Health & WellnessS


Evil Rays

Vets 'at risk from miscarriage'

Female vets over-exposed to the anaesthetics, X-rays and pesticides they use could be raising their chances of miscarriage, research suggests. The Australian study, in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, found regular exposure to workplace hazards was linked to a doubling of risk.

Pills

Antidepressant Drugs Linked to School Shootings

A parents' rights organization has called on Congress to investigate a potential link between psychiatric drugs and school shootings, and called for parents to be better informed about the risks of such medications. New York-based Ablechild accused the mental health industry of "[continuing] to downplay the risks of drugs widely prescribed to millions."

According to statistics from Medwatch, the drug reporting system maintained by the FDA, there have been 63,000 cases of people on antidepressants committing suicide in the United States.

Heart

Men are six times as likely to die of a broken heart in the first year of being widowed

Dying from a broken heart might not be a sufficiently scientific explanation to convince everyone - but it does exist and now it can be measured.

Losing a wife puts the widower at a sixfold higher risk of death, while a widow's chances of dying are doubled, says research published yesterday.

The risk peaks for either surviving partner in the first year after bereavement and then declines, according to the Cass Business School in London.

Bomb

Bird flu spreads among dogs

A study has shown a bird flu strain that has killed dogs can spread from one dog to another, showing that the disease is capable of crossing species and causing sickness in mammals.

Black Cat

Flashback Jaguar Medicine

Until 1971, it was thought that the Nile was the longest river in the world. That year, National Geographic explorer Loren McIntyre, along with a local Indian guide and a friend who owned a pick-up truck, set out to discover the source of the Amazon. On October 15, 1971, McIntyre and his party reached a summit 18,200 feet in altitude, an icy ridge called Choquecorao from which they spotted a body of water 1,000 feet below them. Thirsty, they decided to descend to this small lake, and as they looked at the five brooks that trickled outward and down the mountainside, McIntyre realized they had found the origin of the great Amazon. This daring expedition would lead to the revelation that the twisting and turning river is longer than the Nile by nearly 100 kilometers, and would stir interest in uncovering the mysteries of this region of the world that had been almost completely hidden to westerners.[1]

Jaguar
©Wonderlane

Black Cat

Best of the Web: Cheaters sometimes prosper



cheaters
©Stephanie Findlay and Oker Chen

It is literally the stuff of nightmares and horror movies. Charming and often powerful, they seduce you to get your guard down. And then, without a second thought or any trace of remorse, they are able to cold-bloodedly thieve, rape, or murder you. Robert Hare, UBC's world-renowned professor emeritus of psychology, goes so far as to say that while they look and sound exactly like us, they are functionally a different species from human beings. And seven years ago, Hare estimated that up to one in one hundred Canadians is one of these people: psychopaths.

Health

No benefit in drinking eight glasses of water a day, scientists say

The idea that drinking eight glasses of water a day is good for your health has been dismissed as a myth. Scientists say there is no evidence drinking large amounts of water is beneficial for the average healthy person, and do not even know how this widely held belief came about.

Butterfly

Rise in women doctors 'worrying'

The rising number of female doctors is "bad for medicine", and universities should recruit more men, a GP warns. Writing in the British Medical Journal, Dr Brian McKinstry said female doctors were more likely to work part-time, leading to staffing problems. Women, who now outnumber men in medical schools, were also less likely to take part in training or research, he said.

Health

Supplements are not nutritious

Selenium supplementation, for example in mineral tablets, might not be that beneficial for the majority of people according to researchers writing in the open access journal Genome Biology. Although this trace element is essential in the diet of humans, it seems that we have lost some of the need for selenium, which occurs in proteins and is transported in blood plasma, when our evolutionary ancestors left the oceans and evolved into mammals.

Health

Thousands hit by Brazil outbreak of dengue

More than 55,000 cases of dengue, a sometimes deadly mosquito-borne disease, have been reported in a southeastern Brazilian state in the past four months, authorities said Thursday.

The disease has killed 67 people this year in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro state, the state's ministry of health reported. Slightly less than half of the deaths were children under the age of 13, the ministry said.

Brazilian authorities are calling the situation an epidemic.

Image
©AP