You may have heard that overuse of antibiotics has created dangerous “superbugs” that no antibiotic drug can tame or about people losing hands, feet, legs and arms to these “flesh-eating” superbugs. Could you get attacked by one? It’s possible. But maintaining a strong immune system can keep you safe from harm. In 1947, just four years after penicillin was mass marketed, a common bacterium, found on the mucus membranes and skin of about 1/3 of the population, called Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) was found to be resistant to it. That is, someone got a staph infection, and a health practitioner gave them penicillin expecting it to make short work of the critter . . . but it didn’t. Oh-oh. Methicillin then became the antibiotic of choice. But an S. aureus was found to be resistant to methicillin in 1961. Oh-oh again. This time the resistant strains of S. aureus were called methicillin-resistant S. aureus, or MRSA. Vancomycin became the next antibiotic of choice; the first vancomyc…

With warmer weather, grilling fish and meat outside is a great way to enjoy the fresh air. But there’s a catch: high heat used in grilling reacts with proteins in the meat to form cancer-causing toxins called heterocyclic amines (HCAs). The longer these proteins are cooked, and the higher the temperature used, the more HCAs develop. This is one reason why people eating high meat diets get more cancer. If that’s not bad enough, fat dripping into fire produces another cancer-causing compound, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Smoke dense with PAHs gets into lungs and also coats the meat being cooked. Fortunately, you can greatly reduce HCAs and PAHs and the damage they do: Trim fat. This reduces the formation of PAHs as less fat drips into the fire. Use smaller, thinner cuts of meat to reduce cooking time. Flipping burgers once a minute versus only once reduced cooking time in one study by 1.8 minutes, and cut HCAs by more than 11-fold. Score thicker cuts of meat…