Health & WellnessS


Health

Bipolar Disorder Is A Serious Illness, Not a Celebrity Fad

It's become an occupational hazard for celebrities. But what's it really like to live with bipolar disorder?

Gail Porter has it. Stephen Fry made a documentary about it. Sophie Anderton, Adam Ant, Russell Brand, Richard Dreyfuss, Kerry Katona and Tony Slattery are all sufferers. And now Britney, too, has bipolar disorder, at least according to the media, in whose unforgiving glare she has undergone her very public meltdown.

At times, it seems as though bipolar illness is the latest celebrity fad - like wheat intolerance, perhaps. But the apparent spike in celebrity sufferers points to something else: that awareness amongst both clinicians and the public is growing and some of the stigma attached to admitting to mental health problems has begun to diminish.

Sheeple

New Popular Self-Help Books Share One Message: You're an Idiot

Once known for gentle cheerleading and encouragement, the genre now berates readers with 'you're an idiot' messages.

Of all the aisles in the typical American bookstore, none has expanded faster than the one devoted to self-help. But customers looking for some sage words of relationship advice or a little "you can do it!" encouragement to lose weight may be in for a shock. The motivational gurus of the Simon Cowell (of "American Idol" fame) generation are here with blunt appraisals of our personal shortcomings.

Evil Rays

Brain control headset for gamers

Gamers will soon be able to interact with the virtual world using their thoughts and emotions alone.

A neuro-headset which interprets the interaction of neurons in the brain will go on sale later this year.

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Brain-controlled head set

Cow

China "regrets" U.S. decision on food supplies

Beijing - China expressed regret on Thursday at reports the U.S. Olympic team would bring its own meat for the Beijing Games over concerns of drugs tainted food, and said it could guarantee safe supplies.

Attention

Michael Pollan Debunks Food Myths

Pollan's new book, In Defense of Food, is a scathing indictment of the food industry and a call for a return to unprocessed food.

The human digestive tract has about the same number of neurons as the spinal column. What are they there for? The final word isn't in yet, but Michael Pollan thinks their existence suggests that digestion may be more than the rather mundane process of breaking down food into chemicals. And, keeping those numerous digestive neurons in mind, Pollan's new book In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto entreaties us to follow our knowledgeable guts when it comes to figuring out what to eat.

Arrow Up

Strokes Among Middle-Aged Women Triple

New Orleans - Strokes have tripled in recent years among middle-aged women in the U.S., an alarming trend doctors blame on the obesity epidemic. Nearly 2 percent of women ages 35 to 54 reported suffering a stroke in the most recent federal health survey, from 1999 to 2004. Only about half a percent did in the previous survey, from 1988 to 1994.

Attention

Physical abuse of children a major problem for Russia

Domestic violence has become a major disaster for Russia, where over two million children are beaten by their parents every year, a leader of a Russian human rights movement said on Wednesday.

"According to experts, a total of 50,000 children flee home and 70,000 are abused annually," Olga Kostina, the leader of a non-governmental movement, Soprotivlenye, added.

Attention

US: Midlife Suicide Rises, Puzzling Researchers

Shannon Neal can instantly tell you the best night of her life: Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2003, the Hinsdale Academy debutante ball. Her father, Steven Neal, a 54-year-old political columnist for The Chicago Sun-Times, was in his tux, white gloves and tie. "My dad walked me down and took a little bow," she said, and then the two of them goofed it up on the dance floor as they laughed and laughed.

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©Unknown
Shannon Neal says her debutante ball on Dec. 23, 2003, which she attended with her father, Steven, was the best night of her life. A few weeks later, her father, who was 54 at the time, killed himself.

Monkey Wrench

Flashback Do Narcissists Dislike Themselves "Deep Down Inside"?

Narcissism is a personality trait associated with an inflated, grandiose self-concept and a lack of intimacy in interpersonal relationships. A popular assumption is that narcissists' positive explicit (conscious) self-views mask implicit (nonconscious) self-loathing. This belief is typically traced to psychodynamic theory, especially that of Kohut (1966; Morrison, 1983). Empirically, this view predicts that narcissists will reveal negative self-views when these are measured with unobtrusive instruments - such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) - that record people's automatic, uncontrolled responses. Using the IAT, however, researchers found no simple relation between narcissism and implicit self-esteem (rs = −.13 and .03; Jordan, Spencer, Zanna, Hoshino-Browne, & Correll, 2003; Zeigler-Hill, 2006).1

According to another line of thought, narcissists' explicit self-views are not uniformly positive; rather, narcissism is associated with positive self-views in agentic domains (e.g., status, intelligence), but not in communal domains (e.g., kindness, morality). Evidence for this idea comes from both explicit trait ratings, which show an association between narcissism and positive self-views only on agentic traits (Campbell, Rudich, & Sedikides, 2002), and from analyses showing that narcissism is particularly strongly associated with self-esteem measures that capture dominance (Brown & Zeigler-Hill, 2004). Bradlee and Emmons (1992) and Paulhus and Williams (2002) have also reported personality data supporting this distinction.

correlations
©Campbell, W. Keith, Bosson, Jennifer K., Goheen, Thomas W., Lakey, Chad E. & Kernis, Michael H.
Fig. 1. Correlations between narcissism (the Narcissistic Personality Inventory; Raskin & Terry, 1988) and measures of explicit and implicit self-esteem, agency, and communion in Studies 1 and 2. Asterisks indicate correlations significantly different from zero, *p < .05, prep > .875. IAT = Implicit Association Test; RSES = Rosenberg's (1965) self-esteem scale.

Health

Music speeds recovery from stroke

A daily dose of one's favourite pop melodies, classical music or jazz can speed recovery from debilitating strokes, according to a study published Wednesday.

When stroke patients in Finland listened to music for a couple of hours each day, verbal memory and attention span improved significantly compared to patients who received no musical stimulation, or who listened only to stories read aloud,the study reported.