Julie Steenhuysen
ReutersFri, 17 Apr 2009 05:32 UTC
Short writing assignments in which students discuss their most cherished value may be a powerful new tool to help struggling black youths reduce stress and boost their grades, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.
Twelve- and 13-year-old black students who did a series of 15-minute writing exercises saw their grades improve significantly over the course a year, and the benefit has persisted two years after the exercises stopped, they said.
"The effects were primarily among low-achieving African-American students," Geoffrey Cohen of the University of Colorado at Boulder, whose study appears in the journal Science, said in an audio interview on the Science website.
Is your Facebook time affecting your grades here at Pacific? According to a pilot study from Ohio State University, there may be a relationship between the amount of time a student spends on the social networking site and their grade point average.
The study found that college students who use the site spend less time studying and have lower grade point averages than those students who do not use Facebook.
"We can't say that the use of Facebook leads to lower grades and less studying," said Aryn Karpinski, one of the study's authors. "But we did find a relationship there."
If you suffer from frequent headaches or migraines, chances are you shy away from exercise for fear of inducing a headache. You may be surprised to hear you can find relief through exercise. A recent Swedish study published in Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain showed that exercise does not seem to increase migraines. In fact, regular activity can reduce the number of migraines, the intensity of migraines and the need for pain medication.
Heart patients who become depressed have a higher risk of developing heart failure, regardless of whether they take antidepressants, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
They said the study is the first to look at whether depression raises the risk for heart failure, a chronic condition affecting 5 million Americans in which the heart gradually loses its ability to pump blood efficiently.
U.S. doctors suggest the depression sometimes linked to a stay in the intensive care unit may be rooted in care issues.
The study, published online in Critical Care Medicine, tracked 160 intensive care patients that survived six months after coming to one of 13 Baltimore hospitals for acute lung injury -- a respiratory distress syndrome that despite greatly reduced mortality rates still kills about 40 percent of those affected.
The researchers found 26 percent scored above the threshold for possible depression. The depressed patients were found to be more likely to have suffered greater severity of organ failure and to have received 75 mg or more of a benzodiazepine sedative daily.
Nothing brings up the images of summer breezes and relaxation like pineapple, the sweet juicy treat from the tropics. While thoughts of fun in the sun ease the mind, eating pineapple can greatly ease the body. Bromelain, the key enzyme in pineapple, banishes inflammation as effectively as drugs. It reduces swelling, helps against sore throat, treats arthritis and gout, and speeds digestion of proteins. New research is even showing pineapple to be highly effective at cancer prevention and treatment.
Bromelain keeps cancers from getting started and shrinks tumors
In a study reported on March 30, in the Cancer Letter, scientists at the Indian Institute of Toxicology Research in India, noted the anti-inflammatory, anti-invasive, and anti-metastatic properties of bromelain. They studied its anti tumor-initiating effects against induced skin tumor formation in mice.
Why are suicides among Iraq war soldiers twice that of other wars?
One reason could be that 80 percent of troops with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are given drugs that didn't exist during other wars.
Antidepressants like Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and Celexa (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors or SSRIs) and Cymbalta and Effexor (Serotonin Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors or SRNIs) that are so closely associated with suicide they carry suicide warnings.
660 people have killed themselves on SSRIs and SNRIs since1988 according to published newspaper reports including at least 17 Iraq war veterans. Many more have attempted suicide and committed felonies, self-harm, police stand-offs, murders, murder/suicides and mass murders with high powered weapons.
Yet what does the US Department of Veterans Affairs' suggest as a treatment for PTSD?
Penny Wark
The TimesWed, 15 Apr 2009 05:34 UTC
If I tot up the number of vulnerable children who I've met in recent years in my role as a journalist there are well over 50 of them, and it's strange how many of their faces I remember. Not necessarily their names - I always change them for publication - but the faces, they stay with you.
There was the 14-year-old burglar who said that he'd rather stay in a secure establishment than go back into care. Locked up, he felt safe. He pointed out that he had nothing to look forward to and when I asked how he saw his future he replied with one word: "Prison." He begged for a mention, but didn't believe I'd honour my promise to write about him because people always let him down.
Many of the boys - especially boys - were desperate for attention, even from someone they didn't know. Others had shockingly bleak faces and couldn't communicate. There were twitchy children who couldn't sit still, lots of them. Recently I met a bright, fizzy 12-year-old who hungered for conversation but didn't know how to sit down.
The Korean asbestos contamination crisis continues, and the Korean health authority has released a list of 1,122 medical products from 120 companies that contain asbestos-tainted talc. The Korean government has recalled all of these products, with the exception of 11 products for which there are no "suitable substitutes".
The Prime Minister's Office has forbidden the importation of talc containing asbestos, and plans to develop comprehensive restrictive measures and standards for the carcinogenic substance by the end of June.
These actions come after a week of media frenzy regarding the contaminated baby powder, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals found to contain deadly asbestos.
Julie Steenhuysen
ReutersWed, 15 Apr 2009 05:21 UTC
Children whose mothers took methamphetamine during pregnancy have brain abnormalities that may explain the developmental problems they often experience, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.
Brain scans on a group of 3- and 4-year-old children showed abnormal development in the white matter, which carries messages across the brain, compared with children who did not have prenatal exposure to the drug, often called "meth."
The study provides some of the first physical evidence to show brain changes that can occur during fetal development when the mother used the drug during pregnancy.
