Health & WellnessS


Bulb

Students with a delayed school start time sleep longer, report less daytime sleepiness


American Academy of Sleep Medicine
Mon, 09 Jun 2008 13:05 UTC
High school students with a delayed school start time are more likely to take advantage of the extra time in bed, and less likely to report daytime sleepiness, according to a research abstract that will be presented on Monday at SLEEP 2008, the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS).

The study, authored by Zaw W. Htwe, MD, of Norwalk Hospital's Sleep Disorders Center in Norwalk, Conn., focused on 259 high school students who completed the condensed School Sleep Habits Questionnaire. Prior to the delay, students reported sleeping a mean of 422 minutes (7.03 hours) per school night, with a mean bed-time of 10:52 p.m. and a mean wake-up time as 6:12 a.m.
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Ambulance

Cyprus has lowest suicide rate in Europe

Jean Christou
Cyprus Mail
Sun, 15 Jun 2008 08:17 UTC
Cyprus has the lowest suicide rate in Europe, where overall one EU citizen takes his or her own life every nine minutes.

Around 60,000 EU citizens take their own life each year. An EU citizen is ten times as likely to die by suicide than to die of HIV/AIDS.

In the EU, at least one child under 14 dies by suicide every 48 hours.

In 2006, approximately 20 young adults aged 15-29 committed suicide every day; among those aged 30-59, approximately 87 people died every day by suicide; and 56 people aged over 60 took their own lives every day.
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Syringe

Was Tim Russert Killed by Heart Medication?

Mike Adams
Natural News
Sun, 15 Jun 2008 07:03 UTC
NBC commentator Tim Russert was taking prescription medications when he suffered a heart attack and died yesterday at the age of 58. The mainstream media is reporting that Russert died from a "heart attack," but no press outlet has yet bothered to ask: "What caused the heart attack?"

Nearly 100,000 Americans are killed each year by FDA-approved pharmaceuticals, according to the American Medical Association. Virtually none of those deaths are accurately reported as being caused by pharmaceuticals. Instead, the media simply reports that the victim died of whatever biological malfunction was most noticeable at the time of death.

That's why Tim Russert was said to have died of a "heart attack" -- his failing heart was the most obvious and sudden organ failure, even though the biological tipping point that brought him to that moment of heart failure could have been caused by the very pharmaceuticals he was taking in an effort to "control" coronary artery disease.
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Sheeple

What's So Great About Beauty?

Shannon Rupp
The Tyee
Mon, 09 Jun 2008 00:06 UTC
I thought I had resigned myself to the relentless onslaught of porn infecting every aspect of life, from the skank-wear on the streets, to gratuitous nudity in advertising, to the sitcoms where gags about handcuffs, anal sex, and blow jobs make me want to, well, gag.

I used to think porn culture's driving ethos -- that women have no purpose but to titillate men -- would fade as the sexist old guys died out. In short, I was an optimist. Right until I was hit with Dove's cynical Campaign for Real Beauty and some American election commentary all in the same sick-making hour.
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Info

'Addicted' Cells Provide Early Cancer Diagnosis


Science Daily
Sat, 14 Jun 2008 18:41 UTC
Scientists at the Institute of Food Research have detected subtle changes that may make the bowel more vulnerable to the development of tumours.

With support from the Food Standards Agency and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council they are investigating whether diet could control these changes and delay or reverse the onset of cancer.
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Info

Salmonella: Trickier Than We Imagined


Science Daily
Sat, 14 Jun 2008 18:30 UTC
Salmonella is serving up a surprise not only for tomato lovers around the country but also for scientists who study the rod-shaped bacterium that causes misery for millions of people.

Salmonella infantis bacteria
©Janice Carr
This scanning electron micrograph (SEM) depicts four highly magnified rod-shaped, motile, Gram-negative Salmonella infantis bacteria, which are attached.

In research published June 4 in the online journal PloS One, researchers say they've identified a molecular trick that may explain part of the bacteria's fierceness. A team from the University of Rochester Medical Center has identified a protein that allows the bacteria to maintain a low profile in the body, giving the bacteria crucial time to quietly gain a foothold in an organism before the immune system is roused to fight the invader.
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Health

US: Women Veteran's Are Not Receiving Equal Health Care


KNDO
Sat, 14 Jun 2008 17:08 UTC
Washington - A study finds woman veterans aren't getting equal medical care at many Department of Veteran Affairs facilities.

A review of care mandated by congress found that at about one third of its VA facilities, the quality of outpatient care given to women wasn't as good as what was offered to men.
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People

1 in 8 Lower Manhattan residents had signs of PTSD 2 to 3 years after 9/11


New York City Health Department
Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:36 UTC
For many residents of Lower Manhattan, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, had lasting psychological consequences. New findings, released today by the Health Department's World Trade Center Health Registry, show that one in eight Lower Manhattan residents likely had posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) two to three years after the attacks. The findings show that Lower Manhattan residents developed PTSD at three times the usual rate in the years following 9/11. The rate among residents (12.6%) matched the rate previously reported among rescue and recovery workers (12.4%). Residents who were injured during the attacks were the most likely to develop PTSD. The new study, published online this week in the Journal of Traumatic Stress, is available online here.
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People

Eastern Independence, Western Conformity? Study on Pen Selection Helps to Clarify Japanese and American Misconceptions

Katie Kline
Association for Psychological Science
Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:14 UTC
While the act of selecting an everyday writing utensil seems to be a simple enough task, scientists have found that it actually could shed light on complex cultural differences.

Psychologists Toshio Yamagishi, Hirofumi Hashimoto and Joanna Schug from Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan used the seemingly simple task of pen choice to determine if Japanese and American cultural differences are a function of social constraints. According to the scientists, previous psychological research on the topic has been flawed since it tends to attribute an individual's culture-specific behavior to their inherent preferences.

"In this perspective, preferences are the dominant determinants of behavior only in a social vacuum where individuals do not need to consider the reactions of others," wrote the authors in the June 2008 issue of Psychological Science, a publication of the Association for Psychological Science. "And we believe cultural psychologists would agree that culture-specific behavior does not occur in a social vacuum."
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Info

Memory Loss Linked To Common Sleep Disorder


Science Daily
Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:14 UTC
For the first time, UCLA researchers have discovered that people with sleep apnea show tissue loss in brain regions that help store memory. Reported in the June 27 edition of the journal Neuroscience Letters, the findings emphasize the importance of early detection of the disorder, which afflicts an estimated 20 million Americans.

Image
©UCLA/Harper lab
Brain scans reveal that the mammillary bodies (in box) of a sleep apnea patient (right) are smaller than those of a control subject (left).
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