Reports have often cited parents’ anecdotal claims that artificial food coloring aggravates their childrens’ behavioral problems.

Taking dyes out of kids’ diets is a big part of Minneapolis-based Dr. Arlen Lieberman’s practice. Lieberman is a chiropractor.

“It’s definitely a big factor in what I look at when I talk to the parents is what kind of food are you giving your kid?” Lieberman said.

At the clinic Lieberman shares with his daughter, also a chiropractor and nutritionist, they’ve seen again and again the change food dyes make.

“They have risks and they have no benefit really the only benefit that they have is the look,” said Dr. Krystle Lieberman, also a chiropractor and a registered dietician.

Food manufacturers in the U.S. can use up to nine dyes in food. The dyes Red 40, Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 make up 90 percent of the market and cause the most concern according to those who believe there is a connection.

Take a look at ingredient labels and you’ll see them everywhere: in cereal, pickless, cough syrup, toothpaste, waffles, crackers – the list is endless.

Synthetic dyes are sometimes even sprayed on fresh fruits to sharpen their shades.

Dr. David Wallinga at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy said he believes the science is there for customers to be concerned. Wallinga, a medical doctor, cites more than two dozen studies that point to problems.

Most were done decades ago, while now we eat more dyes than ever before, a 5-fold increase in 50 years, according to Wallinga.

Wallinga said dyes interfere with our metabolism. The yellow dyes deplete zinc levels enough in some kids, he said, to cause hyperactivity.

An added concern: the chemicals come from petroleum products that Wallinga said have shown to be carcinogenic.

“There is no necessary reason to put petroleum dyes in food. Period,” he said.

Countries across Europe have already responded to the controversy. For the most part, you won’t find the dyes in food on grocery store shelves. The European Union requires foods using synthetic dyes to carry a warning label.

Rather than scaring customers away, American companies like Kellogg’s, General Mills and Kraft Foods did away with the synthetic dyes in their overseas products.

“Why shouldn’t American consumers be treated with the same respect, and conversely, why should the U.S. be the dumping ground for worrisome food dyes?” Dr. Wallinga asked.

The Food and Drug Administration took up the issue last spring. Its scientists found that dyes could affect children who already have behavioral disorders. But the agency said most children won’t see a reaction. So the FDA voted against putting warning labels on foods, but it believes more research is still needed.

Some grocery chains, like Whole Foods, have made the decision themselves and won’t sell synthetic dyes.

Prof. Ted Labuza, a food engineer at the Food and Science at the University of Minnesota, said he believes it comes down to customers making choices.

While other countries operate out of precaution, he sees our system as limited. In this country, food additives can’t be tested on people so scientists have to rely on several different factors for study results.

“There’s no way to be 100 percent safe. You can’t test your way to safety. You can’t inspect your way to safety,” Labuza said.

One potential solution to the food dye question is being developed in a small lab in St. Paul and planted in the ground in southwest Minnesota.

The company Suntava started as a way to breed corn resistant to common pests. Scientists found something much more powerful in their purple corn, a compound called anthocyanin with more antioxidants than blueberries.

Suntava CEO Bill Petrich said it’s a huge find. “I believe this is a game-changing technology that can positively affect many lives for years to come, ” Petrich said. “I think the market is global, it’s not just U.S. it’s global.”

The research led to the realization of the corn’s potential as a natural color. Natural food colors can be as much as 20 times more expensive to produce.

The Hopkins, MN school district decided it was worth the investment. It’s taken dramatic steps to get dyes out of its schools.

Barb Mechura, the school’s nutrition director, said it’s changed their approach to cooking.

“Our kitchen looks a little differently because we need additional equipment for scratch cooking,” Mechura said. “We don’t need as much room in the freezer right now because we don’t have all the frozen, manufactured foods.”

Cooks are constantly checking labels for food dyes and if they can’t find a natural substitute, it won’t be served.

An important part of the curriculum for all of their kids includes reading food labels. For the last few years, the district’s lunchrooms have been considered leaders in school nutrition. After making many changes, teachers said they see fewer outbursts in class.

“It makes sense that if we’re going to put a lot of synthetic and artificial stuff into it our cells aren’t going to have the energy they need to create a healthy body, a healthy brain, helps us be happy,” Mechura said.

In a statement, the FDA said “Approved food color additives are considered safe. There has not been a cause and effect relationship established between color additives and hyperactivity in children.”

A spokesperson from General Mills said “We comply with all regulations where we do business and monitor global regulatory developments. Differences around the globe in product formulation have long existed, and are due to different laws or consumer preferences

Kraft Foods said all the food colors they use are approved and deemed safe for food use by the US FDA and the European Food Safety Authority. However, a company spokeswoman said the company knows that some consumers prefer foods with fewer ingredients ad that’s why Kraft now makes some products without any added colors.

(Copyright 2012 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

The study looked at patients with damaged hearts from myocardial infarctions, or heart attacks, and found stem cells reduced the amount of scarring and helped hearts regrow healthy muscle.

“This discovery challenges the conventional wisdom that, once established, scar is permanent and that, once lost, healthy heart muscle cannot be restored,” study co-author Dr. Eduardo Marban, director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute and inventor of the techniques used in the procedure, said in a hospital written statement.

For the study, researchers tested 25 patients, an average of 53 years old, who had experienced heart attacks that had left them with damaged heart muscle. Eight patients served as controls and were treated with conventional treatments including medication, and diet and exercise recommendations. The other 17 patients received stem cells, which researchers derived from raisin-sized pieces of patients’ own heart tissue.

The researchers found that patients treated with stem cells experienced almost a 50 percent reduction of heart attack scars within 12 months of treatment, while the eight patients who received conventional treatment saw no reductions in damage.

“This has never been accomplished before, despite a decade of cell therapy trials for patients with heart attacks. Now we have done it,” Marban said. “The effects are substantial, and surprisingly larger in humans than they were in animal tests.”

The study is published online in the Feb 13. Issue of The Lancet.

One of the 17 patients in the study, 59-year-old Fred Lesikar of Menifee, Calif., said his major heart attack reduced his heart function by more than 30 percent.

“The doctors treating me told me that there was no way to repair a heart damaged by a heart attack,” he told Cedars-Sinai. But then he saw a news report on the study and called Cedars-Sinai, asking to be a part of the trial. “Today I’m feeling super – better than I did before the heart attack.”

Dr. Sonia Skarlatos, deputy director of the division of cardiovascular sciences at the NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, told CNN that the procedure needs to be tested on more patients before it rolls out to the public, but remains hopeful it can improve quality of life for heart attack patients.

She said, “By preventing the consequences of a heart attack you may be able to prevent further down the heart failure that happens in [many of these] patients.”

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Adele’s voice, of course, is back. Her recent vocal cord surgery was a success, and she won six Grammy awards to prove it.

But the doctor who performed Adele’s surgery said he is seeing serious voice trauma routinely in non-singers who use their voices a lot.

“Now people have cell phones, now they’re in constant communication” said Dr. Steven Zeitels, Director of the Center for Laryngeal Surgery and Voice Rehabilitation at Massachusetts General Hospital, who removed a polyp on Adele’s vocal cords. “It’s not just performers. It can happen to executives. It can happen to someone on Wall Street, teachers, all kinds of folks who have huge vocal responsibilities.”

Zeitels said he expects to see even more cases in the future. Technology leads to more communication in general, explained Zeitels, “which is actually putting stress on, and causing trauma to, our vocal cords.”

And it isn’t just mobile telephones. The spread of voice recognition platforms has people giving more and more input by voice, rather than keystroke, and our voice boxes simply were not designed to handle all the high-tech talking.

“Today, most people’s vocal down time is when they are manually inputting on a portable device or on a keyboard on a computer,” said Zeitels. “(As) voice recognition platforms replace manual inputting with keyboards and hand-held devices, voice trauma will increase significantly.”

Zeitels also noted that technology in general has accelerated our productivity letting us do more work, faster than ever.

“The increased work product results in more verbal meetings and phone calls regardless of what percentage of communications are electronic,” explained Zeitels.

More meetings mean more talking. Add cell phones and smart devices and that’s the “sound” of trouble.

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But that voice was in trouble last November, when the 23-year-old underwent vocal cord microsurgery to stop recurrent bleeding from a benign polyp, a problem that had caused her to cancel tour dates.

The surgery took place at Massachusetts General Hospital, performed by Dr. Steven Zeitels.

“When you have vocal bleeding, you simply can’t perform,” Dr. Zeitels said.

Based on Adele’s a capella performance of her hit song “Rolling in the Deep” to 60 minutes Anderson Cooper and during her Grammy performance, it’s safe to say her voice sounds great.

What does the man who helped Adele get to the stage have to say?

“We have generally tried to advance the state-of-the-art of voice surgery over the last 15 years, developing instruments, laser technologies, and the ability to do things that simply weren’t done even 10 years ago, with the very famous case of Julie Andrews,” explained Dr. Zeitels.

Andrews, who lost her singing voice after a botched surgery in 1997, has undergone four procedures with Zeitels since, and currently works with him on a voice restoration foundation. Other famous singers he’s treated include Cher, Lionel Ritchie, Steven Tyler, John Mayer, and Roger Daltrey.

Vocal cord polyps are sometimes caused by years of vocal abuse, the America Speech-Language-Hearing Association said.The growths appear as blister-like lesions or bumps on the cord. Symptoms of a polyp include a rough, scratchy voice, a sensation of a lump in the throat, neck pain, vocal fatigue, and a decrease in pitch range.

Dr. Zeitels said that he used laser technology called KTP, or a green light laser to remove the non-cancerous polyp from Adele. For the singer to completely heal, she needed to not talk for two full months after surgery. “It was really hard to get my point across, ” Zeitels said.

But the surgeon says Adele’s famous case has spread awareness, and is leading others with vocal cord problems to seek help, sometimes for more serious issues.

“They’re helping us get the word out, and that is what has been most gratifying recently with Adele’s case – the majority of the people who are seeking our help are sick. They have real serious issues going on” said Zeitels.

He said other serious problems that damage a person’s voice – regardless of whether they are a professional singer – include cancer, badly blocked airways, or damage from earlier surgeries.

Zeitels said any time a singer (or singing teacher) performs with vocal cords that are not 100 percent – for example, if the person has the sniffles – the vocal cords might swell and lead to damage over time.

As for Adele, Zeitels said, “I think she is repaired and I think she is going to continue to do wonderfully.”

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Former San Francisco Supervisor Bevan Dufty said the idea, typically referred to as a “wet house,” is a safer and cheaper way to have alcoholics drinking in a controlled environment, as San Francisco spends about $13.5 million a year on the top 225 street inebriates.

KCBS’ Anna Duckworth Reports:

“That means that we’re spending money on emergency services, ambulances, shelters and jails, all of these ways that we’re spending money that are not really productive and not having good outcomes,” he said.

Dufty is basing his plan on a pilot program that has operated in Seattle since 2005, where employees don’t stop residents from drinking. Instead, that program has found that counseling and support often helps cut the number of drinkers.

“What we saw in Seattle is that after a few months, 10 percent of the people that lived in wet housing became clean and sober,” said Dufty. “And I couldn’t imagine not drinking and living in that environment, but they do.”

After one year of the wet house program in Seattle, a University of Washington study found the city had saved about $4 million.

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New Life Shoes are designed specifically to accommodate the changes experienced by late-term mothers.

Dr. Eugene Spector, Chief of Podiatry at California Pacific Medical Center, told CBS 5 the biggest foot problems he sees are swelling and a condition known as “over-pronation.”

“It comes mainly from a change in the center of gravity of the patient,” Spector explained. “The other issue is the relaxing hormones from being pregnant will cause the ligaments to stretch out, and the foot pronates more than it should.”

In an overly pronated foot, the heel bone angles in and the arch can flatten. Spector noted that the condition can lead to arch pain, heel pain and pain in the ball of the foot. He recommends pregnant women wear supportive shoes, shoes that breathe well and shoes that expand well.

“We start with over-the-counter supports going on to custom made orthotics (as needed),” he said.

That’s where New Life Shoes can help.

“It allows for expansion of the foot, both lengthwise and verticle-wise, so 360 degree expansion.” said Mark Connors, President of New Life Shoes. The shoes have five different layers of cushioning and support, and the layers are customizable. “You can put in or take out various pieces of the shoe to accommodate changes in the foot.”

Monica Allison, who is expecting her third child in June, likes the idea of a shoe that expands along with your foot.

“Both times my feet would swell up, and I usually have to go up a size in a shoe. I think this is a great concept. I have two young children who are very active. I want a comfortable shoe,” said Allison, who also likes the velcro strap that lets you put the shoes on with one hand.

In addition to an athletic shoe, other styles are in development, including Mary Janes and sandals. The shoes cost about $80, and they will be available on-line in mid-February.

“Wonderful idea,” said Spector, who believes the added support will help with the arch and heel pain. And, he adds, expandable shoes are particularly good, since you never really know what to expect when you’re expecting.

“Most of the people will go back down to their regular size – however, there are people who will end up with a larger foot. For women who buy a lot of shoes, that means a chance to go have a new wardrobe.”

(Copyright 2012 by CBS San Francisco and Bay City News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

Experts will show victims and loved ones how to navigate the court system, as well as get protection, legal help and health services, said Carla Collins with the Santa Clara County Office of Women’s Policy.

“With teen violence, it does look a little bit different than what we think of with adults,” she said, noting excessive texting as one potential method. The underlying dynamic of the relationships, however, is the same.

KCBS’ Anna Duckworth Reports:

The workshop will focus primarily on teaching young people to recognize signs of the controlling behavior that can lead to overt physical violence.

“Most of it is going to be recognizing the red flags, looking for the symptoms of abuse so that you know what to identify,” Collins said.

She said 1 in 3 teenage girls experience some sort of abuse in their romantic relationships, and nearly 80 percent of teen girls who’ve been physically abused in intimate relationships continue to date their abusers.

Collis said experts from the court system, law enforcement and other non-profit agencies all volunteered their time for the workshop because funding for domestic violence prevention has been cut so severely.

“In terms of prevention, there’s almost no funding anymore,” she said.

The county has held similar workshops for adults since 2007.

Santa Clara County had 16 domestic violence deaths last year.

The Domestic Violence Information and Resources Collaborative Teen Dating Workshop takes place Feb. 9 from 5:30 p.m. – 8 p.m. at Sacred Heart Community Services, 1381 S 1st St., San Jose.

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The woman who died had contracted Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and was identified by the Marin Independent Journal as 59-year-old Aline Shaw of San Rafael.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) causes a dementia that progresses more rapidly than others such as Alzheimer’s disease or vascular dementia. Patients eventually go into a coma and die.

The variant form of CJD is the human version of bovine spongiform encephalophathy (BSE), commonly known as ‘mad cow disease.’  BSE is a progressive neurological disorder of cattle that become infected with an abnormal protein in the meat and bone meal they are fed, according to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention. Humans get the variant version of CJD when eating the meat of animals infected with BSE.

Shaw passed away suddenly on Jan. 27 from non-variant – or classic – form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, according to the Marin County Health Dept. The non-variant form has only two known causes: genetic mutation and contaminants introduced during a medical procedure, according to Dr. Craig Lindquist, Marin County’s interim public health officer.

Lindquist said state officials notified him of the two cases on Friday. Lindquist could not identify the victims, but confirmed to the newspaper that one had died.

BSE spread among cattle in Great Britain and peaked with almost 1,000 cases a week in 1993, according to the CDC. Through the end of 2010, more than 145,500 cases were confirmed among more than 35,000 herds.

Lindquist said there is no link between the two Creutzfeldt-Jakob cases in Marin County, and it is not clear which form of the disease is afflicting the living victim.

“There is no threat or danger. Beef is very safe to eat,” Lindquist said.

Experts at the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention are aware of only 3 previous U.S. cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. CDC officials said those earlier victims were all exposed to BSE while abroad.

“We know that there have been no mad cow diseases originating in the United States,” said Dr. James Cullor, director of the UC Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Center.

“The processing system, the surveillance system from the farm all the way through, is vigilant,” he said, making a local outbreak of mad cow very unlikely.

Marin County officials have yet to determine the source that infected the two Bay Area victims.

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It’s a white-hot political issue right now, but the Obama administration is looking for a way to cool things down.

San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer has written what he calls a “letter to the faithful,” which will be given out at all Masses this weekend. In it, he calls the new federal policy “radical” and “insidious.”

KCBS’ Doug Sovern Reports:

Niederauer told KCBS it’s not fair for the government to rule that religiously affiliated hospitals and schools, but not churches themselves, must include contraception coverage in their employees’ health insurance plans.

“Because we hire non-Catholics as well as Catholics, because we serve non-Catholics as well as Catholics, we’re being told that we’re really not a religious institution that can follow the teachings of its faith,” said Niederauer. “For us, it’s not about birth control, it’s about religious freedom.”

California Senator Barbara Boxer points out that church-affiliated hospitals and schools get federal funding and tax benefits.

“We want to make sure that the religious freedom of all Americans is protected, and that means for women who work for institutions which serve the general public,” said Boxer.

There’s talk in Washington of finding a middle path, to end the political controversy.

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Approximately 15 percent of all babies born in the county are delivered at Contra Costa Regional Medical Center in Martinez. The chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Dr. Judy Bliss, said that the hospital has worked hard to reduce C-section deliveries whenever possible.

“Once you’ve had one, each subsequent C-section has more risk,” said Bliss.

KCBS’ Dave Padilla Reports:

Bliss said that a special perinatal program was developed to help more women who have had a cesarean delivery avoid this major surgery with their next pregnancy.

“Women who have a natural birth go home more quickly. They’re not in the hospital as long, and they’re more comfortable,” said Bliss.

The vaginal birth after a cesarean program has received the Quality Leaders Top Honor award from the California Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems.

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As of last week, the virus had sickened more than 300 students and 30 teachers, but Principal Patrick Ruff said Monday that the bug hit more than 500 students and 70 faculty and staff altogether.

Twenty-eight students remained absent Monday but that is about average for a normal school day, Ruff said.

The high school, located at 2001 37^th Ave., was shut down on Wednesday because of an outbreak of gastroenteritis.

Fifty students had called in sick on Tuesday, and another 90 were sent home that day, many of whom had vomited in trashcans or in bathrooms on campus, Ruff said.

The campus underwent a deep cleaning, and the city’s Department of Public Health cleared classes to resume on Thursday, but school officials decided to keep St. Ignatius closed until Monday “to ensure the health of our students,” Ruff said.

Dr. Tomas Aragon, the Department of Public Health’s director of population health and prevention, said the extended closure was wise, in part because it would be difficult logistically to hold classes with so many teachers out sick.

In addition to the campus closure, several of the school’s sports teams had games postponed because of the outbreak, including the boys’ and girls’ basketball and soccer teams, Ruff said.

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Jesus Navarro needs a transplant. He has insurance, and his wife wants to donate a kidney, but University of California, San Francisco won’t do the transplant. Navarro is an undocumented worker from Mexico who spoke to CBS 5 through a translator.

“I’m worried that I might fall ill, or something might happen to me. I’m worried what might happen to my daughter,” said Navarro, whose daughter is 3-years-old. “I was mad and sad at the same time. I assumed that they were here to help save lives.”

Navarro has been in the U.S. for over 15 years. Although UCSF insists his immigration status is not the reason for the rejection, it is a significant part of the decision. The hospital released a statement which included the following:

UCSF does not reject potential transplant patients based on their immigration status and has performed transplants on undocumented individuals…Undocumented individuals have no access to Medicare and may have limited access to Medi-Cal for critical long-term care.

Stanford ethicist David Magnus said he’s surprised by the medical center’s stance.

“You have to do a full evaluation of the psycho social system, how far do they live from hospital, do they have transportation to the hospital, are they able to make appointments,” said Magnus, PhD/Professor of Biomedical Ethics. “Simply relying on immigration status is not enough to rule someone out for a transplant.”

The case is getting a lot of attention, thanks to the efforts of Donald Kagan, who launched a petition campaign on change.org.

“If you have kidney failure, you are going to die. I’m one of the lucky people to have gotten a transplant. It’s my job now to give back to those that aren’t quite as lucky,” said Kagan.

Navarro said he hopes the support leads to a resolution.

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Judy Oderwald finally has the energy to read without falling asleep.

“Now when I go to bed, I have to fight to go to sleep. The other times I would hit the pillow and that would be it,” described Oderwald.

She was always tired because, like millions of Americans, she suffered from obstructive sleep apnea. Her airway closed up during sleep causing her to snore and stop breathing hundreds of times each night.

A revolutionary new robotic surgery is bringing relief to Judy and many others.

Going through the mouth, tiny robotic tools are used to cut out excess tissue – opening up the patient’s airway. The technology lets surgeons operate in a place that, until now, was difficult to reach with human hands.

“This is really an amazing technology that boosts the ability of the surgeon,” said Dr. Jeffrey Ahn, an Otolaryngologist. He said the surgery is only for those who have tried everything else from a breathing mask to partial surgeries.

“It’s just a new outlook on life,” said Oderwald. And her new found energy even helped her lose 30 pounds.

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District officials said that due to stagnant weather patterns predicted over the next several days, pollution from wood smoke could become trapped near the ground, causing unhealthy breathing conditions.

The agency stopped short of declaring a Spare the Air day, which would make wood burning illegal. Instead, the air district is asking residents to voluntarily refrain from wood burning.

But pollution from wood burning is rising, and if it continues to rise, then a Spare the Air day will be called, district officials said.

Wood smoke has been linked to serious respiratory illnesses and increased risk of heart attacks, and may cause difficulty breathing, particularly for those with pre-existing lung conditions, district officials said.

The air district is asking residents to always check whether wood burning is permitted during the winter Spare the Air season, which lasts until Feb. 29.

The current Spare the Air status can be found online, either at www.baaqmd.gov or www.sparetheair.org.

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Researcher Sara Bleich, who is an assistant professor of Health Policy at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, wondered what happens when the adult doctor and patient are both overweight and if people would take weight loss advice from a chubby doctor, so she surveyed 500 physicians to find out.

KCBS’ Patti Reising Reports:

“Statistically speaking it is normal in this country to be in the overweight or obese category, Bleich said.

That’s about 66 percent of adults, according to Bleich, putting the U.S.in the midst of an obesity epidemic.

“If a patient walks into the office they may look like the physician. They may be in the overweight or obese category. The physician may think, ‘this patient looks like me. I don’t have a problem, they don’t have a problem. Let me focus on something like their diabetes or their hypertension’.”

Bleich explained that the biggest predictor of getting weight-related counseling is having an obesity problem in the first place and that healthier patients might start with healthier doctors.

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The explanation lies in the reason muscles get sore during exercise. A hard workout actually causes damage to the muscles, noted Simon Melov, a biochemistry professor affiliated with the Novato-based Buck Institute for Research on Aging and co-author of the study. Tiny micro-tears are created in the muscle tissue.

Melov said the process of recovering from those tears is what helps us improve our performance over time.

Although massage doesn’t prevent the muscle tears, it does curb the inflammation that comes with those tears. Specifically, the study found, massage reduces the expression of inflammatory cytokines in the muscle cells and promotes the growth of mitochondria, the energy-producing units in cells.

In the study, a group of healthy men exercised on stationary bikes to the point of exhaustion. Researchers did biopsies of the men’s quadriceps muscles and then randomly picked one leg on each man to receive massage. Biopsies conducted after the massage found less inflammation.

Interestingly, the researchers said, massage may involve the same pain-relieving mechanism found in conventional anti-inflammatory drugs.

These findings didn’t surprise Shana Ominsky, a Bay Area resident who is training for a marathon and gets massage twice a week to help after workouts.

“I love massage,” Ominsky said. “I find that the recovery for my body, legs especially, is just so much quicker. I can get right back on my feet again to go for another hard workout.”

Kristin Tanner, a licensed massage therapist at the Sanctuary Spa at the Bay Club San Francisco, hears comments like that all the time.

“(Massage) helps to clear out the toxins, and it keeps lactic acid from building. It helps to smooth the fascia, and that’s very beneficial for people who work out regularly,” said Tanner.

Put a little less scientifically – Massage feels good!

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Speaking on Capitol Hill, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi welcomed the decision.

“It just goes to show you when women speak out, women win,” Pelosi said. “Women’s health has a big victory this morning.”

“It just goes to show you when women speak out, women win. Women’s health has a big victory this morning,” she continued. “They made one decision. Now they have reversed it. We have a good outcome. I think we should just go forward with that outcome and focus on improving women’s health.”

The criteria that the charity had adopted would exclude Planned Parenthood for future grants for breast-cancer screenings because it was under government investigation—specifically, a probe launched by a Florida congressman at the urging of anti-abortion groups. Komen now says that policy will only apply to criminal investigations.

A statement from Komen says, “We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.”

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The move comes at the same time that Director Mollie Williams, Komen’s top Public Health Official based in Los Angeles, resigned from the organization, reportedly in protest of the funding decision.

Officials from Komen have said the decision to pull funding from breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood are part of a new policy that prevents the organization from giving money to any group that is under investigation.

Planned Parenthood is the subject of a congressional inquiry into whether taxpayer funds were used for abortions.

Critics say Komen is simply caving to pressure from anti-abortion groups.

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A new commentary published online in the Feb. 1 issue of Nature says sugar is just as “toxic” for people as the other two, so the government should step in to curb its consumption.

The United Nations announced in September that chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes contribute to 35 million deaths worldwide each year, according to the commentary. The U.N. pegged tobacco, alcohol, and diet as big risk factors that contributed to this death rate.

Two of those are regulated by governments, “leaving one of the primary culprits behind this worldwide health crisis unchecked,” the authors, Robert H. Lustig, Laura A. Schmidt and Claire D. Brindis, argued.

They said that over the past 50 years, sugar consumption has tripled worldwide. That’s also helped contribute to the obesity epidemic – so much so that there are 30 percent more obese people in this world than there are malnourished people.

Sugar meets the same criteria for regulation as alcohol, the authors wrote, because it’s unavoidable, there’s potential for abuse, it’s toxic, and it negatively impacts society. They write that sugar is added to so many processed foods that it’s everywhere, and people eat up to 500 calories per day in added sugar alone. Sugar acts on the same areas of the brain as alcohol and tobacco to encourage subsequent intake, they wrote, and it’s toxic because research shows that sugar increases disease risk from factors other than added calories, such as when it disrupts metabolism.

“Many people think that obesity is the root cause of these diseases,” they wrote. But 40 percent of normal-weight people are developing diseases like diabetes, hypertension, lipid problems, heart and liver disease. “Obesity is not the cause; rather, it is a marker.”

That’s why it’s time that the government steps in and regulates sugar in ways similar to tobacco and alcohol, the authors wrote. That includes taxes, age restrictions and other policies to control the distribution of sugar.

“We are now seeing the toxic downside,” co-author and sugar researcher Lustig, a professor of clinical pediatrics at the UCSF Center for Obesity Assessment, Study, and Treatment, told WebMD. “There has to be some sort of societal intervention. We cannot do it on our own because sugar is addictive. Personal intervention is necessary, but not sufficient.”

Dr. Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University, told HealthPop that she agrees that it’s time for policy changes, since many Americans take in roughly 25 percent of their daily calorie intake through sugar.

“I don’t think people have any idea how many calories they take in when they take in soft drinks – particularly because they are consumed in such large quantities,” Nestle said. She thinks regulation could eventually be possible, since many local governments are already enacting policies to curb sugar in schools or tax sodas.

“If you have enough of those, the federal government can step in.”

The Sugar Association said it disagrees with the commentary and disputes some of the science presented – namely the tripled sugar consumption rates, which it said were based on “incomplete science” in a statement emailed to HealthPop.

“We are confident that the American people are perfectly capable of choosing what foods to eat without stark regulations and unreasonable bans imposed upon them,” read a prepared statement from the Sugar Association.

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Officials at St. Ignatius College Preparatory said 325 students and 30 teachers have been made sick by what health experts are calling viral gastroenteritis — a virus that can cause diarrhea and vomiting.

Principal Patrick Ruff initially announced that the school would close only on Wednesday to allow crews time to sanitize and deep-clean the building, but after consulting with health experts it was determined the building would remain closed until Monday to give the cleaning crews more time to work.

“We’re working with the school on cleanup,” San Francisco Department of Public Health spokeswoman Colleen Chawla said. “Given our advice, they didn’t think they could get it done overnight.”

Even once school reopens, Ruff urged students who are ill to remain home for at least three days after their symptoms stop.

He added that initial tests showed the school’s kitchen and water supply had been ruled out as possible sources for the infection.

The parochial school in the city’s Outer Sunset district enrolls 1,444 students.

KCBS’ Bob Melrose Reports:

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Researchers at U.C. Berkeley, along with researchers at Stanford, the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins, have conducted cognitive studies to measure words as brain activity.

This collaboration required the help of patients suffering from seizures. The subjects underwent brain surgery during which surgeons placed electrodes on the surface of the patients’ brain cortex. The electrodes allowed doctors to determine where in the brain the seizures where taking place.

Participants were then observed for a week. During that time the researchers were able to record brain activity detected by the implanted electrodes as the patients heard short conversations.

“When you hear a sound the brain has a particular pattern of activity so we have to figure out how we translate that pattern of activity into the sound,” said Brian Pasley, PhD, UC Berkeley Lead Author. “We have to determine the relationship between these electrical signals we are measuring and the actual stimulus that the person is listening to.”

The sounds the research computer model has made are not quite discernible as regular speech. UC Berkeley Researcher Brian Pasley was the lead author of the report published in the journal PLoS BIOLOGY. He has characterized the synthesized brain waves into sound as “our best guess, essentially.”

Still, the future possibility of restoring speech to those who have lost the ability to speak, remains a tantalizing prospect, even though Pasley has said that day is decades away.

“We have a lot more basic science to do,” said Pasley. “But this is a good first start toward there.”

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The research has important implications for understanding development. Humor is the entryway into the social world, notes neuroscientist and child psychiatrist Dr. Allan Reiss.

“How you relate to peers, how you understand your peer group, how they relate to you, whether they are accepting of your participation, and humor definitely plays a role during childhood,” said Reiss. He believes that humor helps make people resilient, improving their ability to cope with stressful circumstances.

“If you can interpret a difficult situation in a humorous way, as opposed to just ‘this is a terrible fate befalling me’, that could make a significant difference in how your brain and body responds to the difficult situation,” Reiss said.

Findings reported in the “Journal of Neuroscience” show that some of the same brain circuitry that responds to humor in adults already exists in 6 to 12 year-olds.

“(It is) in a less mature state than adults, but it is already present in children ages 6-12,” said Reiss, senior author of the study. “That’s really interesting.”

For the study, children watched short video clips while their brains were scanned with functional MRI. In children, as with adults, the funny videos activated the brain’s mesolimbic regions – the area that processes rewards.

Reiss said that comes as no surprise given “that people go to comedy clubs, they seek out humor in their personal lives, they look for companions or mates that have a good sense of humor.”

There was also high activity at the temporal-occipital-parietal junction, a brain region that processes incongruity or surprise. “A lot of humor is, in fact, incongruity,” explained Reiss. “So you expect something to happen and then all of a sudden there’s a twist, something completely different happens and that’s what makes many jokes really funny.”

Reiss speculates that people who handle humorous surprises well probably do a better job coping with life’s unexpected challenges. He believes this study opens the door to additional research on the development of humor.

“How does a brain that processes humor more effectively, or more robustly, correlate with a child’s quality of life, with temperament, with adaptation to stress?”

As to whether some people are just born with a great sense of humor, Reiss said probably not. Sense of humor, like other complex human traits, is part nature, part nurture. You might have a biological predisposition, but with the right environment you can also refine it. In other words, there’s hope for all of us. Given the stressful times, we might all benefit from a little more humor.

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Around 150 students were sent home Tuesday from the school after they became ill with gastroenteritis, according to Principal Patrick Ruff. 50 students also called in sick Tuesday.

“You would walk by the dean’s office and there would be kids just lined up to go home,” said student Charlie Goldensohn.

According to parents, a player on the girls’ basketball team became sick during a game Tuesday night.

“With the number of students about 200, we thought it was wise to close the school so we can do a through and deep cleaning of all the surfaces,” Ruff said.

KCBS’ Bob Melrose Reports:

Brent McDonald, who has two children attending St. Ignatius, said his whole family caught the bug and thinks he might be next.

“I’ve eaten once today, and I feel like I’ve got a knot in my stomach,” McDonald said. “I’ve had two half bowls of rice.”

School will resume on Thursday February 2nd.

According to the San Francisco Department of Public Health and school officials, the bug typically lasts 24 hours. A statement on the school’s website advised parents to keep children with symptoms at home for at least 72 hours after vomiting or diarrhea has ceased or their fever has abated.

The origin of the outbreak is under investigation, but food from the school cafeteria has been ruled out as a cause.

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Thousands of workers took to picket lines Tuesday in Northern and Southern California over a contract dispute involving 4,000 employees who are members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, a NUHW representative said.

Those workers include NUHW-represented mental health clinicians, clinical psychologists, licensed social workers and opticians.

The union has been in contract negotiations for more than a year, according to Debbie Raymond, a chief nursing officer for Kaiser.

Some 17,000 registered nurses in Northern California represented by the California Nurses Association and approximately 650 building and equipment vendors represented by Stationary Engineers Local 39 are striking in support of the NUHW workers, according to the CNA.

Kaiser officials said there are approximately 1,500 NUHW-represented workers at Northern California Kaiser locations.

The breakdown in talks involves a salary and benefits package that Kaiser “put on the table many, many months ago,” Raymond said, noting that Kaiser and NUHW have reached tentative agreements on 31 elements of the new contract.

The union claims that Kaiser has refused to address caregiver concerns about what they say is chronic short staffing and its negative impacts on patient care.

“It is disappointing that Kaiser is refusing to bargain for sufficient staffing for mental health services, and a secure retirement and accessible health coverage for its frontline caregivers despite its record profits,” said Zenei Cortez, a CNA co-president who works at Kaiser South San Francisco.

This is the second time the 17,000 Northern California Kaiser registered nurses have participated in a walkout since Sept. 22, 2011, when thousands of nurses picketed at more than 30 hospitals to support Sutter Health nurses who were navigating contract negotiations.

“We’re disappointed that the CNA has taken this action,” Raymond said, because of a contract in place since September with “very clear language that there should be no work stoppage or work interruptions.”

<strong>KCBS’ Dave Padilla Reports:</strong>

According to Raymond, approximately 60 percent of the system’s registered nurses who were scheduled to work reported to work today. She said those who participated in the strike today will be welcomed back Wednesday.

Rallies were planned for noon at Kaiser Oakland at 3801 Howe St. and Kaiser South Sacramento at 6500 Bruceville Road in Sacramento.

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The benefits are especially significant for patients with neuromuscular disorders and orthopedic injuries.

The Alter-G Treadmill looks like a bubble-box. Users pull up the plastic cover, zip it around their waist, and use air pressure to literally take the weight off.

“It allows you to run or walk anywhere (with) 20 percent to 100 percent less of your body weight,” explained Monica Garza, executive director of the D.R. Semmes Family YMCA in San Antonio. “So it’s very much like being on air.”

That’s good news for Brad Stephenson who has muscular dystrophy. “You’re able to un-weight your body,” said Stephenson. “So it just feels like a balloon blowing up underneath you. It sort of lifts you up and gives you support.”

Stephenson spends much of his time in a wheelchair. Getting a workout would be much more difficult without treadmills such as Alter-G. “I depend on it now,” he said.

The Alter-G is also helping people with sports injuries rehab with less pain. “It’s very similar to doing a water aerobic workout, where you’re getting (less) impact to your knees, your ankles, or your hips,” said Garza.

Scientists at the Ames Research Center in Mountain View came up with the original idea of an antigravity treadmill. The initial purpose was to help astronauts prevent bone loss and muscle deterioration in outer space. The company that makes the Alter-G is located in Fremont.

(Copyright 2012 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)