Health News

What Is The Best And Worst Place To Be A Mother Worldwide?

Date: May-09-2012
According to Save the Children's 13th State of the World's Mothers report, Norway is the best place to be a mother in the entire world, and Niger is the worst, overtaking Afghanistan, which for the last two years was classified as the worst place to be a mother. The U.S, as of now, is ranked number 25. For their study, Save the Children compared 165 countries around the world to determine which ones were the best and worst places to to be a mother. They analyzed certain components to come to their conclusions, such as education, economic status, mother's health, children's health and...

Nurse-Led Home Interventions Reduce TV Viewing Time And BMI In Kids

Date: May-09-2012
Louise A Baur, Professor of Pediatrics and Child Health at the University of Sydney's Medical School in Australia presented one of the world's first studies that examined obesity risk factors in very young children at the 19th European Congress on Obesity in Lyon, France. The study demonstrated that mothers were able to reduce their child's body-mass index (BMI), TV-viewing time and improve their child's vegetable intake by the age of 2 years by participating in a nurse-led, home-based intervention. In light of the well known fact that people in socially and economically disadvantaged parts of...

Sleeping With Parents May Help Sleep Quality Which Reduces Obesity Risk

Date: May-09-2012
Dr Nanna Olsen from the Research Unit for Dietary Studies at the Institute of Preventive Medicine at Copenhagen University Hospitals in Denmark presented new research at the 19th European Congress on Obesity in Lyon, France, which reveals that children who come into their parent's bed during the night are less likely to be overweight than children who do not.  According to research, children that come into their parents' bed after waking up in the night are linked to short sleep duration and sleep fragmentation. Research has shown that obesity is also linked to a low quality and quantity of...

Pregnancy Rates And Cost Per Pregnancy Improve Linked To Weight Loss Intervention

Date: May-09-2012
At the 19th European Congress on Obesity in Lyon, France, the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Obesity, Dr Kyra Sim from The Boden Institute of Obesity, Nutrition, Exercise and Eating Disorders at the University of Sydney in Australia presented a new study, which shows that weight loss intervention in obese women who undergo fertility treatment substantially improves their chance of pregnancy and other health indicators, whilst also saving substantial costs per achieved pregnancy. The study is the first to evaluate the economic value of the impact of women's weight...

Locating Rare Pancreatic Tumors With New Imaging Technique

Date: May-09-2012
A non-invasive way to detect the exact location of very small life-threatening tumors in the pancreas (insulinomas) has been discovered by a team of researchers in Switzerland. This new technique will help surgeons to successfully remove the tumors that can be less than 1 centimeter in diameter. Professor Emanuel Christ, a clinical researcher in the Department of Endocrinology at the University Hospital of Bern, Switzerland, presented the study findings at the joint International Congress of Endocrinology/European Congress of Endocrinology on May 7, 2012. According to Prof. Christ, current...

Consumption Of Probiotics Associated With Reduced Risk Of Diarrhea From Antibiotic Use

Date: May-09-2012
Consuming probiotics reduces the risk of diarrhea caused by antibiotic usage, researchers from RAND Health, Santa Monica, California reported in Jama (Journal of the American Medical Association). Probiotics are microbes that protect their host and prevent diseases. The most common probiotic is Lactobacillus acidophilus, which is common in yogurt and acidophilus milk. The authors wrote, as background information: "The use of antibiotics that disturb the gastrointestinal flora [microbes] is associated with clinical symptoms such as diarrhea, which occurs in as many as 30 percent of patients....

Brain Networks May Help Prevent Traffic Jams

Date: May-09-2012
According to a study published May 6 in Nature Neuroscience, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the University Medical Center at Hamburg-Eppendorf and the University of Tübingen have found that networks in the brain may avoid congestion at their busiest intersections by communicating on different frequencies. Co-author Maurizio Corbetta, M.D., the Norman J. Stupp Professor of Neurology at Washington University, explained: "Many neurological and psychiatric conditions are likely to involve problems with signaling in brain networks. Examining the temporal...

Brachytherapy Effective In Early Stage Breast Cancer In Milk Ducts

Date: May-08-2012
A new study reveals that women with early-stage breast cancer in the milk ducts that has not metastasized to healthy surrounding breast tissue (ductal carcinoma in situ [DCIS]) appear to benefit from undergoing breast brachytherapy with a strut-based applicator. The study was presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Breast Surgeons, held in Phoenix May 2 to May 4. Breast brachytherapy is a 5-day therapy that patients receive after undergoing lumpectomy surgery and a form of accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI). According to the researchers, women who underwent...

Why We All Love The Sound Of Our Own Voice

Date: May-08-2012
Research shows that people dedicate some 30-40% of their speech to communicating their subjective experiences to others. The old saying to teach is to learn might have been taken a little to the extreme, but none the less, psychologists believe that communicating thoughts and experiences to others stimulates cognitive and neural mechanisms associated with reward. Put simply, we feel better when we share thoughts, experiences and ideas with those around us. Harvard neuroscientist Diana Tamir, who conducted the experiments with Harvard colleague Jason Mitchell said: "Self-disclosure is extra...

Poorer Neighborhoods More Likely To Have Scarce Primary Health Services

Date: May-08-2012
According to a study published in the latest issue of Health Services Research, blacks and lower income Hispanics are more likely to live in neighborhoods with few or no primary care physicians. Lead author Darrell J. Gaskin, Ph.D., deputy director of the Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health explained: "What this says to us is that we really need to encourage physicians to locate in these areas." According to research, minorities, the poor and those living in inner cities and rural areas, as well as those who are uninsured are more...