A year ago on this blog, I wrote about my desire to purchase a new home exercise machine. In Tuesday’s Science Times column, I wrote about the fact that it mostly gathers dust in my house.

Last year, Consumer Reports found that nearly 40 percent of people surveyed said they used their home exercise machines far less than they had planned. The phenomenon is a source of fascination for behavioral scientists. The hope is that by better understanding the behavior, they can help people make better buying decisions — and help them start exercising and stick with it. To read more about the issue, check out With the Right Motivation, That Home Gym Makes Sense.

In hindsight, I realize my gym-quality elliptical machine is far too big and bulky for my space — sometimes I even hit my head on the sloping ceiling when I use it. I’ve also realized that despite my best intentions to work out at home, I hate indoor exercise, at least in my house. I’d much rather jog on my local trails, take a yoga class or work out with a live personal trainer than spend solitary time on an elliptical machine. Even on the day of my purchase, I didn’t sound confident that I would use it.

“I made my purchase today,” I told readers last Jan. 12. “It is big and ugly. Now I have a great machine, but will I use it? That’s always the big question.”

What about you? Is your home exercise machine gathering dust? Why do you think you haven’t used it as much as you had hoped? If you do use your machine regularly, what’s your secret?

As it turns out, there really may be a bug in your soup.

The Food and Drug Administration has finalized a rule that will require food companies to list cochineal extract and carmine on the label when they are used in food and cosmetics. But the new rule contains one glaring omission. It doesn’t require companies to tell you that the ingredients come from a bug.

Cochineal extract and carmine, used to dye food, drinks and cosmetics various shades of red, orange, pink and purple, are extracted from the dried bodies of the female cochineal bug. (Here’s an interesting image of the dye from a crushed insect.)

The F.D.A. typically doesn’t require color additives to be named on food labels. For years, the bug extracts “have been hidden under the terms ‘artificial colors’ or ‘color added,’ ” according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The group says the extracts are commonly used in reddish-colored foods and beverages, including fruit drinks, ice creams, yogurts and candies. Read more…

Holiday stress? (Lucian Read for The New York Times)

If you’re still getting ready for the holidays, you’re about to run out of time. Hanukkah is already here (as of sundown on Sunday), Christmas is three days away and New Year’s Eve is around the corner.

A common theme this year seems to be a desire to scale back and simplify to save both money and time. One friend of mine made homemade truffles and granola as her main holiday gifts this year. Last year, I wrote about a set of friends in Wisconsin who have a fierce holiday competition to come up with the perfect homemade, low-cost gifts. This year they exchanged personalized (and hilarious) haikus.

For advice on taking the stress out of the holidays, I checked in with Marcia Ramsland, a San Diego personal organizer and writer of several organizing books, including the new book “Simplify Your Holidays: A Classic Christmas Planner to Use Year After Year” (Thomas Nelson, 2008). Ideally, your simplification efforts should start at the beginning of the holiday season, she said, but there are still ways to de-stress at the last minute. Here’s her advice. Read more…

Debunking medical myths just in time for the holidays. (Kevin Maloney for The New York Times, Ting-Li Wang and Damon Winter/The New York Times)

Last year, the British medical journal BMJ reported on a series of medical myths that even doctors believe. Among them: Turkey makes you drowsy. Dim light ruins your eyes. Drink at last eight glasses of water a day.

This year, the same researchers, Dr. Aaron Carroll and Dr. Rachel Vreeman of the Indiana University School of Medicine, offer six new medical myths for the holiday season. The latest set of myths, published this month in BMJ, are commonly believed by the general public and many doctors, said the researchers. However, a search of the medical literature shows these myths aren’t true or lack evidence to support them.

“Even widely held medical beliefs require examination or re-examination,” the study authors wrote. “Both physicians and non-physicians sometimes believe things about our bodies that just are not true.”

Here are the six new commonly believed medical myths they’ve identified. Read more…

The best efforts of the scientific community to prove the health benefits of vitamins keep falling short.

Consumers don’t want to give up their vitamins. (Tony Cenicola/The New York Times)

This week, researchers reported the disappointing results from a large clinical trial of almost 15,000 male doctors taking vitamins E and C for a decade. The study showed no meaningful effect on cancer rates.

Another recent study found no benefit of vitamins E and C for heart disease.

In October, a major trial studying whether vitamin E and selenium could lower a man’s risk for prostate cancer ended amidst worries that the treatments may do more harm than good.

And recently, doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York warned that vitamin C seems to protect not just healthy cells but cancer cells, too. Read more…

Cholesterol-lowering statin drugs are the biggest-selling drugs in the world. But it’s apparently not enough to give them to people with heart problems. Now doctors want healthy people to start taking them too.

Last week, Harvard researchers reported how healthy 50-year-old men and 60-year-old women could benefit from taking a statin even if they didn’t have high cholesterol. The people they studied had high levels of C-reactive protein, or CRP, which is a marker for inflammation. The study showed that risk for major heart problems was cut by about 50 percent among the statin users.

But like many industry-sponsored drug studies, the results focused on something called “relative risk,” which compares differences between study groups. Relative risk has the effect of exaggerating a drug’s benefits. What does a 50 percent reduction in heart risk mean? It means that just one out of 120 statin users was helped by the drug.

To read more about the push to put healthy people on statins, read my latest Well column, “A Call for Caution in the Rush to Statins.

What do you think? Please join the discussion below.

Even dogs that don’t shed can trigger an allergic reaction. (G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times, Phil Mansfield for The New York Times, Scott Mullin for The New York Times, Tony Cenicola/The New York Times)

Few appointments in the new Obama administration are as eagerly awaited as the choice of first dog. Animal advocacy groups are lobbying for a rescue pet. Meanwhile, the American Kennel Club has seized on the fact that Malia Obama has allergies, suggesting that the first family choose among several so-called “hypoallergenic” breeds like the Bichon Frise or the poodle.

Now allergy specialists are weighing in as well, noting that there really is no such thing as a nonallergenic dog. People who are allergic to dogs are reacting to the pet dander, not the pet hair. Dogs like poodles, with coats that don’t shed, and hairless dogs will typically produce less dander than other types of dogs, but they still can produce enough dander to affect a highly allergic person.

Dr. Jonathan Field, director of the allergy and asthma clinic at New York University’s Langone Medical Center/Bellevue, said he gets questions all the time from parents who want dogs despite a child’s allergies. “Pet allergies are not due to hair, but are from pet dander — skin flakes — but also can be reactions to saliva or urine,” Dr. Field said. “Before investing in a dog, I suggest that parents have their child spend time with an animal — if possible — to see how they react.”

Are you having what he’s having? (Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times)

Eight new cases of human salmonella infections linked with dry pet food have been reported this year, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Last year, the C.D.C. reported on a Salmonella outbreak in 2006 and 2007 that was traced back to dry dog food. The C.D.C. has identified a total of 79 cases in 21 states, according to the latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The illness was tracked back to an Everson, Penn., pet food plant operated by Mars Petcare US, Inc. The company closed the plant in July. Read more…

A scientific panel has issued a blistering report against the Food and Drug Administration, saying the agency ignored important evidence in reassuring consumers about the safety of the controversial chemical bisphenol-A.

The panel, in a report issued this week, did not draw any conclusions about the safety of the chemical, known as BPA. But it criticized the F.D.A. for ignoring crucial studies and using what it said were flawed methods in reaching its conclusions.

The drug agency’s evaluation of BPA “creates a false sense of security” and “overlooks a wide range of potentially-serious findings,” the panel’s report said. Read more…

A major trial studying whether simple nutritional supplements could lower a man’s risk for prostate cancer has ended amidst worries that the treatments may do more harm than good.

The SELECT trial, which stands for the Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial, was studying whether selenium and vitamin E, either alone or in combination, could lower a man’s risk for prostate cancer. More than 35,000 men were taking part, making it one of the largest and best studies of a vitamin or supplement.

But the National Cancer Institute announced Monday that the trial, which was scheduled to end in 2011 after seven years, is being halted early. A review of the data shows no benefit in using the supplements to prevent prostate cancer. In addition, slightly more users of vitamin E were getting prostate cancer, and slightly more selenium-only users were developing diabetes.

The findings are a major setback in the effort to prevent prostate cancer, which is diagnosed in about 200,000 men in the United States each year. While most men diagnosed with the disease are cured, treatments can be debilitating, rendering men incontinent and impotent. Read more…

A simple Sharpie pen is emerging as an effective tool to prevent surgical errors and infections.

Surgeons typically use marking pens to ensure they operate on the correct part of a patient’s body. But one concern is that the germs from the pen could pose a risk for infection. As a result, many hospitals use sterile pens once and throw them away, a practice that costs thousands of dollars a year.

Infection control experts from the University of Alberta decided to study pens used to mark up surgical patients. They compared a one-use sterile surgical pen to a standard Sharpie — the brand name for a line of no-smudge permanent markers favored by everyone from autograph-writing football stars to President Bush.

In a controlled experiment, the tips of both kinds of pens were heavily contaminated with four types of bacteria that can cause surgical site infections, including two germ types that are resistant to antibiotics. The researchers recapped the markers and allowed them to sit for 24 hours. Read more…

One of the best ways to prevent cavities in children is to treat their molars with a dental sealant that protects the teeth. But now, many parents are worried that teeth sealants will expose their children to higher levels of bisphenol-A, or BPA, a chemical used to make hard clear plastic and the linings of food and soft-drink cans.

The National Toxicology Program, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, has raised concerns about BPA. The chemical has estrogen-like effects and animal studies have suggested that exposure to it may accelerate puberty and that the chemical may also pose a potential cancer risk.

My Well column in Tuesday’s Science Times explores the data on BPA and dental sealants. The bulk of the evidence suggests that exposure to BPA through these products is minimal, although some simple precautions can further reduce risk. To learn more about dental sealants and BPA, read the full Well column here, and join the discussion below.

A chemical widely used in hard plastic drinking bottles and the lining of food cans may reduce the effectiveness of chemotherapy treatment, a new study shows.

The findings, reported in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, adds to the growing list of concerns about bisphenol-a, or BPA, a chemical used to make the hard, clear and nearly unbreakable plastic called polycarbonate. The plastic is also found in the lining of nearly every soft drink and canned food product.

Most of the concern about BPA has focused on children, who are exposed to the chemical when trace amounts leach from polycarbonate baby bottles and the linings of infant formula cans. The worry is based on data from animal studies. Rat pups exposed to BPA, through injection or food, showed changes in mammary and prostate tissue, suggesting a potential cancer risk. In some tests of female mice, exposure appeared to accelerate puberty.

In the latest research, a team from the University of Cincinnati studied human breast cancer cells, Read more…

(Credit:Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press)

Among the 45 million smokers in the United States, about 19 percent don’t smoke every day. These occasional smokers — people who smoke only on the weekends or just a few times a week in social situations — often believe they are avoiding the health worries typically associated with smoking.

But new research shows that even occasional cigarette smoking can impair artery function, a sign of looming heart disease. Read more…

Should energy drinks note the caffeine content? (Tony Cenicola/The New York Times)

Super-caffeinated energy drinks popular with teenagers, with names like Red Bull, Monster and Full Throttle, should carry warning labels, says a group of prominent caffeine researchers.

In an article published this month in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, researchers from Johns Hopkins University say caffeinated energy drinks should carry labels that note caffeine doses and warn of potential health risks for consumers.

The caffeine content of energy drinks varies from 50 milligrams to more than 500 milligrams per serving. A regular 12-ounce cola drink has about 35 milligrams of caffeine, and a 6-ounce cup of brewed coffee has 80 to 150 milligrams of caffeine.

Some energy drinks contain the caffeine equivalent of 14 cans of Coca-Cola, said Roland Griffiths, a professor of behavioral biology and one of the study authors. “Yet the caffeine amounts are often unlabeled, and few include warnings about the potential health risks of caffeine intoxication,” he said.

Dr. Griffiths notes that caffeine intoxication is a recognized clinical syndrome included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases. It is marked by nervousness, anxiety, restlessness, insomnia, gastrointestinal upset, tremors, rapid heartbeats, restlessness and pacing, and in rare cases, even death. Read more…