According to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 90 percent of people over the age of two consume too much sodium.

The problem isn't potato chips and french fries. Rather, the CDC places much of the blame on bread products. Just one slice of bread can contain over 200 milligrams of salt.

The recommended amount of sodium per day is 2300 milligrams, but the average American eats about 3300 milligrams daily.

This is a concern because too much sodium can raise blood pressure, which can cause heart disease.

Some highlights from the study include:

• Reducing the sodium Americans eat by 1,200 mg per day on average could save up to $20 billion a year in medical costs.
• Types of foods matter-More than 40% of sodium comes from the following 10 types of foods: breads and rolls, cold cuts and cured meats such as deli or packaged ham or turkey, pizza, fresh and processed poultry, soups, sandwiches such as cheeseburgers, cheese, pasta dishes, meat mixed dishes such as meat loaf with tomato sauce, and snacks such as chips, pretzels, and popcorn.

If you watched the Super Bowl this past weekend from the Northeast Ohio region, you may recall seeing an intriguing commercial by the University of Akron which featured contact lens for diabetics that will change color with blood sugar levels. Researchers at U of A have been working on the diabetic lens since 2003, but they won't be ready for human use for at least three years.

The lens are currently in the prototype phase and are not approved for human use. The model in the advertisement did not actually wear the lens, and the images shown were simulated.

At best, it will be at least three years before such a lens could be made available commercially. As it is dependent upon clearing various funding and regulatory hurdles, the wait could end up being longer.

Jun Hu, an associate professor of chemistry at Akron, has been working on the sugar-sensing chemical that is key to the lens since 2003. He and his lab discovered a molecule known as a probe that binds well to sugars. In order to make it visible, they combined the probe with a dye. So, when sugar concentrations increase, the sugar binds to the probe, knocking loose the dye which will then be seen as a color change. When the sugar normalizes, the probe molecule picks the dye back up.

After nearly a decade of decline, measles outbreaks in parts of Europe and Africa led to 60,000 more cases worldwide in 2010 over the previous year.

A boost in global efforts to vaccinate people against measles lead to a decline in total cases from 853,000 in 2000 to 278,000 in 2008. In 2009, the figures remained stabled. 2010, however, saw an increase to 339,845 cases of measles, due largely to outbreaks in Europe and Africa.

The biggest increase in measles cases came specifically from Malawi, which had 118,712 cases. Burkino Faso came in second with 51,118, and Iraq pulled in third with 30,328. A couple European nations also came in the top 15, with Bulgaria reporting 22,004 cases and France with 5,048. Vietnam also notably reported 9,491 cases, while the Philippines had 6,368.

The measles outbreaks were mostly linked to low vaccination coverage of the population. In some cases this was due to limited or no access to health services, while in other areas it is due to religious or philosophical objections by parents who oppose vaccinating their children.

On Tuesday, the first drug to treat the root cause of cystic fibrosis, Kalydeco, won approval by the Food and Drug Administration. Kalydeco now offers a life-changing treatment for a handful of patients in the U.S. who suffer from the deadly illness, and gives home for thousands of other patients with the disease.

30,000 Americans live with cystic fibrosis, which is a disease that causes sticky mucus to build-up in he lungs and other organs, which leads to infections, digestive problems and death in young adulthood. The typical life expectancy for those with cystic fibrosis is 37 years.

The FDA approved Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s Kalydeco for patients with a rare form of the disease that affects only about 1,200 people in the U.S., or just 4 percent of all cystic fibrosis sufferers. These particular patients have a protein defect that prevents their cells from properly absorbing and excreting salt and water. Studies of Kalydeco showed that it significantly improved lung function ad reduced other symptoms of the disease.

The pill, which is taken twice a day, is amongst the first drugs designed to correct a specific genetic defect.

Women may get more than more than just a pick-me-up from their morning cup of coffee. According to new research, caffeine may alter women's estrogen levels, and the changes differ according to race.

The study looked at more than 250 women aged 18 to 44, and found that in white women, caffeine appeared to lower estrogen levels, while in Asian women it seemed to raise them.

Women involved in the study were analyzed one to three times per week over the course of two menstrual cycles. Exercise, eating, and smoking behaviors were recorded and reviewed along with blood samples. Participants, on average, consumed about 90 milligrams of caffeine daily, which is the equivalent of one cup of coffee.

Asian women who consumed 200 milligrams of caffeine or more per day had higher estrogen levels than those who drank less. Among white women, however, the opposite was true: those who drank at least 200 milligrams of caffeine daily had lower levels of estrogen. Among black women the results were similar to those of Asian women, but did not reach statistical significance.

The study was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Those who give into racism and prejudice might simply be dumb, according to the results of a new study that is sure to stir up some controversy.

The study found that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. Lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario, said that these findings point to a vicious cycle.

The study also found that low intelligence adults tend to gravitate towards socially conservative ideologies, and those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice.

Hodson said:

"Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood."

Hodson said that earlier studies have found links between low levels of education and higher levels of prejudice, so studying intelligence seemed to be a logical next step.

A new study which was recently published in the British Medical Journal found no association between the frequency of fried food consumption in Spain and the incidence of heart disease. This adds to the mounting research which suggests that it is the type of oil used and whether or not it has been used before, that really matters.

It should be noted that in Spain olive and sunflower oil are mostly used for frying. The British Heart Foundation was quick to warn its citizens not to "reach for the frying pan" just yet, and noted that the Mediterranean diet is healthier than that of England, or the U.S. for that matter.

Researchers in Spain followed more than 40,000 people, of which two-thirds were women, from the mid-1990s to 2004. Participants were asked at the outset how often they ate fried foods, either at home or while out. Then researchers looked to see whether eating fried foods regularly increased the likelihood of falling ill from having coronary heart disease.

Researchers divided participants into four groups, from lowest fried food intake to highest. They found no significant difference in heart disease. In total, there were 606 incidents linked to heart disease, but they were split pretty evenly among the four groups.

The study's authors concluded:

According to a new study, a group of compounds that are used in a variety of products, from microwave popcorn to water-resistant clothing, may actually prevent childhood vaccinations from working properly.

The study found that children who had higher concentrations of the compounds called perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) in their blood had lower immune responses to diphtheria and tetanus vaccinations. An insufficient immune response to a vaccine can mean that the child is more vulnerable to catching a disease despite the fact that they've been vaccinated against it.

In fact, the levels of antibodies in the blood of some children exposed to PFCs showed that they were no longer protected against these diseases by age 7.

Dr. Philippe Grandien of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, who led the study, said:

"When we take our kids to the doctor's office to get their shots, we expect that the vaccines are going to work. What we found was that there was an increasing risk that they didn’t work if the kids had been exposed to the PFCs."

Do women or men hurt more? According to a new study out of Stanford University that examined patients' medical records, women report higher levels than men across the board.

Researchers reviewed patients electronic medical reports (EMRs). Patients at the participating hospitals reported their feelings of pain, usually in the form of scores on a 0 to 10 scale, with 0 meaning "none at all" and 10 meaning "the most imaginable."

Dr. Atul Butte, a Stanford pediatrics professor, along with his colleagues, reviewed 160,000 pain reports from more than 72,000 patients. After looking over all the data, a clear gender gap was seen.

In Stanford's Scope journal, Butte said:

"In many cases, the reported difference approached a full point on the 1-to-10 scale. How big is that? A pain-score improvement of one point is what clinical researchers view as indicating that a pain medication is working

"We actually use these numbers," Butte said. "We use these as a kind of threshold - when do we start pain medicine? Are we treating someone with enough pain medicine? We need to have that understanding that there is a sex difference here."

Most pregnant women are able to find out the gender of their unborn baby between 18 and 22 weeks during a routine, mid-pregnancy ultrasound, and invasive testing can reveal gender even earlier at around 11 weeks. But women may soon be able to find out whether they are carrying a boy or a girl as early as five weeks, after scientists have developed a pioneering, new non-invasive test.

A team at Chenil General Hospital in Seoul, South Korea, found that various ratios of two enzymes, which can be extracted from a pregnant mother's blood, indicate the baby's gender as early as five or six weeks.

Dr. Hyun Mee Ryu, the study's lead author, said that knowing the sex early is important if the mother is a carrier of a X-chromosome gene that can cause a disease such as hemophilia or muscular dystrophy. Female fetuses are either carriers of the disease or are free from it, but a male fetus has a 50 percent chance of inheriting the disease and parents could choose to abort the pregnancy.

The researchers also warn:

"This method might promote the potential for sex selection. Therefore, there should be careful consideration about the use of this analytical tool in clinical situations."