Health & WellnessS


Arrow Up

US, California: Shasta county suicide rate troubling

The suicide rate in Shasta County remained alarmingly high in 2007, despite a slight dip in the number of people who killed themselves compared to the previous year.

Forty-two Shasta County residents killed themselves in 2007 - a drop from 49 in 2006, according to annual preliminary cause of-death statistics released last week by the Shasta County Public Health department. Even with the slight drop, Shasta County's residents are more than twice as likely to kill themselves as other areas in the state.

Info

'It was tough': Woman's struggle with strange symptoms leads to Cushing's diagnosis

As a dietician, Mississippi native and Orangeburg resident Rebecca Sibley was conscious of her food intake and caring properly for her body. So it was of great concern to her in 1986 when she began experiencing uncontrollable weight gain, among other symptoms.

"I had the moon face, the buffalo hump on the back of my neck, thin skin, I bruised real easily, and I had depression," Sibley said. "I knew something was wrong, being a dietician, but I just didn't know what was wrong. I knew I wasn't eating enough to be gaining the weight I was gaining."

Health

What Ails You: The mysterious, painful frozen shoulder

"Frozen Shoulder" is the common name for "adhesive capsulitis," a chronic and debilitating condition affecting mostly, but not exclusively, women.

Frozen shoulder describes a shoulder which has become so stiff that the patient can no longer raise their his or her arm above shoulder level. Women can no longer fasten their bra in back while men have difficulty tucking in their shirts and reaching their wallet out of their back pocket. It's hard to reach across your body to scrub under the opposite arm and combing your hair or putting the glasses away on the upper shelf has become impossible.

Health

Alligator Blood May Lead to Powerful New Antibiotics



American alligator
©Melissa Farlow
An alligator walks along the muddy bottom of the St. Mary's River on the Florida-Georgia border. Proteins in alligator blood help the reptiles stave off fatal infections from injuries made during their violent fights over mates and territories, researchers announced on April 6, 2008. The blood proteins may one day lead to new drugs for fighting infections in humans.

Alligators often engage in violent fights over territories and mates, and scientists have puzzled over why their wounds rarely get infected.

Now researchers think the secret lies in the reptiles' blood.

Health

Stem cells from skin treat brain disease in rats



Adult stem cell
©REUTERS/Handout/ J.D. de Bruijn University of London
Undated file photo shows adult stem cells grown on a 3D biomaterial scaffold.

Skin cells re-programmed to act like embryonic stem cells eased symptoms of Parkinson's disease in rats, researchers reported on Monday in a first step toward tailored treatments for people that bypass concerns about using human embryos.

Key

Study: Dyslexia Differs by Language

Washington - Dyslexia affects different parts of children's brains depending on whether they are raised reading English or Chinese. That finding, reported in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, means that therapists may need to seek different methods of assisting dyslexic children from different cultures.

Attention

Menace of the internet sites urging teenagers to starve

Children surfing the internet are being targeted by thousands of websites encouraging them to develop potentially fatal eating disorders. They display pictures of ultra-slim women along with tips on how to starve for days while convincing your parents that you are still eating.

Pills

UK: 3,000 children were given unlicensed anti-psychotic drugs despite safety fears

The number of British children being given controversial anti-psychotic drugs has increased sharply, according to research.

As many as 3,000 children were administered the unlicensed drugs between 1996 and 2005, despite concerns from experts that they could cause long-term harm and even death.

Ambulance

Two die in Spain from human variant of mad cow disease

Two people in Spain have died of the human variant of mad cow disease, in the first such fatalities since 2005, officials said Monday.

The victims were aged 40 and 51 and lived in the central Castilla-Leon region. One died in December and the other in February, said Jose Javier Castrodeza, director of public health at the regional government. Until now Spain's only fatality from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease came in 2005 with the death of a 26-year-old woman in Madrid.

Magic Wand

New study finds anticipating a laugh reduces our stress hormones

In 2006 researchers investigating the interaction between the brain, behavior, and the immune system found that simply anticipating a mirthful laughter experience boosted health-protecting hormones. Now, two years later, the same researchers have found that the anticipation of a positive humorous laughter experience also reduces potentially detrimental stress hormones. According to Dr. Lee Berk, the study team's lead researcher of Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, CA, "Our findings lead us to believe that by seeking out positive experiences that make us laugh we can do a lot with our physiology to stay well."