Health & Wellness
Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell
Microsoft National Broadcasting
Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:29 EST
Authors say long-term consequences are destructive to society
In their new book, The Narcissism Epidemic, psychologists Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell explore the rise of narcissism in American culture and explain how this can lead to aggression, materialism and shallow values. An excerpt.
Introduction
We didn't have to look very hard to find it. It was everywhere.
On a reality TV show, a girl planning her sixteenth birthday party wants a major road blocked off so a marching band can precede her grand entrance on a red carpet. A book called "My Beautiful Mommy" explains plastic surgery to young children whose mothers are going under the knife for the trendy "Mommy Makeover." It is now possible to hire fake paparazzi to follow you around snapping your photograph when you go out at night - you can even take home a faux celebrity magazine cover featuring the pictures.
A popular song declares, with no apparent sarcasm, "I believe that the world should revolve around me!" People buy expensive homes with loans far beyond their ability to pay - or at least they did until the mortgage market collapsed as a result. Babies wear bibs embroidered with "Supermodel" or "Chick Magnet" and suck on "Bling" pacifiers while their parents read modernized nursery rhymes from This Little Piggy Went to Prada. People strive to create a "personal brand" (also called "self-branding"), packaging themselves like a product to be sold. Ads for financial services proclaim that retirement helps you return to childhood and pursue your dreams. High school students pummel classmates and then seek attention for their violence by posting YouTube videos of the beatings.
Emma Young, Blackpool
Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians
Fri, 15 Mar 2002 03:22 EST
A.E.B.C. Editor's Note: This article is reprinted from New Scientist, March 15, 2002. http://www.newscientist.com
Rejection can dramatically reduce a person's IQ and their ability to reason analytically, while increasing their aggression, according to new research.
"It's been known for a long time that rejected kids tend to be more violent and aggressive," says Roy Baumeister of the Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, who led the work. "But we've found that randomly assigning students to rejection experiences can lower their IQ scores and make them aggressive."
The Telegraph
Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:58 EST
© Getty
The study found that people in a bad mood were also less likely to make snap decisions based on racial or religious prejudices
Being in a bad mood may not be all gloom and doom after Australian scientists found that negative feelings improved judgement, boosted memory and made people less gullible.
The study, authored by psychology professor Joseph Forgas at the University of New South Wales, showed that
people in a bad mood were more critical of, and paid more attention to, their surroundings than happier people, who were more likely to believe anything they were told.
"Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, cooperation, and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking paying greater attention to the external world," Prof Forgas wrote.
David Gutierrez
NaturalNews
Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:00 EST
Byproducts from the production of corn for ethanol biofuels have been found to be contaminated with antibiotics.
"Ethanol's drug problem is just the latest of many reasons to impose a moratorium on production of fuels from grains," wrote Stan Cox for the Land Institute's Prairie Writers Circle. "If industry cannot supply sufficient quantities of alternative fuels without risking an even deeper medical crisis, it might just be another sign that our thirst for vehicle fuel has outgrown all ecological limits."
Ethanol production has previously been criticized for diverting land from food to fuel production and for degrading soil, depleting water supplies and increasing various forms of pollution.
"Now to the list of ethanol's environmental insults we can add pharmaceutical pollution," Cox wrote.
Hesh Goldstein
NaturalNews
Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:00 EST
Recently, USA Today has been running an interesting series of articles on our ridiculous health care system or, as reality would put it, our "disease care" system. While more and more Americans are concerned with the increasing costs of the U.S. health care system, hawked as the best medical care in the world, the problem is that those that cannot afford it are steadily increasing.
A poll found that eighty percent of those that responded were not thrilled with the $2.2 TRILLION, or $7,129 a person, being spent on health care in the U.S. and that medical company profits or malpractice lawsuits were the biggest causes of the spending. Actually, of the $2.2 trillion, 660 billion is spent on hospital care; 462 billion is spent on doctors, and 220 billion on drugs. (See end for complete breakdown)
For the most part, this medical inflation is perpetuated by Big Pharma's drug hype as the solution to everything. This inflation is also brought about by waste, inefficiency, and the growing number of chronic diseases caused by our epidemic of obesity.
Mike Adams
NaturalNews
Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:00 EST
The Associated Press has declared war on alternative medicine, publishing a series of stories attacking everything from nutritional therapies to bioidentical hormones. These stories, which are syndicated across thousands of websites around the world, are prefaced with the following highly-opinionated "Editor's Note":
EDITOR'S NOTE: Ten years and $2.5 billion in research have found no cures from alternative medicine. Yet these mostly unproven treatments are now mainstream and used by more than a third of all Americans. This is one in an occasional series examining their use and potential risks.
What this note reveals is an extraordinary bias against natural medicine from the start. It's clear from the claim of "examining their use and potential risks" that the Associated Press isn't even looking for potential benefits of natural medicine. They're just looking to discredit it. And the part about "Ten years and $2.5 billion in research have found no cures" is factually incorrect.
To be more accurate, the statement should have said "Ten years and $2.5 billion in research by pharmaceutical researchers who don't even know how to study something holistically have found no cures that they are willing to publicly acknowledge."
Science Daily
Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:06 EST
Many people perceive gambling to be a harmless recreational activity. However, it is estimated that six to eight million people in the United States personally suffer from a gambling related problem. This problem seems to grow tentacles, extending out to wreak havoc and can profoundly impact the physical, emotional, and financial health of the family (spouses, children, extended).
As stated in this month's issue of the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, the most common treatment models for problem gambling are focused on meeting the needs of gamblers but do not address the needs of couples and families whose lives have been negatively impacted by someone else's gambling.
Science Daily
Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:00 EST
School-based physical education plays a key role in curbing obesity and improving fitness among adolescents from low-income communities, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco and UC Berkeley.
The study, which identifies opportunities for adolescents to improve their health based on routine daily activities, finds that regular participation in PE class is significantly associated with greater cardiovascular fitness and lower body mass index.
"We took an incredibly comprehensive look at all of the opportunities kids have throughout their day to engage in physical activity and determined which are the most strongly linked to fitness and weight status," said first author Kristine Madsen, MD, MPH, an assistant professor of pediatrics at UCSF Children's Hospital. "Obesity continues to be a major public health concern, particularly in low-income communities, so it is imperative that we develop targeted interventions to improve the health of at-risk youth."
Science Daily
Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:55 EST
Being warm enough at home might lead to better health, according to a new review appearing online in theAmerican Journal of Public Health.
Hilary Thomson, of the Medical Research Council's Social and Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow, Scotland, and her colleagues combined the results of 40 studies from the 1930s through 2007. Improvements in general, mental, and respiratory health followed increases in warmth of a person's housing, studies showed.
Positive effects included reductions in breathing-related concerns such as cold and flu symptoms, first diagnosis of nasal allergies and wheezing and dry coughs at night. Better heating also appeared to have an impact on first diagnosis of high blood pressure and heart disease, and there were also indications of less depression or anxiety.
"Those who live in poor housing are at a greater risk of developing chronic disease and premature death," Thomson said. "For the public health community there is the potential to use investment to improve housing conditions as a means to improve the health of the worst off."
Sara A. Carter
Washington Times
Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:46 EST
Kandahar, Afghanistan | U.S. military officials sent a medical team to a remote outpost in southern Afghanistan this week to take blood samples from members of an Army unit after a soldier in the unit died from an Ebola-like virus.
Dr. Jim Radike, an expert in internal medicine and infectious diseases at the Role 3 Trauma Hospital at Kandahar Air Field, told The Washington Times that Sgt. Robert David Gordon, 22, from River Falls, Ala., died Sept. 16 from what turned out to be Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever after he was bitten by a tick. The virus is transmitted by infected blood and can be carried by ticks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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