Health & WellnessS


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Psychiatric Disorders and Sexual Trauma are Associated with Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms


ScienceDaily
Tue, 20 Oct 2009 06:00 UTC
Depression, anxiety disorders and sexual trauma have all been implicated as risk factors in lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) such as incontinence and overactive bladder. The exact nature of these associations is unknown. In a study published online in The Journal of Urology, researchers from the Division of Urology, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine and the Hunter Holmes McGuire Veterans Affairs Hospital, Richmond, Virginia, explored the possible association of LUTS with those factors.

Two questionnaires, the Urogenital Distress Inventory-6 and Incontinence Impact Questionnaire-7, were administered to 121 women referred to a specialized urology clinic for evaluation of lower urinary tract symptoms. These data were then analyzed according to psychiatric comorbidities, history of sexual trauma, age, race and obstetric history. Baseline incidence of psychiatric comorbidity and sexual trauma was also compared to a control population of 1,298 women from the Veterans Affairs primary care clinic.

Women referred for evaluation of lower urinary tract symptoms had higher rates of psychiatric comorbidities (64.5% vs. 25.9%) and sexual trauma (49.6% vs. 20.1%) compared to those in the primary care clinic. Separate analysis showed that women younger than 50 years and with a history of miscarriage had higher Urogenital Distress Inventory-6 scores, while higher Incontinence Impact Questionnaire-7 scores were associated only with psychiatric comorbidities and history of miscarriage.
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Eye 1

Do Your Eyes Give You Away?

John M Grohol
Psych Central
Tue, 20 Oct 2009 06:00 UTC
Eye
© iStockphoto
Can your eyes give away how much you're thinking - even when you're not consciously aware of your effort? According to new research, the answer is yes.

Previous research has shown that people spend more physical effort in a demanding physical task when they could gain a high-value monetary reward, than when they could gain a low-value reward. But the intriguing finding from this research was that this behavior occurred even when the monetary reward was presented subliminally, below the threshold of our conscious awareness. In other words, a person would work harder for more money, even if they weren't consciously aware that more money was the reward. Other research into subliminal processing suggests people can perceive emotional messages subliminally too.

Dutch researcher Erik Bijleveld and colleagues recruited 15 participants to take part in an experiment measuring cognitive effort on a task for various amounts of money. They measured the brain effort required to complete the task through eye pupil dilation. Why would you care about pupil dilation, an automatic nervous system response? Well, it appears that you can tell a lot by the size of your pupils, because it expands with sympathetic activity, making it an unobtrusive measure of how much mental effort you've invested in a particular task.
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The Psychology of the Parents of Balloon Boy

John M Grohol
Psych Central
Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:00 UTC
Heene
© iStockphoto
This past week we saw the news media captivated by the idea that a 6-year-old boy, Falcon Heene had been carried off by a weather balloon. That is until the boy was later found in his own garage attic and shortly thereafter it was revealed on a television news show that the entire incident was likely a hoax. In replying to a reporter's question, the young Falcon turned to his dad on camera and said, "You guys said that, umm, we did this for the show." Oops.

The parents - Richard Heene and Mayumi Heene - have all along claimed it was not a hoax or a publicity stunt. Now, according to The New York Times, the parents will voluntarily surrender to police as soon as charges are filed, which is expected to happen on Wednesday.

While the truth continues to unfold, the police in the investigation have concluded it was likely indeed a publicity stunt: "We have evidence to indicate it was a publicity stunt done with the hope of marketing themselves to a reality-television show sometime in the future," said Larimer County sheriff Jim Alderden on Sunday afternoon at a news conference in Fort Collins, Colorado.

So that leaves us with the inevitable question - what could possibly psychologically motivate parents to use their child's very life in order to further themselves?
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Family

Infant Formula Companies Claim They Can Make Babies 'Smarter' - Quite Dangerous Hype

Ari LeVaux
AlterNet
Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:49 UTC
If you believed a certain baby formula would make your child smarter, would you buy it?

Infant formula manufacturers are banking that you would. That's why, since 2002, several companies have fortified their products with synthetic versions of DHA and ARA, long-chain fatty acids that occur naturally in breast milk and have been associated with brain development.

The oils are produced by Martek Biosciences Corp. from lab-grown algae and fungus and extracted with hexane, according to the company's patent application. Hexane is a neurotoxin.
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Ambulance

Diabetes epidemic worse than thought, congress hears

Charlie Fidelman
montreal gazette
Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:00 UTC
A petient has blood sugar readings taken.
© Lucy Nicholson, Reuters
The epidemic of diabetes has accelerated beyond expectations, from 7 million new cases a year predicted in 2007 to a whopping 10 million in 2009, Martin Silink, outgoing president of International Diabetic Federation (IDF) said in a speech Monday at the federation's 20th World Diabetes Congress held in Montreal.

Established as one of the most significant events of the global health calendar, the mega-congress attracts 12,000 delegates and 400 speakers. They are at the congress to discuss issues in diabetes care as well as local, national and regional solutions to that Silink warns is "a growing global problem with an economic impact."

An estimated 70,000 children are in desperate of need of life-saving insulin, Silink says, in countries where it takes several days of wages to buy diabetic medicines.
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Footprints

Children's Development Center Says, 'Train Autistic Children'

Okechukwu Nnodim
234Next.com
Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:46 UTC
Image
© Okechukwu NnodimKids at a cultural day celebration at the Children Development Center
The Children's Development Center, on Friday, called on Nigerians, especially rural dwellers, to desist from stigmatizing children with autism.

The Center, a non-governmental organization catering for children and young adults with developmental disabilities, said the killing of autistic children is perpetrated in some Nigerian communities.

"It is appalling to know that people still kill children with autism or other forms of disability in some villages in Nigeria," said Tunde Adunola, the head of Prince School, a unit in the Center's Lagos office in Surulere, Lagos.
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Family

Filling the Autism Void

Doug Flutie
Boston Globe
Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:41 UTC
Massachusetts may have the best health care in the country, but it doesn't cover the treatment for the fastest-growing health threat to children - autism.

Autism affects brain function and impairs communication, social interaction, and sensory modulation skills. The most recent statistics show that 1 in 91 children has autism, with the incidence four times as high in boys.
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Red Flag

Monsanto Lies, Again (and Again and Again)

Charles Margulis
Corporate Crime Daily
Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:07 UTC
Image
Earlier this week, Monsanto was found guilty by France's highest court of false advertising, for claims that Roundup, its toxic weed killer, is biodegradable and leaves "the soil clean." Environmental and consumer rights campaigners brought the French case in 2001, shortly after Monsanto announced its new ethics "Pledge." The advocates noted that glyphosate, Roundup's main ingredient, is classified in Europe as "dangerous for the environment" and "toxic for aquatic organisms."

Monsanto has a long history of fraudulent statements about the safety of Roundup. In 1996, the New York Attorney General fined the company $50,000 for claims that Roundup was, you guessed it, biodegradable and good for the environment.
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Health

Brain-damaged Children Often Have Cold Feet


Science Daily
Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:35 UTC
Many wheelchair-using children with neurological disorders have much colder hands and feet than other children, and most receive no special help even though they have had these problems for a long time, is revealed in at thesis from the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

"These children have a disorder that can make it difficult to express how they feel, but it must be unpleasant to have cold hands and feet," says physiotherapist Lena Svedberg, author of the thesis. "I find it surprising that the matter hasn't been given more attention."

The thesis shows that skin temperature in brain-damaged preschool children in wheelchairs was several degrees lower than in children without neurological disorders. The temperature of their feet was three degrees lower and their hands two degrees lower than children without brain damage. The reason for their cold extremities may be that the brain damage affects the part of the nervous system that is not controlled by the will and which, among other things, regulates blood circulation, digestion and sleep.
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Health

Can Social Networking Help Consumers Get Healthier?


Science Daily
Sun, 18 Oct 2009 17:25 UTC
Can social networking sites help people make wise health decisions? A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research says it depend on people's willingness to take action on the information they gain from the sites.

Using social networking sites to obtain health information and advice is controversial. Critics say the sites can confuse, give inaccurate information, or prevent people from seeking professional advice. They doubt consumers can carry the burden of complex medical decisions, and worry that social networks can actually harm naïve consumers by encouraging them to engage in self-diagnosis and self-treatment.

Authors Rama K. Jayanti (Cleveland State University) and Jagdip Singh (Case Western Reserve University) closely monitored use of an Electronic Bulletin Board dedicated to thyroid disease and treatment over the course of ten months. Based on random selection, they analyzed six threads representing 392 distinct postings with 7,825 text lines by 80 unique individuals. They sought to determine if consumers can learn from these sites, how they learn, and how the learning empowers them.
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