Men are at risk of being "feminised" by thousands of "gender bending" chemicals that are changing the behaviour of humans and animals, according to a report.
Scientists are warning that manmade pollutants which have escaped into the environment mimic the female sex hormone oestrogen.
The males of species including fish, amphibians, birds, and reptiles have been feminised by exposure to sex hormone disrupting chemicals and have been found to be abnormally making egg yolk protein, normally made by females, according to the report by Chem Trust, environmental group.
The authors claim that the chemicals found in food packaging, cleaning products, plastics, sewage and paint cause genital deformities, reduce sperm count and "feminise" males.
Men may fancy it and medical science considers it the best indicator of a woman's health and fertility, but the classic hourglass figure isn't necessarily suited for demands in the real world, according to new body type research conducted at the University of Utah.
Having a less than Barbie doll, more cylindrical body might not look ideal on the shelf, but it offers substantial benefits for coping with daily life, Elizabeth Cashdan, chair of the U. anthropology department, reports in the December issue of the journal Current Anthropology.
In societies and under conditions in both Third World and industrialized countries, women with bigger waists and flatter hips tend to have the strength, assertiveness and competitive attributes to cope with the stresses of bringing home the bacon and tending to the survival of her family.
With up to half of a person's body mass consisting of skeletal muscle, chronic inflammation of those muscles - which include those found in the limbs - can result in significant physical impairment.
According to University of Illinois kinesiology and community health professor Kimberly Huey, past research has demonstrated that the antioxidant properties of Vitamin E may be associated with reduced expression of certain pro-inflammatory cytokines, in vitro, in various types of cells. Cytokines are regulatory proteins that function as intercellular communicators that assist the immune system in generating a response.
To consider whether the administration of Vitamin E, in vivo, might have similar effects on skeletal and cardiac muscle, Huey and a team of Illinois researchers put Vitamin E to the test in mice. The team included study designer Rodney Johnson, a U. of I. professor of animal sciences, whose previous work has suggested a possible link, in mice, between short-term Vitamin E supplementation and reduced inflammation in the brain.
Antibiotics are the single largest class of agents that cause idiosyncratic drug-induced liver injury (DILI), reports a new study in Gastroenterology, an official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Institute. DILI is the most common cause of death from acute liver failure and accounts for approximately 13 percent of cases of acute liver failure in the U.S.
It is caused by a wide variety of prescription and nonprescription medications, nutritional supplements and herbals.
"DILI is a serious health problem that impacts patients, physicians, government regulators and the pharmaceutical industry," said Naga P. Chalasani, MD, of the Indiana University School of Medicine and lead author of the study. "Further efforts are needed in defining its pathogenesis and developing means for the early detection, accurate diagnosis, prevention and treatment of DILI."
Happiness is contagious, spreading among friends, neighbors, siblings and spouses like the flu, according to a large study that for the first time shows how emotion can ripple through clusters of people who may not even know each other.
The study of more than 4,700 people who were followed over 20 years found that people who are happy or become happy boost the chances that someone they know will be happy. The power of happiness, moreover, can span another degree of separation, elevating the mood of that person's husband, wife, brother, sister, friend or next-door neighbor.
"You would think that your emotional state would depend on your own choices and actions and experience," said Nicholas A. Christakis, a medical sociologist at Harvard University who helped conduct the study published online today by BMJ, a British medical journal. "But it also depends on the choices and actions and experiences of other people, including people to whom you are not directly connected. Happiness is contagious."
Andras Gergely and Kate Kelland
Reuters Mon, 08 Dec 2008 02:06 UTC
Dublin/London - Irish pig meat contaminated with toxic dioxins could have been exported to as many as 25 countries, including France and the Netherlands, Irish government officials said on Sunday.
The Irish government has recalled all domestic pork products from shops, restaurants and food processing plants because of contamination with dioxin -- which in some forms and concentrations, and with long exposure, can cause cancer and other health problems.
Neighboring Britain, the main export market, has warned consumers not to eat any Irish pork products after tests revealed the contamination.
New York - Healthy people should have the right to boost their brains with pills, like those prescribed for hyperactive kids or memory-impaired older folks, several scientists contend in a provocative commentary.
Magnesium helps build bones, make proteins, release energy stored in muscles and regulate body temperature. In the cover story of the Dec. 2 issue of Neuron, MIT researchers report a possible new role for magnesium: helping maintain memory function in middle age and beyond.
The adult daily nutritional requirement for magnesium, a trace mineral found in foods such as dark green, leafy vegetables, is around 400 mg a day. But studies show that as many as half of all Americans do not consume enough magnesium. Magnesium deficits have been tied to allergies, asthma, attention deficit disorder, anxiety, heart disease, muscle cramps and other conditions.
Associate Professor Guosong Liu and postdoctoral associate Inna Slutsky at MIT's Picower Center for Learning and Memory found that magnesium helps regulate a key brain receptor important for learning and memory. Their work provides evidence that a magnesium deficit may lead to decreased memory and learning ability, while an abundance of magnesium may improve cognitive function.
A new report provides evidence linking traumatic brain injury sustained by troops in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan to a variety of long-term health problems including dementia, aggression, depression and symptoms similar to those seen in Parkinson's disease.
But the Institute of Medicine committee charged with developing the report also pointed to a troubling lack of scientific data on such injuries, which are fairly recent in the history of warfare.
"The real bottom line significant finding is that there's not a good human literature on the kinds of neurotrauma seen in Iraq and Afghanistan caused by blasts," said Dr. George W. Rutherford, vice chair of the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. "The human literature is really about people who've had [brain injury] from car crashes or falling down stairs and, in the military, from shrapnel or gunshots. We're all worried that blast neurotrauma hasn't really made it into the human literature."
Washington, D.C. - Genetically modified crops reached 9 percent of global primary crop production in 2007, bringing the total GM land area up to 114.3 million hectares, according to Worldwatch Institute estimates published in the latest
Vital Signs Update. The United States continues to be the global leader in production, accounting for half of all GM crop area.
GM production has been on the rise since the crops were first introduced more than a decade ago, and it now includes 23 countries. But controversy over the benefits of genetic modification continues, including questions about the technology's ability to deliver on promises of enhanced yields and nutrition.
"GM crops are definitely not a silver bullet," said Alice McKeown, a researcher for the Worldwatch Institute. "They sound good on paper, but we have yet to see glowing results."
