Health & WellnessS

Bulb

End Fluoridation, Say Over 500 Physicians, Dentists, Scientists And Environmentalists

In a statement released recently, over 600 professionals are urging Congress to stop water fluoridation until Congressional hearings are conducted. They cite new scientific evidence that fluoridation, long promoted to fight tooth decay, is ineffective and has serious health risks.

Bomb

Can Diet Help Stop Depression and Violence?

New research suggests that certain supplements and foods can help curb prison violence and increase academic performance in troubled students. Yet the effect of nutrition on psychological health and behavior is still controversial.

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Ambulance

The Certainty Bias

With less information to go on, the players exhibited substantially more activity in the amygdala and in the orbitofrontal cortex, which is believed to modulate activity in the amygdala. In other words, we filled in the gaps of our knowledge with fear. This fear creates our bias for certainty, since we always try to minimize our feelings of fear. As a result, we pretend that we have better intelligence about Iraqi WMD than we actually do; we selectively interpret the facts until the uncertainty is removed.

Heart

Moral judgment fails without feelings

Neuroscientists from Harvard, USC and Caltech trace abnormal moral choices to damaged emotional circuits

Consider the following scenario: someone you know has AIDS and plans to infect others, some of whom will die. Your only options are to let it happen or to kill the person.

Do you pull the trigger?

Most people waver or say they could not, even if they agree that in theory they should. But according to a new study in the journal Nature, subjects with damage to a part of the frontal lobe make a less personal calculation.

The logical choice, they say, is to sacrifice one life to save many.

Smiley

Diet in the Dark: Brain scans pinpoint how chocoholics are hooked

Chocoholics really do have chocolate on the brain. Their grey matter reacts differently when they see or taste chocolate than people who do not crave the food.

British researchers used brain scans to investigate subconscious reactions to the confection and found that the pleasure centres of chocolate lovers' brains lit up more strongly in response to the food than those who are less partial.

There may also be some truth in calling the love of chocolate an addiction in some people. When cravers viewed pictures of chocolate this activated regions of the brain known to be involved in habit-forming behaviours and drug addiction.

Attention

Survey finds elevated rates of new asthma among WTC rescue and recovery workers

Findings released today by the Health Department shed new light on the health effects of exposure to dust and debris among workers who responded to the World Trade Center disaster on September 11, 2001. The data, drawn from the World Trade Center Health Registry, show that 3.6% of the 25,000 rescue and recovery workers enrolled in the Registry report developing asthma after working at the site. That rate is 12 times what would be normally expected for the adult population during such a time period. The paper was published today in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives and is available online here.

Attention

US: Salmonella found in recalled pet food

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it has found Salmonella bacteria in two Mars Petcare U.S. dry dog food products that are under recall.

The Franklin, Tenn., company has recalled select five-pound bags of Krasdale Gravy dry dog food sold in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, and 50-pound bags of Red Flannel Large Breed Adult Formula dry food sold in Pennsylvania.

Wine

Alcoholics show deficits in their ability to perceive dangerous situations

-Previous brain-imaging studies have suggested cognitive deficits in alcoholic patients.

-New findings indicate that alcoholic patients show emotional processing deficits as well.

-These deficits primarily affect processing for negative emotional expressions.

Alcoholics tend to be deficient in both cognitive and emotional processes. Previously, most brain-imaging research focused on cognition rather than emotion. A new study uses functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) to examine emotional processing, finding that alcoholics have stunted abilities to perceive dangerous situations.

Results are published in the September issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

People

100-year-old celebrates her birthday by smoking 170,000th cigarette

An iron-lunged pensioner has celebrated her 100th birthday by lighting up her 170,000th cigerette from a candle on her birthday cake.

Winnie Langley started smoking only days after the First World War broke out in June 1914 when she was just seven-years-old - and has got through five a day ever since.

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Winne Langley celebrated her 100th birthday the best way she knows how - smoking.

She has no intention of quitting, even after the nationwide ban forced tobacco-lovers outside.

Speaking at her 100th birthday party Winnie said: "I have smoked ever since infant school and I have never thought about quitting.

Health

New warning issued for Indian toothpaste

A popular brand of toothpaste imported from India contains dangerously high levels of harmful bacteria, Health Canada says.

Yesterday's warning comes a month after the agency revealed Neem Active Toothpaste with Calcium also contains a poison used in antifreeze.