Health & WellnessS


Bulb

What's not to like? Why fondness makes us poor judges, but dislike is spot-on

How good are we at guessing other people's likes and dislikes? Ever bring a favorite dish to a potluck - only to watch it go uneaten? Or receive an unwelcome shock when a cherished product is discontinued for lack of sales? People have the tendency to assume the whole world likes what we like, reveals new research from the June 2008 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research. However, we don't generalize the same way when it comes to things we hate.

"The degree of false consensus depends on whether a person likes or dislikes an item," explain Andrew D. Gershoff (University of Michigan), Ashesh Mukherjee (McGill University), and Anirban Mukhopadhyay (University of Michigan).

Life Preserver

Teenage suicides: Study advocates greater family support

Teenage suicide is often perceived as the result of rejection of family, significant others and of society. Families affected by teenage suicide often look back for warning signs and clues in order to make sense of the tragedy. With the recent teenage suicides in Bridgend, South Wales, there have been demands for improved suicide prevention strategies. However little attention is paid to those families who have already lost their teenage sons or daughters.

Research published in the open access journal, BMC Psychiatry, has highlighted a key role for general practitioners in organising long-term, individually formulated support schemes for those affected.

People

Women's networks critical to survival during Hurricane Katrina

More than 1,800 people perished in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 - the largest hurricane death toll in the United States since 1928. For the most vulnerable - the urban poor with little money, no transportation and limited resources - Katrina threatened to take everything. According to a University of Missouri researcher, some of those people survived the hurricane because of quick action from key women who, through pre-existing social networks, were able to mobilize for successful evacuation.

Jacqueline Litt, associate professor and chair of the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at MU, found that informal family and community networks coordinated by women are vital in emergency situations. More than 50 people were evacuated from New Orleans, La., through the efforts of two "core anchors," a 58-year-old woman and her daughter, who initiated communication and organization using established familial and social relationships.

Laptop

Is This Man Cheating on His Wife?

On a scorching July afternoon, as the temperature creeps toward 118 degrees in a quiet suburb east of Phoenix, Ric Hoogestraat sits at his computer with the blinds drawn, smoking a cigarette. While his wife, Sue, watches television in the living room, Mr. Hoogestraat chats online with what appears on the screen to be a tall, slim redhead.

He's never met the woman outside of the computer world of Second Life, a well-chronicled digital fantasyland with more than eight million registered "residents" who get jobs, attend concerts and date other users. He's never so much as spoken to her on the telephone. But their relationship has taken on curiously real dimensions. They own two dogs, pay a mortgage together and spend hours shopping at the mall and taking long motorcycle rides. This May, when Mr. Hoogestraat, 53, needed real-life surgery, the redhead cheered him up with a private island that cost her $120,000 in the virtual world's currency, or about $480 in real-world dollars. Their bond is so strong that three months ago, Mr. Hoogestraat asked Janet Spielman, the 38-year-old Canadian woman who controls the redhead, to become his virtual wife.

Life Preserver

Rich and poor will pay for world food crisis

There's a man opposite me on the Tube eating Big Macs from a paper bag. He swallows the first between King's Cross and Euston and the second between Euston and Warren Street. That's about 1,000 calories in three minutes. On his knee is a newspaper soliciting admiration for John Prescott's "brave" revelation of bulimia. The disease is terrible, but I can't muster much sympathy for Prescott's methods.

Evil Rays

Is Your Daily Life Enslaved by the Electronic World?

The recent 10-minute "made for YouTube" beating of a girl by a group of teenagers in Florida exemplifies a new trend in which the electronic world dictates our reality.

Future historians may very well look back at the beginning of the 21st century as an era in which the human mind developed into a split screen, with one eye on real space and the other ogling the electronic mirror.

Magnify

Not All Apples Are Created Equal

Don't ask the US federal government whether there are any health benefits to eating organic food. It won't tell. No mere coincidence, then, that no pictures of farmers or farms (or fertilizers or pesticides) appear in the USDA food pyramid logo. The federal government encourages the consumption of more fruits, vegetables, and grains, but stops short of evaluating the farming systems that produce these same foods. An apple is an apple regardless of how it has been grown, the USDA food pyramid suggests, and the only take-home message is that we should all be eating more apples and less added sugars and fats.

But this message may be too simplistic. Over the past decade, scientists have begun conducting sophisticated comparisons of foods grown in organic and conventional farming systems. They're finding that not all apples (or tomatoes, kiwis, or milk) are equal, especially when in comes to nutrient and pesticide levels. How farmers grow their crops affects, sometimes dramatically, not only how nutritious food is, but also how safe it is to eat. It may well be that a federal food policy that fails to acknowledge the connection between what happens on the farm and the healthfulness of foods is enough to make a nation sick.

Attention

Just How Secure Is Your Employer-Based Health Insurance?



Secure health insurance
©Unknown

Last week, the Economic Policy Institute released a disturbing report revealing just how many white-collar workers have lost their employer-based health insurance in recent years - even though they didn't change jobs.

Many workers believe that if they hold onto their job, their insurance is safe. Professionals with jobs near the top of the occupational ladder are especially likely to assume that their employer is not going to cut their coverage. That may well have been true in the 1990s, when the job market was tight - but not today.

Pills

Taking Common Painkiller (acetaminophen) with Coffee is Extremely Toxic to the Liver

Combining caffeine with the active ingredient in Tylenol (acetaminophen) may be extremely dangerous for the liver, according to new research conducted at the University of Washington and reported in the journal Chemical Research in Toxicology.

Bomb

Puzzle, precaution over plastic

Last week, hard plastic baby and water bottles were not considered harmful.
Now, in the eyes of many users, they are toxic. Yesterday, CVS said it will join Wal-Mart, bottle-maker Nalgene, and other companies in pulling tens of thousands of the shatter-proof, transparent products off store shelves. Some parents are tossing hiking bottles into the trash, feeding their babies with glass containers, and searching for a safer alternative to see-through sippy cups.