Health & WellnessS

Health

Pretty pills: The dark side of the latest underground beauty trend

Just imagine if you could transform your looks by popping a pill.
No need to spend hours in the gym in pursuit of a perfect body; no fake tans, sunbeds or hours baking on the beach to get a tan; and you could say goodbye to facials and expensive anti-ageing treatments.

Just swallow a tablet with breakfast and you're done.

Magic Wand

Oklahoma Professors Develop Cancer Protein

NORMAN, Okla. - Two professors at the University of Oklahoma say they've developed a protein that can stop the spread of certain cancer cells without damaging normal cells.

Wolf

How to deal with a psychopathic 'Frankenboss'

Beyond the good, the bad and the ugly are the toxic.

Bosses, that is.

Since most of us are going to be in the workplace from age 23 to 65, we're guaranteed to run into one. Or two.

In some industries, you might bounce from a bad boss to a worse one and back again. You need deft armor and an exit strategy to protect yourself. Now.

Ambulance

Record numbers on anti-depressants

The number of prescriptions for anti-depressants has hit an all-time high, a mental health charity has revealed.

More than 31 million prescriptions for anti-depressants were written [in Britain] last year - a rise of 6 per cent on the year before, according to Mind.


Question

China denies epidemic killing children

Chinese authorities are denying reports that at least 26 children have died from a mysterious illness in the east of the country while local media accuses the Government of covering up an epidemic.

Newspaper and internet reports from Shandong province say that "many" children are dead and hundreds of others have fallen ill from a mysterious illness that has swept through Linyi city since late April.

Attention

Britain becomes a Prozac nation

The number of Britons prescribed antidepressants is at a record high, despite official warnings that many patients may not need them.

More than 31 million prescriptions were written by doctors for antidepressant drugs last year, figures published today reveal, with the use of drugs such as Seroxat and Prozac increasing by 10 per cent. The findings, which show a big increase on previous years, come despite growing concerns over the country's excessive reliance on chemical treatments and over their possible side-effects.

The exact number of people taking pills for depression is not known but is thought to be several million, with many taking the medications over long periods on repeat prescriptions.

Vader

Depleted uranium weapons linked to lung cancer

Governments deny it, but many people have long suspected that depleted uranium weapons may cause cancer. It looks as if the suspicions were right.

Depleted uranium (DU) is a dense, weakly radioactive metal used in armour-piercing shells. Hundreds of tonnes of them were fired by US and UK forces in Iraq in 2003. Previous research at the US government's Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico found that people exposed to DU dust were at little extra risk of developing cancers (New Scientist, 30 July 2005, p 5).


Magic Wand

Cognitive Therapy Can Reduce Post-traumatic Stress In Survivors Of Terrorist Attacks

Cognitive therapy is an effective treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder related to acts of terrorism and other civil conflict, finds a study published on bmj.com.

Recent NICE guidelines recommend cognitive behaviour therapy as a treatment of choice (alone or in conjunction with drugs) for post-traumatic stress disorder. However, this recommendation is largely based on trials focusing on non-terrorism related traumatic events, such as road traffic crashes and rape. Little is known about how to best treat those traumatised by terrorist incidents.

So researchers at the Northern Ireland Centre for Trauma and Transformation undertook the first controlled trial aimed at assessing the effectiveness of cognitive therapy for people affected by terrorism and other civil conflict.

The trial involved 58 people with chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, mostly resulting from multiple traumas linked to terrorism and other civil conflict.

Attention

Ex-nuclear weapons workers file claims

Walter McKenzie's assignment toward the end of the Cold War was to mop up after mishaps at a nuclear weapons factory. With a crew of other laborers from rural Georgia, he swabbed away leaks and spills inside the secret buildings, until one day his body became so contaminated with radiation that alarms at the factory went off as he passed.

"They couldn't scrub the radiation off my skin -- even after four showers," McKenzie, 52, recalled of his most terrifying day at the Savannah River nuclear weapons plant near Aiken, S.C. "They took my clothes, my watch, and even my ring, and sent me home in rubber slippers and a jumpsuit."

Later, when doctors discovered the first of 19 malignant tumors on his bladder, McKenzie followed the same torturous path as thousands of nuclear weapons workers with cancer: He filed a claim for federal compensation. It was denied.

Unable to access secret government files, or even some of his own personnel records, McKenzie could not sufficiently prove that he was exposed to something that might have made him sick. Nor can most of the 104,000 other workers, retirees, and family members who have sought help from a federal program intended to atone for decades of hazardous working conditions at scores of nuclear weapons facilities around the country.

Magic Wand

The face, not the body, attracts a mate

Body builders and gym buffs, look away now. It appears that the opposite sex is much more interested in your face than your bulging biceps or elegant figure, especially if you're a man. At least that's the upshot of the first study to assess how much faces and bodies contribute to someone's overall attractiveness.

Twelve women and 12 men took part in a trial to assess the attractiveness of people in photographs, on a scale of 1 to 7. Some participants saw the entire person, some saw faces on their own, and some just bodies. Marianne Peters from the University of Western Australia in Crawley and colleagues assessed the face-only and body-only ratings to see how well they predicted the "entire person" ratings.