Health & WellnessS


Wine

Chocolate, Wine And Tea Improve Brain Performance


Science Daily
Wed, 24 Dec 2008 03:45 UTC
All that chocolate might actually help finish the bumper Christmas crossword over the seasonal period. According to Oxford researchers working with colleagues in Norway, chocolate, wine and tea enhance cognitive performance.

The team from Oxford's Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics and Norway examined the relation between cognitive performance and the intake of three common foodstuffs that contain flavonoids (chocolate, wine, and tea) in 2,031 older people (aged between 70 and 74).

Participants filled in information about their habitual food intake and underwent a battery of cognitive tests.Those who consumed chocolate, wine, or tea had significantly better mean test scores and lower prevalence of poor cognitive performance than those who did not. The team reported their findings in the Journal of Nutrition.
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© iStockphoto/Silvia JansenChocolate, wine and tea enhance cognitive performance.
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Control Panel

Healthcare is a Human Right

Darrell Spurlock
Care2
Mon, 22 Dec 2008 20:29 UTC
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In the most advanced nation in the world, there are 47 million people (at least) without health care coverage. In a nation that spends almost 1/4 of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defense, it is difficult to explain how this could be. Will we be able to right the moral wrong of too many uninsured once President-elect Obama takes office? I sure hope so.

It is my belief that health care is a fundamental right of all people; a human right, in fact. Artcile 25 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
"Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."

Comment:
"it is difficult to explain how this could be."
It is not so difficult to explain, once one is familiar with the study of Ponerology. Anyone who genuinely seeks to remedy this situation will need this knowledge if they are to succeed.

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Pumpkin

Study: Yawning is to cool the brain

Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News
Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:20 UTC
The new findings also explain why we yawn when we're tired If your head is overheated, there's a good chance you'll yawn, according to a new study that found the primary purpose of yawning is to control brain temperature.

The finding solves several mysteries about yawning, such as why it's most commonly done just before and after sleeping, why certain diseases lead to excessive yawning, and why breathing through the nose and cooling off the forehead often stop yawning.
The key yawn instigator appears to be brain temperature.

"Brains are like computers," says Andrew Gallup, a researcher in the Department of Biology at Binghamton University who led the study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Animal Behavior. "They operate most efficiently when cool, and physical adaptations have evolved to allow maximum cooling of the brain."
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Stormtrooper

FDA warns Coca-Cola over nutritional claims


Associated Press
Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:32 UTC
Washington - Federal health regulators have scolded Coca-Cola for placing inappropriate nutritional claims on its Diet Coke Plus soft drink.

The Food and Drug Administration issued a warning letter to the company, objecting to the product's labeling, which describes the drink as "Diet Coke with Vitamins and Minerals."

Regulators said the beverage does not have enough nutrients to justify using the word "plus" in its name. According to the agency, foods labeled "plus" must have at least 10 percent more nutrients than comparable products. Additionally, the FDA said it is inappropriate to add extra nutrients to "snack foods such as carbonated beverages."
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Beer

Six in 10 UK soldiers 'alcoholics'

Chris Irvine
The Daily Telegraph
Mon, 22 Dec 2008 17:13 UTC
Almost six in 10 soldiers drink so much they could be considered alcoholics, according to a Ministry of Defence report.

The document analysing the drinking and drug-taking habits of Army recruits found that 58 per cent were "considered possibly dependent on alcohol" and drinking at levels considered a health hazard.

Soldiers blame the drinking culture on the Army, which they say encourages regular binges and drinking to excess.

The report found that more than six in 10 soldiers had six or more drinks in any one session, with one in five admitting they were unable to stop drinking once they started.

A third of those interviewed also admitted that they had injured themselves or someone else as a result of drinking in the last year.

Around 6 per cent of the civilian population drink at levels which indicate dependency - but this report concludes that the Army figure was 10 times higher.
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Health

Malaria bed nets' usefulness is their downfall


New Scientist
Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:21 UTC
Bed nets intended to slow the spread of malaria are not always being put to best use: some Kenyans are using them to fish.

Insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) are a simple, cost-effective way to fight malaria and are distributed to pregnant women and children in Kenya, often for free. But when Noboru Minakawa of the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Nagasaki, Japan, and colleagues surveyed villages along Lake Victoria, they found people were using the nets for fishing or drying fish, because the fish dry faster in the nets than on papyrus sheets, and the nets are cheaper (Malaria Journal, DOI: link).
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Nuke

Flashback Child leukemia death rates increase near US nuclear plants, rises greatest near oldest plants, declines near closed plants

Joseph J. Mangano
Radiation & Public Health Project
Wed, 12 Nov 2008 09:07 UTC
New York: Leukemia death rates in U.S. children near nuclear reactors rose sharply (vs. the national trend) in the past two decades, according to a recent study.

The greatest mortality increases occurred near the oldest nuclear plants, while declines were observed near plants that closed permanently in the 1980s and 1990s. The study was published in the most recent issue of the European Journal of Cancer Care.

The study updates an analysis conducted in the late 1980s by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). That analysis, mandated by Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), is the only attempt federal officials have made to examine cancer rates near U.S. nuclear plants.

U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-MA), a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said
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Pills

Deadly Painkillers Taking Young Lives

Rod MacTaggart
Novus Detox News
Tue, 23 Dec 2008 02:37 UTC
In cities and towns across the country, young people are abusing and dying from prescription narcotic painkillers, and fentanyl and methadone are among the most deadly. Scarcely a week goes by without a story about someone's son or daughter either dying from a fentanyl or methadone overdose, or falling victim to a dangerous prescription drug addiction.

Deaths from all prescription drugs in the U.S. have doubled in the past decade, and overdoses of prescription narcotic painkillers are at the top of the list. Narcotics such as methadone, hydrocodone, oxycodone, OxyContin, Percocet, Vicodin, Lortab and the fentanyl drugs commonly marketed as the Duragesic skin patch and the Actiq 'lollipop' -- are at the forefront of the rise in prescription drug addiction as well as overdose deaths.

The highly addictive opioid painkiller methadone is often cited as the most deadly narcotic painkiller, because of the soaring numbers of overdose deaths attributed to the drug. Its widespread availability as a 'replacement therapy' drug for tens of thousands of heroin and morphine addicts, and its relatively low cost, has made it easily obtainable almost everywhere.
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Sheeple

Study: Men aggressive to get status, sex


United Press International
Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:12 UTC
Activating a desire for status can trigger aggression and aggressive displays, which may result in enhanced status and sex, a U.S. researcher said.

"It all boils down to the fact that status for men typically equals sex," Vladas Griskevicius of the University of Minnesota said in a statement. "Across different cultures and time, the higher status men have, the more sex or better-quality partners they may have. At the gene-level, nobody wants to go down in an evolutionary blaze of glory -- no one wants their genes to become extinct. Additionally, unlike low-status women, low-status men are in serious danger of not reproducing, since they make especially undesirable mates."
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Robot

'Sex chip' being developed by scientists

Chris Irvine
The Daily Telegraph
Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:53 UTC
Scientists are developing an electronic "sex chip" that can be implanted into the brain to stimulate pleasure.

The chip works by sending tiny shocks from implanted electrodes in the brain.

The technology has been used in the United States to treat Parkinson's disease.

But in recent months scientists have been focusing on the area of the brain just behind the eyes known as the orbitofrontal cortex - this is associated with feelings of pleasure derived from eating and sex.
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