Health News

Bad Sleep Leads To Unhealthy Food Choices

Date: Jun-13-2012
Bad food choices may partially be due to sleep deprivation, according to a new study. At Sleep 2012, researchers from the University of California show how sleep deprivation impairs the regions in the human brain responsible for food choices. They state that these findings may help explain the association between obesity and sleep deprivation. The researchers enrolled 23 healthy individuals to participate in the study...

Amazon Indian Breast Milk Has Higher Omega-3 Content

Date: Jun-13-2012
The omega-3 fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is vital for cognitive and visual development in infants. Now, researchers have discovered that Amerindian women have higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids in their breast milk than women in the United States. The study, conducted by anthropologists at UC Santa Barbara in collaboration with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and the Cincinnati Children's Hospital, examined breast milk fatty acid composition in Tsimane women (who live in Amazonian Bolivia) and U.S. women...

Genetic Discovery Will Help Fight Diarrhoea Outbreaks

Date: Jun-13-2012
Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have discovered unexpectedly large genetic differences between two similar species of the pathogenic Cryptosporidium parasite. Published today in the journal Evolutionary Applications, the findings pave the way for a new gold standard test to distinguish between the waterborne parasite's two main species affecting humans. One species is spread from person to person (Cryptosporidium hominis) but the other is often spread from livestock to people (Cryptosporidium parvum)...

Smoking Raises Overall Death Rates In Elderly Patients

Date: Jun-13-2012
A study featured in the June 11 edition of JAMA's Archives of Internal Medicine reveals that older patients have a higher mortality rate due to smoking and that quitting smoking is linked to a lower mortality risk in older aged people. Background information of the study states that smoking is a known risk factor for many chronic diseases, such as cancer and cardiovascular disease, yet epidemiological evidence is mostly based on research conducted in middle-aged adults...

Unhealthy Diet Increases Risk Of Cardiovascular Disease

Date: Jun-13-2012
According to a study published in BioMed Central's open access journal Nutrition Journal, low carb, high fat diets could be responsible for an increase in unhealthy cholesterol levels in the blood of Swedes. In Northern Sweden, the incidence of heart disease in the 1970s was higher than any other region in the country. Furthermore, men in this area had some of the highest prevalence of cardiovascular disease in the world...

Stigma Stops Many Adolescents With Mental Illness From Seeking Help

Date: Jun-13-2012
According to researchers at Case Western Reserve, it is vital to reduce stigmas associated with adolescent mental illness in order to increase the number of adolescents who seek help. The study is published in the Journal of Nursing Measurement. The researchers note that it is particularly difficult to tackle this problem as teenage mental health stigma is rarely studied and because there is insufficient data regarding the accuracy of measures used to evaluate it...

Vitamin D Supplements May Stave Off Disability And Mobility Issues In The Elderly

Date: Jun-13-2012
According to a new study published online in the Journal of Gerontology elderly individuals with insufficient levels of vitamin D, regardless of whether obtained through diet, supplements or sun exposure, could have a higher risk of developing mobility problems and disability. Leading researcher, Denise Houston, Ph.D., R.D...

Gender Differences In Physicians' Pay Still Exist

Date: Jun-13-2012
An article published in JAMA today shows that although great efforts are made to balance salaries between male and female staff, differences still exist in pay rates, even after adjusting for differences in specialty, institutional characteristics, academic productivity, academic rank, work hours, and other factors. Reshma Jagsi, M.D., D.Phil., of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and their colleagues gathered data to establish whether salaries do indeed differ by gender...

Early Menopause Raises Brain Aneurysm Risk

Date: Jun-13-2012
How old a women is when she experiences menopause can influence her risk of having a brain (cerebral) aneurysm, say researchers. The study, published online first in the Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery, found that the younger a women is during menopause, the more likely she is to have a cerebral aneurysm. A cerebral aneurysm occurs when a blood vessel in the brain enlarges and is usually only discovered once it ruptures, causing a potentially lethal and/or disabling bleed. According to the researchers, men are less likely to experience cerebral aneurysms than women...

Omega-3 Fish Oil Supplements Unlikely To Ward Off Cognitive Decline

Date: Jun-13-2012
A new review of studies that lasted up to 3.5 years suggests taking omega-3 fish oil supplements probably does not help older people ward off cognitive decline, the loss in memory and thinking skills that is a hallmark of dementia. The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) researchers found participants who took the supplements performed no better in tests of mental ability than counterparts who took placebos or dummy pills...