Health & WellnessS


Bulb

Men more likely to have problems with memory and thinking skills

When it comes to remembering things, new research shows men are more likely than women to have mild cognitive impairment, the transition stage before dementia.

"This is one of the first studies to determine the prevalence of mild cognitive impairment among men and women who have been randomly selected from a community to participate in the study," said study author Rosebud Roberts, MD, with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, and member of the American Academy of Neurology. Mild cognitive impairment can also be described as impairment in memory or other thinking skills beyond what's expected for a person's age and education.

For the study, 2,050 people living in Olmsted County, Minnesota, who were between the ages of 70 and 89 were interviewed, examined, and given cognitive tests. Overall, 15 percent of the group had mild cognitive impairment.

Coffee

Your belly fat could be making you hungrier

The extra fat we carry around our middle could be making us hungrier, so we eat more, which in turn leads to even more belly fat. Dr. Kaiping Yang and his colleagues at the Lawson Health Research Institute affiliated with The University of Western Ontario found abdominal fat tissue can reproduce a hormone that stimulates fat cell production. The researchers hope this discovery will change in the way we think about and treat abdominal obesity.

Yang identified that the hormone Neuropeptide Y (NPY) is reproduced by abdominal fat tissue. Previously, it was believed to only be produced by the brain. Yang believes this novel finding may lead to new therapeutic targets for combating obesity. Their findings were reported in a recent issue of The FASEB Journal.

Syringe

Aboriginal children 'injected with leprosy'

ABORIGINAL children were injected with leprosy treatments in a medical testing program that used members of the Stolen Generation as guinea pigs, a Senate Committee has heard.

Health

Flashback Treatment with 'friendly' bacteria could counter autism in children

PROBIOTIC bacteria given to autistic children improved their concentration and behaviour so much that medical trials collapsed because parents refused to accept placebos, a scientist revealed yesterday.

The effect of the bacteria was so pronounced that some of the parents taking part in what was supposed to be a blind trial realised their children were taking something other than a placebo.

Comment: More information about probiotics is available here:
Gut Flora: A Digestible Account of Probiotics


Magnify

Red blood cells impenetrable to malaria parasite

For people carrying a mutation that causes the rare genetic disease - pyruvate kinase deficiency - it's not all bad news. The mutation also protects against malaria.

About one in 20,000 people have two copies of a genetic mutation that prevents red blood cells from producing energy and causes anaemia. Patients with the condition often die young.

Stop

French law to block anorexia websites

In image-conscious France, it may soon be a crime to glamorise the ultra-thin. New legislation aims crack down on websites that advise anorexics how to starve - and could be used to hit fashion industry heavyweights, too.

The French parliament's lower house has adopted the groundbreaking bill that would make it illegal to incite extreme thinness.

It recommends fines of up to 45,000 euros ($A76,805) and three-year prison sentences for offenders. It next goes to the Senate in the coming weeks.

Monkey Wrench

Assume the possibility of a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure

The traditional face of survivalism is that of a shaggy loner in camouflage, holed up in a cabin in the wilderness and surrounded by cases of canned goods and ammunition.

It is not that of Barton M. Biggs, the former chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley. Yet in Mr. Biggs's new book, Wealth, War and Wisdom, he says people should "assume the possibility of a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure."

Attention

Credit Crunch? The Real Crisis Is Global Hunger

Never mind the economic crisis. Focus for a moment on a more urgent threat: the great food recession that is sweeping the world faster than the credit crunch. You have probably seen the figures by now: the price of rice has risen by three-quarters over the past year, that of wheat by 130%. There are food crises in 37 countries. One hundred million people, according to the World Bank, could be pushed into deeper poverty by the high prices.

But I bet that you have missed the most telling statistic. At 2.1bn tonnes, the global grain harvest broke all records last year - it beat the previous year's by almost 5%. The crisis, in other words, has begun before world food supplies are hit by climate change. If hunger can strike now, what will happen if harvests decline?

Comment: Yes, the article is surreal. The trouble is, Monbiot is writing about the final chapter of a train wreck that has been in the making for thousands of years. There is so much wrong about the way modern society is organized, that approaching from his position of trying to work out what to eat and what not to eat completely misses the fundamental point.

We are prisoners in a system that was set up to bring us where we are now. It is a system run by, and using a model of people who cannot consider long-term goals. They have no inner life that would permit them to imagine the consequences of what they do. Even then, they have no conscience, no ability to feel for another human being.

What we see today is the result of such individuals running the show, and no amount of tinkering a la Monbiot is going to fix it. Only getting down to the root of the problem, that is, understanding the true nature of the rulers of our planet, the psychopaths and other deviants, seeing the system they have constructed and how it has infiltrated itself into each of us, into how we think and act, and rooting this poison out of ourselves and our leaders out of their posts of authority, has any hope of improving our lot.


Health

Mental disorders widespread in Lebanon - study

A significant proportion of Lebanese people have experienced at least one mental disorder at some point in their lives, according to a new study, with war exposure increasing the likelihood of onset.

Health

Second West Nile virus case reported in Mississippi

The state Department of Health reported today one additional human case of West Nile virus for 2008. The new case is in Madison County