmel has been critical of Republican efforts to reform the health care system, and brought Billy onto the “Jimmy Kimmel Live” stage with him in December to advocate for the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

DeGeneres praised Kimmel for his honesty about his family’s struggles and his willingness to show emotion when talking about health care reform, mentioning a few times when the late-night host has teared up.

“It’s embarrassing to me. I try not to cry,” Kimmel said before DeGeneres introduced her surprise.

“You’re such a great guy, and that was so emotional to see you go through that,” DeGeneres said. “We called our friends at Children’s Hospital LA, including Billy’s surgeon. We have named one of the rooms of the Heart Institute floor in honor of Billy.”

Then DeGeneres and an emotional Kimmel watched a video of doctors and nurses at the hospital standing outside the room dedicated to Billy.
Kimmel later tweeted about the exchange on Tuesday, with a photograph of Billy smiling:

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Mom of girl with high levels of lead in blood thrilled after winning $57M verdict against NYCHA

Dakota Taylor, 12, (l.) and her mother, Tiesha Jones, inside their apartment in the Bronx. (GREGG VIGLIOTTI/FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)

Public housing tenant Tiesha Jones was heartbroken after learning 4-year-old daughter Dakota — life-long resident of a lead-tainted NYCHA apartment — registered an alarmingly dangerous level of lead in her blood.

On Friday, she received a measure of retribution: A Bronx jury handed down a $57 million verdict against the Housing Authority for its failure to inspect her apartment for lead paint as required.

“I was overjoyed. I was crying nonstop,” said Jones, 38, ripping NYCHA officials as “liars” for insisting despite the evidence that her apartment was lead-free.

“The tenants don’t have any hope here. It’s like we’re an afterthought. They’re ruining our quality of life. They’re ruining our hopes and dreams.”

The huge verdict comes as the Housing Authority and Mayor de Blasio struggle to address revelations that the authority had for years neglected to perform thousands of required lead paint checks in its aging apartments.

Even worse, NYCHA then falsely claimed the work had been performed.

Jones moved into the apartment in the Fort Independence development in the Bronx in 1999. By 2010, she was living there with her six children.

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Don’t eat the bread first: Saving carbs for last at mealtime may help control blood sugar levels for diabetics

Diabetics should save bread for last at mealtime to keep their blood sugar under control, new research suggests.

Carbohydrates trigger a surge in blood sugar levels in sufferers – hence many avoid such foods completely.

But scientists have found that leaving bread, potatoes and pasta til the end helps to control these spikes after eating.

Going straight for the meat and vegetables stops type patients from consuming as much of the carbs, causing a decreased spike.

Weill Cornell Medicine researchers said adopting this technique and saving carbs for last is comparable to the effects of insulin.

Lead author Dr Alpana Shukla said: ‘Eating carbohydrates last may be a simple strategy for regulating post-meal glucose levels.

‘We all recognize that while it’s good to eat less carbs to control blood sugar levels, it may sometimes be difficult to follow this advice.’

How was the study carried out?

For the study, 16 type 2 diabetics consumed the exact same meal three different times, eating the items in a different order.

The items were bread, chicken, salad and orange juice, the team of researchers wrote in BMJ Open Diabetes Research and Care.

What did they find?

When people ate the carbs last, their post-meal blood glucose levels were about half as high as when they ate carbs first.

They were also around 40 per cent lower than when they ate all meal components together, the scientists found.

The carbohydrate-last meal was also associated with lower insulin secretion and higher levels of a gut hormone that helps regulate glucose and satiety.

Insulin levels required to keep study participants’ glucose under control were about 25 percent lower when they followed the carbs-last plan.

A hidden killer

Often thought of as harmless, type 2 diabetes is a hidden killer and can lead to heart failure, blindness, kidney disease and leg amputations.

Controlling blood sugar levels is considered to be the key to reducing the risk of life-changing complications for those already diagnosed.

The condition is caused by having too much glucose in the blood because the body’s way of turning it into energy is not working properly.

As it progresses, sufferers often need to maintain a healthy diet, exercise and a combination of medications to manage it.

Someone’s life expectancy with type 2 diabetes is likely to be reduced as a result of the condition, by up to 10 years, it is believed.

Worldwide, there are believed to be around 380 million sufferers. In Britain this has topped 3.8 million, a figure that continues to rise.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-4932604/Saving-bread-help-diabetics.html#ixzz4uEUzaJKJ

Advanced stages of CTE found in Aaron Hernandez’s brain

BOSTON — Former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez had a severe case of the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy, researchers said on Thursday. His lawyer announced a lawsuit against the NFL and the team, accusing them of hiding the true dangers of the sport.

Dr. Ann McKee, the director of the CTE Center at Boston University, said Hernandez had stage 3 (out of 4) of the disease, which can cause violent mood swings, depression and other cognitive disorders.

“We’re told it was the most severe case they had ever seen for someone of Aaron’s age,” attorney Jose Baez said.

Hernandez was 27 when he killed himself in April in the prison cell where he was serving a life-without-parole sentence for murder. Baez said Hernandez had shown signs of memory loss, impulsivity and aggression that could be attributed to CTE.

“When hindsight is 20-20, you look back and there are things you might have noticed,” he said. “But you don’t know.”

Buprenorphine is a opioid used as an alternative to methadone to help addicts recovering from heroin use. Buprenorphine is different from other opioids because it’s a “partial opioid agonist,” which means that when taken in proper prescribed doses, it should produce less euphoria and physical dependence, and therefore a lower potential for misuse. It’s also supposed to have a relatively mild withdrawal profile.

However, if abused by crushing and snorting or injecting, it can suppress breathing and cause dizziness, confusion, unconsciousness and death.

Subutex, the brand name for buprenorphine, is taken as a tablet placed under the tongue and allowed to dissolve.

The brand Suboxone is a combination of buprenorphine and naloxone, an opioid antagonist. Antagonists block the opiate receptors in the brain, keeping the narcotic from creating the high abusers crave.

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The Lonely Road Back From a Very Public Injury

Credit
Michael Steele/Getty Images.

“I thought something was wrong,” he said. “I knew I had to come out.”

A few minutes later, in the treatment area that sits on the other side of the wall from the first-team changing room at City’s Etihad Stadium, Sala’s on-field suspicion — a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament — was confirmed with a few cursory tests.

Gundogan injured his right knee when he and Watford’s Nordin Amrabat collided during a match in December. He returned to the field briefly, but soon realized he could not continue.

Many athletes fear a torn A.C.L. more than any other injury. It is not as visibly painful, or as gruesome, as a broken bone, but it is much more menacing. Not so long ago, it was more often than not the end of a career; even now, many who suffer it find they are never quite the same.

Deep down, as Gundogan watched the second half of that December game against Watford on a laptop in silence, his knee packed in ice, he knew what was coming. He tried to be optimistic.

“People know what to do now,” he thought. “They know how to operate, how to do rehab, how long you are out.”

He had steeled himself for the worst. Now he just had to face it.

What he was facing, though, was intimidating. There would be the delicate hours of surgery, the endless days of rest, the long, slow weeks and months that would teach him first to walk, then to run, and finally to play again.

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