Health & WellnessS


Heart

Is Love Good For You?

While most things are best taken in moderation, love is something you might want to give and receive freely this Valentine's day.

Being involved in a healthy, loving relationship is good for the heart, says Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute cardiologist Dr. Julie Damp.

Heart

A Valentine's Day story: Women more perceptive than men in describing relationships

Women are better than men in describing their feelings and those of their romantic partners than are men, while the latter tend to project their own feelings upon their partners more than women. This, according to a study undertaken by graduate student Dana Atzil Slonim and Dr. Orya Tishby of the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in cooperation with Prof. Jacques Barber and Dr. Carol Foltz from the University of Pennsylvania.

The research was conducted in the United States among 97 couples, married and unmarried, between the ages of 18 and 46. Using a questionnaire, the researchers checked the sensitivities of couples in their relationships in three areas: participants' wishes or desires towards their romantic partner; the perceived response of how their partner will respond to these wishes; and finally for their own responses to their partners' responses.

Bulb

Sex differences in the brain's serotonin system

A new thesis from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet shows that the brain's serotonin system differs between men and women. The scientists who conducted the study think that they have found one of the reasons why depression and chronic anxiety are more common in women than in men.

Serotonin is a brain neurotransmitter that is critical to the development and treatment of depression and chronic anxiety, conditions that, for reasons still unknown, are much more common in women than in men. A research group at Karolinska Institutet has now shown using a PET scanner that women and men differ in terms of the number of binding sites for serotonin in certain parts of the brain.

People

University of Illinois study: exercise to avoid gallstones!

A new University of Illinois study shows that exercise-trained mice get far fewer gallstones than sedentary mice and identifies potential mechanisms to explain why this occurs.

The study, recently published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, can be viewed online here.

"For the first time, we have direct evidence that physical activity reduces gallstone formation, adding to the ever-increasing number of reasons that people should get more exercise," said Kenneth Wilund, a faculty member in the University of Illinois Division of Nutritional Sciences and an Assistant Professor in Kinesiology and Community Health.

People

Male births are more likely to reduce quality of life and increase severe post-natal depression

Giving birth to a boy can lead to higher levels of severe post-natal depression (PND) and reduced quality of life than having a girl, according to research published in the February issue of Journal of Clinical Nursing.

A team of researchers led by Professor Claude de Tychey, from Universite Nancy 2, France, found that just under a third of the 181 women they studied four to eight weeks after delivery had PND.

Nine per cent of the women in the study - carried out in a French community where they didn't face cultural pressures over the sex of their baby - had severe PND and just over three-quarters of those had given birth to boys.

Health

Congo-Kinshasa: Cholera Outbreak Spreads in Katanga

A cholera outbreak in the southern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) province of Katanga has spread, despite efforts to bring the epidemic under control.

The disease has claimed the lives of 97 people and 4,029 have been infected since the first cases of the gastro-intestinal illness were reported in Katanga in September 2007, according to François Dumont, spokesman for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF-Belgium). The disease has spread quickly since the end of December.

Pills

Inside a pharmacy where a fatal error occurred

Jacksonville - It was a busy summer night in 2001 at a Walgreens (WAG) store here when pharmacy technician Tomario Lewis went to a computer and typed in the new prescription that would cost Terry Paul Smith his life.

Lewis, then 22, a part-timer hired two years earlier, had been at the Merrill Road store for just a few months, working the evening shift. She had hoped to get a 50-cent hourly raise Walgreens offered for passing a national certification exam. But she'd failed the test.

Question

Could women grow their own sperm?

The day when babies can be made from stray flakes of skin may not be far away. But the ethical implications are enormous, says Roger Highfield

When the Prime Minister walks out of the press conference, he leaves a single flake of skin on the lectern. A woman quietly picks it up, takes it to a lab and, nine months later, gives birth to his child.

sperm and egg
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"A woman could simply pick up a bit of bodily detritus, take it to a laboratory, and give birth to the genetic child of Sir Richard Branson."

Pills

GPs have got Britain 'hooked on painkillers'

Doctors are unwittingly fuelling the growing number of Britons hooked on prescription drugs by giving patients dangerously high doses of medicines that can prove highly addictive, a parliamentary inquiry has concluded.

MPs say that 'mis-prescribing' of drugs such as painkillers, sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety pills by some doctors is 'leading to addiction and dependence'.

Penis Pump

Greece: Stress plagues men calling sex helpline

Eight in 10 men who called a sex helpline in Thessaloniki did so because they were anxious about their performance in bed, according to figures made public yesterday.