Health & WellnessS


Health

"Unlikely" that key genes cause schizophrenia

The genes most widely believed to cause schizophrenia are, in fact, unlikely to play a role in the condition, according to the most comprehensive genetic study of its kind.

Health

How Big Is Your Brain? Its Size May Protect You From Memory Loss

From autopsies, researchers have long known that some people die with sharp minds and perfect memories, but their brains riddled with the plaques and tangles of Alzheimer's disease. New research shows that those people have a larger part of the brain called the hippocampus.

Cow Skull

Sickened U.S. pork workers have new nerve disorder

Eighteen pork plant workers in Minnesota, at least five in Indiana and one in Nebraska have come down with a mysterious neurological condition they appear to have contracted while removing brains from slaughtered pigs, U.S. researchers and health officials said on Wednesday.

Pills

Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation



Antidepressant Pills
©Unknown

Author Charles Barber discusses Americans' unrealistic notions about happiness. We've medicalized a lot of life issues that aren't mental illnesses.

While we've now become accustomed to the barrage of prescription drug commercials on prime-time TV, it's jarring to learn that this advertising is legal only in the United States and New Zealand. The pharmaceutical industry doesn't just target Americans directly, but also spends roughly $25,000 per physician per year. With the aid of information from data mining companies, a pharmaceutical representative knows exactly how many prescriptions for what medication a doctor has written, allowing the industry to individually target them.

How Americans came to this fraught relationship with the pharmaceutical industry and its drugs -- particularly antidepressants -- is the subject of Charles Barber's new book, Comfortably Numb. A veteran of mental health programs in homeless shelters and a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine, Barber trains his eye to the confluence of science and culture that have led to the widespread prescribing of medications once reserved for the most serious cases.

Bulb

Men more likely to have problems with memory and thinking skills

When it comes to remembering things, new research shows men are more likely than women to have mild cognitive impairment, the transition stage before dementia.

"This is one of the first studies to determine the prevalence of mild cognitive impairment among men and women who have been randomly selected from a community to participate in the study," said study author Rosebud Roberts, MD, with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, and member of the American Academy of Neurology. Mild cognitive impairment can also be described as impairment in memory or other thinking skills beyond what's expected for a person's age and education.

For the study, 2,050 people living in Olmsted County, Minnesota, who were between the ages of 70 and 89 were interviewed, examined, and given cognitive tests. Overall, 15 percent of the group had mild cognitive impairment.

Coffee

Your belly fat could be making you hungrier

The extra fat we carry around our middle could be making us hungrier, so we eat more, which in turn leads to even more belly fat. Dr. Kaiping Yang and his colleagues at the Lawson Health Research Institute affiliated with The University of Western Ontario found abdominal fat tissue can reproduce a hormone that stimulates fat cell production. The researchers hope this discovery will change in the way we think about and treat abdominal obesity.

Yang identified that the hormone Neuropeptide Y (NPY) is reproduced by abdominal fat tissue. Previously, it was believed to only be produced by the brain. Yang believes this novel finding may lead to new therapeutic targets for combating obesity. Their findings were reported in a recent issue of The FASEB Journal.

Syringe

Aboriginal children 'injected with leprosy'

ABORIGINAL children were injected with leprosy treatments in a medical testing program that used members of the Stolen Generation as guinea pigs, a Senate Committee has heard.

Health

Flashback Treatment with 'friendly' bacteria could counter autism in children

PROBIOTIC bacteria given to autistic children improved their concentration and behaviour so much that medical trials collapsed because parents refused to accept placebos, a scientist revealed yesterday.

The effect of the bacteria was so pronounced that some of the parents taking part in what was supposed to be a blind trial realised their children were taking something other than a placebo.

Comment: More information about probiotics is available here:
Gut Flora: A Digestible Account of Probiotics


Magnify

Red blood cells impenetrable to malaria parasite

For people carrying a mutation that causes the rare genetic disease - pyruvate kinase deficiency - it's not all bad news. The mutation also protects against malaria.

About one in 20,000 people have two copies of a genetic mutation that prevents red blood cells from producing energy and causes anaemia. Patients with the condition often die young.

Stop

French law to block anorexia websites

In image-conscious France, it may soon be a crime to glamorise the ultra-thin. New legislation aims crack down on websites that advise anorexics how to starve - and could be used to hit fashion industry heavyweights, too.

The French parliament's lower house has adopted the groundbreaking bill that would make it illegal to incite extreme thinness.

It recommends fines of up to 45,000 euros ($A76,805) and three-year prison sentences for offenders. It next goes to the Senate in the coming weeks.