Does living near fast food increase stroke risk?

I generally don't defend fast food. I'm not about to tell you that it's good for you. But that doesn't mean I'm ready to buy into any and all arguments that vilify these places lock, stock, and barrel. That is to say, I don't think you should use junk science to drag down junk food.

But it seems the food Nazis of this country are willing to use any argument - regardless of how phony it may be - to attack the fast food industry. The latest is the assertion that people who live in neighborhoods that have a high density of fast-food restaurants are 13 percent more likely to suffer from a stroke.

Dr. Lewis B. Morgenstern and his research team reached this grandiose and headline-grabbing conclusion by examining ischemic stroke data (stokes which result from blocked blood vessels) from a particular county in Texas. They then cross referenced these numbers with the number of fast food restaurants in the same county, ranking the neighborhoods based on the number of fast food places in each town.

Morgenstern and his team then compared these numbers with the number of stroke cases and - voila! - he discovered that the top 25 percent of stroke density areas had 33 fast- food restaurants per 5,000 people, while the bottom quarter of strokes occurred in areas with just 12 fast food restaurants.

Did Morgenstern find out how often the people in these areas actually ate at fast food restaurants? Nope.

Did he determine if the people in the areas where there were the most strokes had other risk factors such as age, or previous medical conditions? Nope.

So, should we take Morgenstern's study seriously? Nope.

Morgenstern admits that he's unsure about whether or not there's a solid link between stroke rates and the number of fast food places near where you live. Yet at the same time he says he IS certain of the fact that "if you life in a neighborhood with a high fast-food concentration, you are at an increased risk."

Huh?

Using these research methods, Morgenstern could just as easily have compared the number of pet dogs in this county and concluded that towns with a lot of dogs have a higher or lower number of strokes.

Dangers lurking in your water

New research says that one in three swimmers at public beaches could be exposed to staph bacteria - including the deadly the anti-biotic resistant strain called Methicillin- resistant Staphylococcus aureus (also known as MRSA).

Trust me: this is a lot scarier than what you saw in JAWS. According to study author Dr. Lisa Plano of the University of Miami, "We think that people are the instruments for bringing their organisms into the water and leaving it behind."

I've written to you about MRSA before. This deadly bacteria is usually picked up in hospitals or schools. But Plano's research found staph bacteria in 37 percent of the samples from a popular Florida beach, and MRSA in three percent of those samples.

Plano claims that a shower before and after hitting the beach will help cut down on the number of pathogens in the water… but it's not exactly the kind of study that makes you eager for a swim.