Health & WellnessS


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Weight gain between first and second pregnancies associated with increased odds of male second child

A slightly greater number of males than females are born worldwide every year. In recent decades, although there are still more baby boys born than girls, there has been an apparent decline in the ratio of male to female newborns in several industrialized countries, including Canada, Denmark, England, Germany, Japan and the United States. That has led researchers to ask: Are there any factors that can influence the probability of giving birth to a baby boy or girl? A new study from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, found that mothers who experienced an increase in weight from the beginning of the first pregnancy to the beginning of the second pregnancy may be slightly more likely to give birth to a baby boy during their second pregnancy. The study appears online September 24, 2007 in the journal Fertility & Sterility.

Syringe

Vaccines and autism? Parents contend one causes the other

Actress Jenny McCarthy set off a buzz throughout the Internet when she claimed the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine triggered her son's autism.

Following her appearance last week on "Oprah," where she was discussing her new book outlining her son's struggle with autism, many blogs picked up the story and parents began coming forward to back up McCarthy's claim about the MMR vaccine.

Magic Wand

Music training improves verbal skills

Music training may be more important for enhancing verbal communication skills than phonics, a U.S. study found.

Researchers at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., say musicians use all of their senses to practice and perform a musical piece. The brain's alteration from the multi-sensory process of music training enhances the same communication skills needed for speaking and reading, explains researcher Nina Kraus.

Syringe

Deaths Associated with HPV Vaccine Start Rolling In, Over 3500 Adverse Affects Reported

As Canada, in large part due to aggressive behind the scenes lobbying, rolls out the not-comprehensively-tested Merck HPV vaccine for girls as young as nine, a look at developments on the vaccine south of the border should cause Canadians serious concern. In the United States a similar lobby campaign by the same company launched the mass HPV vaccination of girls beginning in June last year.

People

Deep-voiced men 'have more kids'

Men with deep voices tend to have more children than those who speak at a higher pitch, scientists say.

Propaganda

Dentists say sugarless, aspartame laced gum OK - as long as it's Wrigley

The nation's largest dentist group now says gum can be good for you, as long as it's sugar-free.

The American Dental Association said today it has awarded its seal of acceptance to Wrigley sugar-free gums Orbit, Extra and Eclipse - based on studies funded at least partially by the maker of Wrigley gums, Chicago-based Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co.

Comment: The ADA are the same people that say flouride is good for you and your teeth despite studies showing that the introduction of flouride into water and hygiene products has had no noticeable benefit.

If the gum is sugarless, then it most likely contains aspartame or some other frankenstein artifical sweetner that is poisoning you.

Chewing gum with aspartame habit 'poisons' woman
Abigail Cormack thought she was dying from a mystery illness. She never realised her daily chewing gum habit was probably poisoning her.

The sugar-free gum contained aspartame, a food additive widely used in thousands of products, including gum, diet soft-drinks and tea and coffee.



Syringe

'Proof still needed' for flu jab

There is not enough evidence to support the effectiveness of immunising older people against flu, fresh research in the US has concluded.

Researchers from George Washington University, Washington DC, say the benefits in reducing deaths among over 70s have been "greatly exaggerated".

Ambulance

Morgellons disease, Is this a disease or an episode of the X Files?

The symptoms sound like something from The X Files - sufferers complain of a crawling sensation all over the body, egg-like lumps under the skin and, even more bizarrely, cuts which produce tiny red and blue fibres.

©Daily Mail
Morgellons disease: Sufferers complain of cuts which produce tiny red and blue fibres.

Many doctors, however, are highly sceptical - dismissing the symptoms as imaginary and patients as delusional.

But a growing number of experts believe the symptoms are genuine, and the U.S. government's Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is investigating the condition - Morgellons disease - as reported in the New Scientist.

Info

New study discovers why few people are devoid of racial bias

Why are some individuals not prejudiced? That is the question posed by a provocative new study appearing in the September issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The authors investigate how some individuals are able to avoid prejudicial biases despite the pervasive human tendency to favor one's own group.

Robert Livingston of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and Brian Drwecki of the University of Wisconsin conducted studies that examined white college students who harbored either some or no racial biases. What is remarkable about the findings is that only seven percent did not show any racial bias (as measured by implicit and explicit psychological tests), and that nonbiased individuals differed from biased individuals in a psychologically fundamental way -- they were less likely to form negative affective associations in general.

Attention

Victims of child maltreatment more likely to perpetrate youth violence, intimate partner violence

Some people are caught in a cycle of violence, perhaps beginning with their own abuse as a child and continuing into perpetration or victimization as an adult. To interrupt this cycle, it is important to understand how childhood experiences are related to behavior later in life. In a paper published in the October issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers examined how forms of child maltreatment victimization and youth violence and young adult intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration or victimization are interrelated.

This study analyzed data from more than 9,300 respondents of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Respondents were asked about youth violence perpetration and victimization during Wave I of the study in 1994-1995, and were subsequently asked about IPV perpetration and victimization in young adult sexual relationships in Wave III of the study (2001-2002). Questions in Wave III assessed whether the respondent suffered physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect as a child. To evaluate IPV in young adults, this study was restricted to those respondents who reported at least one sexual relationship in the two years preceding Wave III. In addition, demographic and environmental variables were collected, such as parent education, employment status, school enrollment, and the county crime rate, among others. Youth violence was defined as fighting, hurting someone badly enough to need care, threatening to use a weapon, using a weapon, and shooting or stabbing someone. Intimate partner violence was defined as threatening a partner with violence; pushing, shoving, or throwing something at a partner; slapping, hitting, or kicking a partner; or insisting or making a partner have sexual relations when he or she did not want to do so.