Brightly-colored little packets that combine laundry detergent with other cleaning agents are a new convenience for consumers -- and a new danger for kids.Nearly 250 people have called poison centers in a past couple of months after small children swallowed or bit into the packets, the Associated Press reports. And some of the kids have gotten very sick -- much sicker than kids usually get when they swallow a little detergent, says an alert from The American Association of Poison Control Centers. For example, the association says: A 15-month-old child developed "profuse vomiting" and had to be put on a ventilator at a hospital to keep breathing. A 17-month-old child developed nausea and vomiting and also inhaled some of the product. That child also needed ... Continue reading →

Tommy Edison knows you've got questions about blind people — because people have been asking him those questions all his life.Like: Do you see stuff in your dreams?And: How do you count your paper money?And: Do you think you could hit a golf ball?Actually, that last one was a question Edison had and decided to answer, along with the others, in a online video series he calls "The Tommy Edison Experience." The videos are shot and edited by his buddy Ben Churchill, a documentary filmmaker, and share a website with a series called "Blind Film Critic."Yes, a blind guy reviews movies. In fact, Edison — who works as a traffic reporter for a Connecticut radio station — became mildly famous for his pithy reviews about ... Continue reading →

Thanks to Kim Painter from USA Today for the interview and articles about our You Tube series! In this post, we feature all of the videos mentioned in Kim’s articles. —————– ARTICLES / INTERVIEW “Blind movie critic Tommy Edison educates the masses” (USA Today)http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/wellness/story/2012-06-08/Tommy-Edison-blind-move-critic/55172196/1 “iPhone: For the blind, it may be biggest thing since Braille” (USA Today: Your Life)http://yourlife.usatoday.com/health/healthyperspective/post/2012-05-07/iphone-for-the-blind-it-may-be-biggest-thing-since-braille/688904/1 —————– How Blind People Dream How A Blind Person Uses Paper Money Blind Man vs. Golf Blind Man vs. Airport I’m blind, but if I could see 3 celebrities… How Blind People Use The iPhone 4S – Accessibility, Twitter, You Tube, Siri How Blind People Use The iPhone 4S – Facebook App (Bonus Footage) “Cabin In The Woods” movie review (no spoilers) “The Hunger Games” movie ... Continue reading →

How does a blind man text or tweet? How does a blind woman navigate a city?Increasingly, that answer is "with an iPhone." As The Atlantic reported recently, the Apple smart phone "has turned out to be one of the most revolutionary developments since the invention of Braille," for the blind and visually impaired.The key: an accessibility feature that many sighted users probably never notice. Once it's on, you don't need vision to find and use apps. Instead, you use finger taps: One tap and a voice tells you which app you're on; two taps and you open the app. To see how it works, check out this video by Tommy Edison, the blind radio personality and movie critic I feature in a story today. Edison ... Continue reading →

Tommy Edison knows you've got questions about blind people — because people have been asking him those questions all his life.Like: Do you see stuff in your dreams?And: How do you count your paper money?And: Do you think you could hit a golf ball?Actually, that last one was a question Edison had and decided to answer, along with the others, in a online video series he calls "The Tommy Edison Experience." The videos are shot and edited by his buddy Ben Churchill, a documentary filmmaker, and share a website with a series called "Blind Film Critic."Yes, a blind guy reviews movies. In fact, Edison — who works as a traffic reporter for a Connecticut radio station — became mildly famous for his pithy reviews about ... Continue reading →

Your Thursday morning health roundup:Best birth control: A real-world comparison test of birth control methods finds birth control pills are far from the most reliable pregnancy preventers -- largely because women often forget to take them. Much more effective: intrautine devices (IUDs) and other long-acting methods that women don't have to remember to use. But the study of 7,500 women differed from real world conditions in one important way: Participants got any method they wanted for free, so did not have to pay upfront costs of $500 to $1,000 for IUDs. Unneeded angioplasties: Only 36% of patients who got non-emergency angioplasties --- procedures to clear clogged heart arteries -- clearly needed them in a new study conducted in 58 New York hospitals. In 14% the ... Continue reading →

The chorus of concussion concerns is growing with big names in the lead. Former NFL quarterback Kurt Warner has labeled the notion of his two school-age sons playing football a "scary thing" and says he'd prefer they didn't. Now, the father of three-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady is expressing reservations about how he'd handle it if his son were just starting out.Meanwhile, registration is underway for the coming season of youth football across the USA. Parents face the question: Do you let your kids play?More than 2,000 former players are suing the NFL alleging they weren't warned about long-term risks of concussions. The NFL has cracked down on bounties — cash for knocking out foes. And Junior Seau's death has raised questions about whether ... Continue reading →

Your Wednesday morning health roundup:Diabetes deaths: There's a rare bit of good news about diabetes. Though case counts in the United States continue to rise, people with the disease are dying at lower rates, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Better diabetes management, improved treatment of related heart conditions and healthy lifestyle changes seem to be making the difference, researchers say. Heart failure hope: A new experiment offers hope that failing human hearts might someday be repaired with their owners' skin cells. In the experiment, scientists took skin cells from elderly heart failure patients and turned them into functioning, youthful heart muscle tissue that survived transplant into healthy rat hearts. But even if the technique works in people under real-world conditions, use is ... Continue reading →

Your Monday morning health roundup:Sleep apnea and cancer: People with sleep apnea -- pauses in nighttime breathing, often linked with snoring and daytime fatigue -- are more likely to develop and die from cancer, two new studies suggest. The studies don't prove a cause and effect relationship, but "it looks like a very solid association," one researcher tells the New York Times. It's possible that treating sleep apnea would reduce cancer risks. In any case, one expert says: "Not breathing while you're sleeping is a serious problem." Butter and your brain: Cut down on butter and load up on olive oil and you may be rewarded with a more youthful brain. That's the suggestion of a new study of 6,200 women over age 65. Those ... Continue reading →

Diabetes and pre-diabetes have skyrocketed among the nation's young people, jumping from 9% of the adolescent population in 2000 to 23% in 2008, a study reports today.The findings, reported in the journal Pediatrics, are "very concerning," says lead author Ashleigh May, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."To get ahead of this problem, we have to be incredibly aggressive and look at children and adolescents and say you have to make time for physical activity," says pediatric endocrinologist Larry Deeb, former president of medicine and science for the American Diabetes Association.Of the two types of diabetes, type 2 accounts for more than 90% of cases. In people with diabetes, the body does not make enough of the hormone insulin or doesn't use ... Continue reading →