Too embarrassed to ask your doctor about sex, body quirks, or the latest celeb health fad? In a regular feature and a new book, "What the Yuck?!," Health magazine medical editor Dr. Roshini Raj tackles your most personal and provocative questions. Send 'em to Dr. Raj at whattheyuck@health.com.

Q: Is it bad to drink alcohol if I’m on antibiotics?

A: You shouldn’t drink at all while on certain antibiotics - like Flagyl (metronidazole), Tindamax (tinidazole), or Bactrim or Septra (trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole) - because you can get unpleasant side effects like nausea and headaches.

Otherwise, a glass of wine probably won’t hurt, though you might experience worse potential side effects (upset stomach, dizziness, drowsiness) than usual from the drug and the alcohol.

If you’re sick enough to need antibiotics, however, I’d say skip happy hour and give your body time to fight the infection.

Editor's Note: Adrienne LaGier from St. Leonard, Maryland, is one of seven CNN viewers selected to be a part of the Fit Nation Triathlon Challenge program.  Each athlete receives all the tools necessary to train for and compete in the Nautica Malibu Triathlon this September, alongside Dr. Sanjay Gupta.  The seven athletes met up this past weekend in Atlanta for the official kickoff of the program.

One of my goals in completing this challenge is to create a new healthy lifestyle for myself, fiancé Chris, and the girls. Making exercise a priority is only half of the equation.

The other half is food. FULL POST

Editor's Note: Glenn Keller from Burleson, Texas is one of seven CNN viewers selected to be a part of the Fit Nation Triathlon Challenge program.  Each athlete receives all the tools necessary to train for and compete in the Nautica Malibu Triathlon this September, alongside Dr. Sanjay Gupta.  The seven athletes met up this past weekend in Atlanta for the official kickoff of the program.

What clicked? That’s the question I have had to ask myself. What clicked to cause me to realize the importance of my personal health? What clicked to make me stop ignoring my most prized possession: me!

Every 3,000 miles, cars have to get an oil change and service. Every 15,000 miles, the same for my truck. When either starts to make a noise or runs funny, off to the shop they go. Every two weeks I have to make sure the lawn gets mowed. It’s hard to believe everything gets maintained except for me.

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Editor's note: Dr. Charles Raison, CNNhealth's mental health expert, is an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Between kids banging their heads in sports and soldiers banging their heads in battle, traumatic brain injury (TBI) gets a lot of press these days.

Sadly, TBI is very common, occurring in 1.7 million people annually in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The condition ranges in severity from mild concussions with no long-term consequences to severe brain damage leading to coma and/or death.

Now Hollywood is entering the national discussion about TBI with “The Vow," a movie inspired by real events that tells how a tragic case of TBI nearly destroyed the love between a married couple.

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If you went to a beach where one in 28 swimmers later experienced diarrhea, stomachache or nausea, would you jump right in?

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing new water quality standards that would allow just such a beach to remain open, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“EPA has a duty to protect the public from all of these illnesses, but EPA seems to refuse to acknowledge this duty,” says Steve Fleischli, a senior attorney in the water program at NRDC who has written about the proposed criteria.
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Fewer teens are getting pregnant now, than at any point in the last 40 years, says a new report.

Researchers at the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual and reproductive health think tank, say the pregnancy rate among teens is down 42%, from 116.9 pregnancies per 1,000 women in 1990, to 67.8 pregnancies per 1,000 women in 2008. This means about 7% of young women between the ages of 15 to 19 became pregnant in the United States in 2008.

"The 30-plus years of rates that we have, have been showing a very steady decline," said Kathryn Kost, a senior research associate at Guttmacher, and the lead author on the paper. "Rates now, from 2008 are at the lowest levels we ever seen since we started reporting them."

Kost also says the teen birth rate – the number of actual babies born to teenage moms - was down 35% as well; and the abortion rate among teens dropped almost 60% from its peak in 1988.
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We hear a lot about the hazards of drunk driving, but here's something else to put on your radar: A study in the British Medical Journal found that marijuana nearly doubles the risk of vehicle collisions.

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Indiana state officials say they have confirmed two cases of measles and two probable cases of the highly infectious disease.

Last Friday, one of the confirmed patients from Hamilton County, Indiana, visited a free outdoor festival called the Super Bowl Village, a three-block area of downtown Indianapolis which was turned into an open area for games, concerts and activities.

The patient did not go inside the Indiana Convention Center where there were more NFL-related activities taking place.

Measles is a respiratory disease which is very contagious.  It spreads through sneezes, coughs and droplets in the air.  Symptoms of measles include fever, cough, runny nose and a rash all over the body. Infection can be prevented if you are vaccinated. 
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Editor's Note: Nancy Klinger from Afton, Minnesota is one of seven CNN viewers selected for The CNN Fit Nation Triathlon Challenge, where they will train for and compete in the Nautica Malibu Triathlon this September.  This past weekend, all seven participants came together with Dr. Sanjay Gupta in Atlanta for the official kickoff of the challenge.

The impact of the CNN Fit Nation Triathlon Team kick-off weekend in Atlanta did not hit me until Monday morning.

It started out as a normal work day, up at 5:15 a.m. to take the dogs for a walk, ate breakfast, and grabbed a quick shower before heading off to work. I wrapped the towel around myself and looked in the mirror to dry my hair. And then it happened. The impact.

The tears started to flow and they kept flowing. The tears were constant and heavy, like a faucet fully opened.

Although I was looking in the mirror, I did not see myself but small video clips of this incredible weekend with the most wonderful people that one can imagine. The clips were not in any particular order but were random. Each clip sparked a different emotion; emotions that I have not felt, or allowed myself to feel, in a very long time.
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How many times have you been to the movie theater, ordered a regular-sized popcorn or soda and been asked, “Would you like a large for a quarter more?” What about ordering a sandwich at your local deli? "Make it a combo!" you probably say.

We’re trained early on, oftentimes by our parents, to clean our plates or no dessert. Frequently, regardless of how hungry we are, that’s exactly what we’ll do. 

Sure, the medium-sized popcorn would’ve been entirely satisfying, but if offered the larger portion, we’re going to take it and eat it – all of it.

This phenomenon, in part, is was what sparked a series of studies conducted at a fast-food Chinese restaurant on Tulane’s New Orleans campus.

The researchers conclude, in a study published in this month’s Health Affairs,  that up to one-third of customers accepted a verbal offer to downsize their lunch, regardless of whether they were offered a minor monetary incentive to do so. Customers who accepted the downsized meals ate, on average, 200 fewer calories than did those who ordered the full-sized meals.
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