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Many of us may remember the dreaded "pop quiz" from school and how it sometimes created that sinking feeling of being unprepared. Well, the National Institutes of Health has its own pop quiz it would like you to take. You may not be prepared for it either, but the quiz answers could help save your life.
The quiz asks 11 true-false questions and then allows you to gauge your performance--your cholesterol IQ--as you read detailed answers to each of the questions. Even if you miss some of the quiz questions, you'll be ahead of the game if you read and heed the correct answers, which cover subjects such as heart disease in women, fish oil supplements, and food labels.
Also regarding cholesterol, the NIH has created an online calculator that tells you--based on cholesterol numbers, blood pressure, age, and other factors--your probability of having a heart attack over 10 years. The calculator is designed for adults older than 20 who do not have heart disease or diabetes.
Vaccines are often mentioned in the context of how crucial they are for optimum health in children. As a result, it may be easy to overlook the message that adults need to keep their vaccines current as well.
A Web site called Adult Immunization Schedule lists all the appropriate adult vaccines based on age or, in some cases, possible exposure to a disease (such as malaria in another country). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which maintains the site, all adults should have certain vaccines (tetanus/diphtheria, for example, administered every 10 years), but only certain adults should have others (hepatitis B, intended just for those at risk).
To help you understand what vaccines you might need, the site offers an online quiz. After taking it, you can discuss the results with your doctor.
How do you keep track of vaccines you need? The site has an "adult vaccination screening form" that can help you and your doctor decide which vaccines you need and when to get them. You can print out the form and take it with you next time you see your doctor.
Ever wonder about air and water quality in your local area? How about issues such as fish advisories or the conditions of watersheds in your region? There's an easy way for you to find this information quickly. You simply take a peek into the Window to My Environment, a Web site of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Here's how it works. Go to the site and type in your ZIP code or city and state in the box provided. This creates your "window," which is a map of your region into which you can place dozens of indicators. For example, if you are interested in where hazardous waste or toxic release areas are, you simply click those boxes, and the map displays the known spots, which are color-coded for easy identification on the map. The site also lets you find where churches, schools, hospitals, and other features are located.
If you want even more detail on your local conditions, the site can answer specific questions such as what facilities in your region release emissions into the air or if there are any polluted waters. For each region displayed, you also can find out what is being done--tracking, restoring and protecting--to aid the environment in that area.
Though the deliberate tampering of food to cause disease is rare in the United States, the FDA is enhancing its surveillance of foodborne disease and bolstering inspections of domestic and foreign food-producing plants.
As a consumer, you also can play a role by following a list of tips on an FDA Web site called Food Tampering: An Extra Ounce of Caution. The site covers measures you can take at home and at the grocery store, and it advises what to do if you suspect product tampering.
FDA.gov is written by John Henkel, a member of the FDA's Website Management Staff.