Are you really thirsty or just conditioned to drinking water?  This bottle takes the guesswork out of getting the proper levels of fluids.

A smart new bottle and design may be the very thing to help monitor our need for hydration.  It monitors by body temperature and data received the gauge turns blue if you need fluids.

Read the full article about this new trend:  Smart Beverage Container

Reflecting on how have we made things better…Taking extra food to an elder neighbor or inviting them over to share our bounty.

Turning off lights in rooms that are currently being used?  Running computers and phones on solar chargers, being more conservation minded -  “Go Green”.  Any step can be of help.

Happy Thanksgiving from Good Changes Now

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta has joined health officials in four states and the Canadian province of British Columbia in a review of a fungal outbreak that has made at least sixty people in the U.S. ill since 2004.

With the deaths of fifteen of 47 patients tracked – nearly a third – health officials say the fungus must be taken seriously. The fungus is identified as cryptococcus gatii, which attacks people who inhale spores found in the bark of certain trees and in the soil around them.  It has typically been found in tropical and subtropical climates, but arrived on British Columbia’s Vancouver Island in 1999.

Scientists aren’t sure how it got to the western United States in 2004 or how it mutated to a new strain.  Julie Harris of the CDC says the fungus could spread again but might not.  So far, Oregon has been hit hardest with 43 cases, 15 cases were reported in Washington, and Idaho and California logged one case each.  A July, 2010 CDC report says 81 per cent of the patients identified had another underlying disease that may have made them susceptible, but nine of the reported deaths were attributed directly to C. Gattii infection.  The other six were blamed on other direct causes.

The new strain, identified by Duke University researchers, is believed to be more deadly than that found in the earlier cases.

Symptoms include:

• persistent cough
• headaches
• weight loss
• fever

According to the CDC, where Julie Harris says the treatment is not always pleasant:  six to eight weeks of daily intravenous anti-fungals and six months or more of four-a-day oral medications.  Doctors are no required to report suspected cases of C. Gattii infection, but they are urged to do so.

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