Baltimore region's blood supply hit an annual low. Blood donations are typically slow in January but the need picks up with surgeries back on schedule after the holidays. Types O and B seem to be particularly low.

Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Joshua Sharfstein called blood donation "a very thin red line that connects a lot of people in the community". He also stated that as a physician, it is a very horrible moment when you think that blood may not be available.

Blood can not be manufactured in a lab, it has to be given by people. Premature babies require blood donations in order to live, trauma victims need blood so they don't die, cancer victims require blood sometimes because of very toxic therapies, and that is only a few of the reasons blood is so desperately needed.

To schedule an appointment to donate blood, call 800-GIVE-LIFE

You're in luck if you like fruit, vegetables, and milk -- because Italian researchers say these items appear to reduce the likelihood of developing liver cancer.

Diet plays a significant role in the risk of liver cancer, says the lead researcher of this study who singles out fruits and vegetables as the foods with the most protective effect.

Subjects of this study -- published in the International Journal of Cancer -- were 185 patients with liver cancer and a comparison group of 412 controls without cancer. Participants responded to questions about diet, and their answers showed that as intake of certain foods went up, the risk of liver cancer went down. Factoring out other issues possibly contributing to this indication, researchers found that high intake of milk and yogurt cut the risk of developing liver cancer by 78 percent. High consumption of white meat lowered the risk by 56 percent, and when combined with high intake of fruit, this number dropped to 52 percent.

These finding are particularly important for patients with hepatitis B and hepatitis C (HCV) infection. But overall, experts say anyone wishing to ward off liver cancer should adopt a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, limit alcohol consumption, and avoid HCV infection by practicing safe sex and never sharing needles.

Children and teenagers -- mostly girls -- need zinc, a mineral important for maintaining healthy immune systems and healthy skin and for preventing colds and infections. Yet half of all teenage girls have zinc deficiencies.

Red meat is the most effective way of channeling zinc into the body. Perhaps these young girls are eating red meat less than two times per week -- a practice research shows can contribute to zinc deficiencies.

Iron is vital for good health. Menstruating women need it. The elderly need it. Pregnant women need it. And children need it too. But many lack healthy levels of iron.

Red meat contains a lot of iron. And while iron also comes from vegetable sources, meat contains more iron than most foods and is best utilized by the body in this form.

Red meat also contains B vitamins, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, selenium -- and protein, critical for muscle and organ health. Protein from red meat is complete, meaning it contains all the amino acids the body cannot make on its own. Protein helps the body repair and renew.

There is definitely a good side to eating red meat. There is also a bad side.

Red meat has been linked to incidences of bowel cancer, breast cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, osteoporosis, arthritis, high cholesterol, clogged arteries, and food poisoning.

Experts say the controversy surrounding red meat comes down to the type of meat we are eating -- and how we are eating it.

There are three official red meats -- pork, lamb, and beef. Pork is the leanest, lamb is the fattiest, and beef is the most nutritious. Red meat is typically high in saturated fats and bad cholesterol. But lean beef is fairly healthy -- if it's not treated with hormones and is truly free from excess fat. The more white you see, the more fat you get.

So here is the trick for all meat-eaters out there -- choose lean meats, seek nutritious cuts of meat, avoid hormone-treated products, steer clear of processed meats (these include more additives and fats than simple cuts of pork, lamb, and beef), read labels carefully, make meat just one component of a balanced diet, and brace yourself for more research and study and discussion that will undoubtedly conclude that meat is good for us. And bad for us too.

Dooce. It's a blog. It's a woman who blogs. Being dooced is a word that means losing your job because of something you blogged. Back when blogs first started to become a popular activity, Heather B. Armstrong got fired for writing about work and the people she worked with, and it made national mainstream news. Dooce became a cautionary tale of weighing how much a blogger should reveal and what protection they should have in what they shared online. Eventually, everyone you blog about is going to find your blog. No one really thought that before Armstrong got fired for her satirical take on where she worked.

To this day, and by her own account, she receives hundreds of hate emails and blog comments. But she also has hundreds of thousands of devoted blog fans, readers who stop by at least once a day to get Dooce's take on her every day life -- which is usually quirky, insightful, irreverant and always humorous. From motherhood to Mormons, no one is safe and no topic off-limits as far as I can tell.

The latest blogging at Dooce has to do with cancer. It all started with a scar that kept growing and self-employment health insurance that had Heather asking how much a biopsy would cost before consenting to one because if it cost as much as a casket she needed to weigh her options. Luckily, whatever answer the doctor gave her, she consented to having the growth checked. The results of the biopsy are in. Heather has been diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma, as she blogs, the most common of all cancers.

"It is not a melanoma, and most likely will not kill me, but the fact that I have one at my age is cause for concern. It is the result of many years of negligence on my part, of all those times I never fully protected my skin from the sun. I'd say it wasn't ever willful negligence, necessarily, maybe just a huge portion of carelessness mixed with laziness and the idiotic assumption that it would never happen to me.

Now I'm afraid to go near a window else a ray of sun touch my skin and kill me instantly. Irrational, yes, but look what being rational got me in the first place: CANCER. Next week she is going to cut the whole thing out of my arm, and then I am going to bring it home and plant it in a jar next to the kitchen window. I will name it Ed."

After Dooce gets done blogging cancer, cancer will never be the same.