Carol Johnson, an otherwise healthy woman in her 60s, was at her wits’ end. Despite a good diet and regular exercise, she was gaining weight — 20-plus pounds. Her blood pressure was too high, even though she was taking three drugs for it. And she didn’t feel well.
Since 2005, two doctors had told her she had a high blood level of creatinine, a product of muscle breakdown that can suggest abnormal kidney function. Yet neither doctor could figure out why. Even repeated kidney infections failed to alert her current doctor to the real problem.
Then, in March 2008, Mrs. Johnson, a retired special-education teacher living in Independence, Mo., noticed an advertisement for a free screening test offered by the National Kidney Foundation. Read the rest of this entry »
In a study that will provide comfort to chocoholics everywhere, researchers in Sweden have found evidence that people who eat chocolate have increased survival rates after a heart attack — and it may be that the more they eat, the better.
The scientists followed 1,169 nondiabetic men and women who had been hospitalized for a first heart attack. Each filled out a standardized health questionnaire that included a question about chocolate consumption over the past 12 months. Chocolate contains flavonoid antioxidants that are widely believed to have beneficial cardiovascular effects. Read the rest of this entry »
Swimming in a chlorinated pool may boost the odds that a child susceptible to asthma and allergies will develop these problems, a study released today indicates.
“These new data clearly show that by irritating the airways of swimmers chlorination products in water and air of swimming pools exert a strong additive effect on the development of asthma and respiratory allergies such as hay fever and allergic rhinitis,” Dr. Alfred Bernard, a toxicologist at the Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels, Belgium, noted in an email to Reuters Health. Read the rest of this entry »
Language barriers may contribute to lower screening rates for colorectal cancer among Mexican-Americans, a San Diego State University study suggests.
A 2005 telephone survey of close to 17,000 older Californian residents found that two thirds of those of Mexican descent needed another person to help them talk with doctors — more than three times the rate of those non-Latinos surveyed.
This, the researchers said, could account for another finding: More than 40 percent of Mexican-Americans never received one of the two most common screening tests for colorectal cancer while the same was true of less than a quarter of non-Latino whites. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by admin | Posted in Cancer | Posted on 15-09-2009
Children who are smacked are more aggressive and have poorer mental development than those who are verbally castigated, studies have found.
Research on toddlers and other studies following children into adolescence found physical punishment was bad for children and made them more likely to show anti-social behaviour.
The children who were smacked at age one were more aggressive and had not developed cognitive skills as well as those punished verbally. Read the rest of this entry »
Working with certain chemicals, which have been shown to disrupt signals in the brain, significantly increased the chances of developing the devastating neurological condition, researchers found.
Many of the pesticides studied are still used in Britain, while those which have been banned can remain in the body for decades, previous research has shown.
Although the latest findings looked at exposure to the chemicals through work, earlier studies have suggested that damage could be caused even by small amounts of exposure to the chemicals. Read the rest of this entry »
