Hi to all
Here is the newsletter for the past two weeks. Many interesting articles which I hope you have time to read.
TIDBITS
- ADHD: The Family Tree - Parents whose children have attention deficit more likely to have mood and anxiety disorders. Parents of kids with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are 24 times as likely to suffer from the disorder themselves as are parents of children without the disorder, according to a study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. Parents whose children had both ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder or conduct disorder were found more likely to have mood, anxiety and substance-abuse disorders than other parents. Living with kids who have ADHD can exacerbate a parent's own problems and vice versa, says Andrea Chronis, a psychologist at the University of Maryland. http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20040628-000001.html
- You don't have to say no to nuts! Nuts are a good source of fiber, protein, complex carbohydrate and protein. They also are good sources of potassium, phosphorus, magnesium and iron. Because they're also high in fat (not saturated fat), limit your nuts to an occasional serving of one ounce. Enjoy almonds, walnuts and pecans for a healthy energy boost.
- Enjoy fresh or frozen vegetables, depending on your preferences, lifestyle and budget. The nutrient content of raw and cooked veggies is similar, but cooking some vegetables increases the nutrient content over raw. When vegetables are cooked, the body uses minute phytochemicals called antioxidants to repair cell damage caused by "free radicals," toxic byproducts of normal metabolism and the environment.
- Flaxseed for Hot Flashes? New research suggests that lignans, estrogen-like compounds in flaxseeds, may help relieve hot flashes. In the pilot study, 28 women consumed four tablespoons of ground flaxseed daily—two in the morning, two at night. After six weeks, the frequency of their hot flashes dropped, on average, from 7.3 to 3.6 a day. Intensity of the hot flashes decreased too. "[Lignans in] flax offer a ‘natural,’ less potent estrogen effect on hot flashes than synthetic hormone therapy," says the study’s lead author, Sandhya Pruthi, M.D., of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who is planning a larger study to confirm the findings. Pruthi recommends starting with two tablespoons daily and working up to four. (Note: 4 tablespoons = 190 calories.) Flaxseeds are rich in fiber—2.5 grams per tablespoon—so increasing intake too quickly can cause bloating. Grind whole flax—a coffee grinder works great—and sprinkle it on yogurt, cereal, fruit and salads.
VIDEOS
MIND GAMES
Marc Salem says he can read your thoughts. He's a mentalist, a magician of the mind. Is he for real? Correspondent Mike Wallace (60 Minutes) tried to find out. But perhaps, it's better if you decide. . .
http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/133/mind_games
ARTICLES
BRAIN
What Are We Thinking When We (Try to) Solve Problems? By Nikhil Swaminathan
New research indicates what happens in the brain when we're faced with a dilemma
Aha! Eureka! Bingo! "By George, I think she's got it!" Everyone knows what it's like to finally figure out a seemingly impossible problem. But what on Earth is happening in the brain while we're driving toward mental pay dirt? Researchers eager to find out have long been on the hunt, knowing that such information could one day provide priceless clues in uncovering and fixing faulty neural systems believed to be behind some mental illnesses and learning disabilities.
Researchers at Goldsmiths, University of London report in the journal PLoS ONE that they monitored action in the brains of 21 volunteers with electroencephalography (EEG) as they tackled verbal problems in an attempt to uncover what goes through the mind—literally—in order to observe what happens in the brain during an "aha!" moment of problem solving.
In many cases, the subjects hit a wall, or what researchers refer to as a "mental impasse." If the participants arrived at this point, they could press a button for a clue to help them untangle a problem. Bhattacharya says blocks correlated with strong gamma rhythms (a pattern of brain wave activity associated with selective attention) in the parietal cortex, a region in the upper rear of the brain that has been implicated in integrating information coming from the senses. The research team noticed an interesting phenomenon taking place in the brains of participants given hints: The clues were less likely to help if subjects had an especially high gamma rhythm pattern. The reason, Bhattacharya speculates, is that these participants were, in essence, locked into an inflexible way of thinking and less able to free their minds, and thereby unable to restructure the problem before them. "If there's excessive attention, it somehow creates mental fixation," he notes. "Your brain is not in a receptive condition."
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=what-are-we-thinking-when&sc=WR_20080205
10 Ways We Get the Odds Wrong By: Maia Szalavitz
Our brains are terrible at assessing modern risks. Here's how to think straight about dangers in your midst.
Is your gym locker room crawling with drug-resistant bacteria? Is the guy with the bulging backpack a suicide bomber? And what about that innocent-looking arugula: Will pesticide residue cause cancer, or do the leaves themselves harbor E. coli? But wait! Not eating enough vegetables is also potentially deadly.
These days, it seems like everything is risky, and worry itself is bad for your health. The more we learn, the less we seem to know—and if anything makes us anxious, it's uncertainty. At the same time, we're living longer, healthier lives. So why does it feel like even the lettuce is out to get us?
The human brain is exquisitely adapted to respond to risk—uncertainty about the outcome of actions. Faced with a precipice or a predator, the brain is biased to make certain decisions. Our biases reflect the choices that kept our ancestors alive. But we have yet to evolve similarly effective responses to statistics, media coverage, and fear-mongering politicians. For most of human existence, 24-hour news channels didn't exist, so we don't have cognitive shortcuts to deal with novel uncertainties.
Still, uncertainty unbalances us, pitching us into anxiety and producing an array of cognitive distortions. Even minor dilemmas like deciding whether to get a cell phone (brain cancer vs. dying on the road because you can't call for help?) can be intolerable for some people. And though emotions are themselves critical to making rational decisions, they were designed for a world in which dangers took the form of predators, not pollutants. Our emotions push us to make snap judgments that once were sensible—but may not be anymore.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20071228-000005.xml
Getting Duped: How the Media Messes with Your Mind By Yvonne Raley and Robert Talisse
Statements made in the media can surreptitiously plant distortions in the minds of millions. Learning to recognize two commonly used fallacies can help you separate fact from fiction
In 2003 nearly half of all Americans falsely assumed that the U.S. government had found solid evidence for a link between Iraq and al Qaeda. What is more, almost a quarter of us believed that investigators had all but confirmed the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to a 2003 report by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes and Knowledge Networks, a polling and market research firm. How did the true situation in Iraq become so grossly distorted in American minds?
News shows often have an implicit bias that may motivate the portrayal of facts and opinions in misleading ways, even if the information presented is largely accurate. Nevertheless, by becoming familiar with how spokespeople can create false impressions, media consumers can learn to ignore certain claims and thereby avoid getting duped. We have detected two general types of fallacies—one of them well known and the other newly identified—that have permeated discussion of the Iraq War and that are generally ubiquitous in political debates and other discourse.
One common method of spinning information is the so-called straw man argument. In this tactic, a person summarizes the opposition’s position inaccurately so as to weaken it and then refutes that inaccurate rendition.
Weak man tactics are harder to detect than those of the straw man variety. Because straw man arguments are closely related to an opponent’s true position, a clever listener might be able to spot the truth amid the hyperbole, understatement or other corrupted version of that view. A weak man argument, however, is more opaque because it contains a grain of truth and often bears little similarity to the stronger arguments that should also be presented. Therefore, a listener has to know a lot more about the situation to imagine the information that a speaker or writer has cleverly disregarded.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=getting-duped&sc=WR_20080205
Lead linked to aging in older brains By MALCOLM RITTER
NEW YORK - Could it be that the "natural" mental decline that afflicts many older people is related to how much lead they absorbed decades before?
That's the provocative idea emerging from some recent studies, part of a broader area of new research that suggests some pollutants can cause harm that shows up only years after someone is exposed.
The new work suggests long-ago lead exposure can make an aging person's brain work as if it's five years older than it really is. If that's verified by more research, it means that sharp cuts in environmental lead levels more than 20 years ago didn't stop its widespread effects.
"We're trying to offer a caution that a portion of what has been called normal aging might in fact be due to ubiquitous environmental exposures like lead," says Dr. Brian Schwartz of Johns Hopkins University.
"The fact that it's happening with lead is the first proof of principle that it's possible," said Schwartz, a leader in the study of lead's delayed effects. Other pollutants like mercury and pesticides may do the same thing, he said.
In fact, some recent research does suggest that being exposed to pesticides raises the risk of getting Parkinson's disease a decade or more later. Experts say such studies in mercury are lacking.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080127/ap_on_he_me/aging_brain
EDUCATION & MATHEMATICS
Professor: Fractions should be scrapped By Maureen Milford
PHILADELPHIA — A few years ago, Dennis DeTurck, an award-winning professor of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, stood at an outdoor podium on campus and proclaimed, "Down with fractions!"
"Fractions have had their day, being useful for by-hand calculation," DeTurck said as part of a 60-second lecture series. "But in this digital age, they're as obsolete as Roman numerals are."
The speech started a firestorm, particularly after the university posted it online.
"There were blogs and rants, and there were some critical e-mails," said DeTurck, who is now dean of the college of arts and sciences at Penn. "They'd always boil down to: 'What would we do in cooking and carpentry?' "
DeTurck is stirring the pot again, this time in a book scheduled to be published this year. Not only does he favor the teaching of decimals over fractions to elementary school students, he's also taking on long division, the calculation of square roots and by-hand multiplication of long numbers.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/mathscience/2008-01-23-fractions_N.htm?se=yahoorefer
Teacher Burnout? Blame the Parents
The stress of teaching is often blamed on rowdy students and unrealistic expectations from school officials. But new research suggests that parents may be the real culprit in teacher burnout.
The study, published this month in the psychology journal Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, surveyed 118 German schoolteachers who had been teaching for an average of 20 years. The questionnaires were designed to assess personality traits like perfectionism. They also measured the teachers’ level of burnout and their reactions to pressure from colleagues, students and parents. Although “burnout” is complex and different for every teacher, it’s usually defined as occurring when a teacher feels emotionally exhausted at the end of the day, appears cynical or uncaring about what happens to students and feels as if he or she has reached few personal goals.
Although perfectionism is often linked with job stress, teachers with perfectionist tendencies in this survey weren’t more likely to have burnout. But teachers who felt pressure to be perfect or experienced criticism for being imperfect were more likely to have burnout. Notably, the highest pressure to be perfect didn’t come from students or colleagues but from parents.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/teacher-burnout-blame-the-parents/
Teacher absences are hurting learning
Vacuum in classroom linked to lower test scores, research shows
WASHINGTON - A year is a long time in a child's education, the time it can take to learn cursive writing or beginning algebra. It's also how much time kids can spend with substitute teachers from kindergarten through high school — time that's all but lost for learning.
Despite tremendous pressure on schools to increase instructional time and meet performance goals, the vacuum created by teacher absenteeism has been all but ignored — even though new research suggests it can have an adverse effect in the classroom.
The problem isn't just with teachers home for a day or two with the flu. Schools' use of substitutes to plug full-time vacancies — the teachers that kids are supposed to have all year — is up dramatically.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22686809/
Spanish town to pay kids to read By IAIN SULLIVAN
NOBLEJAS, Spain — A small-town Spanish mayor concerned about a high dropout rate in local schools has devised a way to keep kids studying — pay them.
Agustin Jimenez, Socialist mayor of the central agricultural town of Noblejas, is recommending the town's children be given a euro — the equivalent of $1.50 — for every hour they spend reading in the local library.
The sweetener is part of a series of measures to be voted on by the Noblejas council in March. Others include funds for apartments in university towns for students from Noblejas, teachers to give private lessons to struggling students, and expert advice to parents on the virtues of keeping their children at school.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080204/ap_on_re_eu/spain_paid_to_read
You’re 16, You’re Beautiful and You’re a Voter By ANYA KAMENETZ
THE 2008 presidential campaign has made history in many ways, not least being the arrival of a new generation at the polls. Voters under 29 were the first to anoint Barack Obama as their candidate. Reversing a general decline that began in 1972, youth turnout leapt in 2004, and in the early contests in this primary season it was up sharply.
We should hasten the enfranchisement of this generation, born between 1980 and 1995, by lowering the voting age to 16.
We know driving laws reflect reality; whoever heard of the scourge of under-age driving? On the other hand, studies have shown that three-fourths of high school seniors have drunk alcohol. Surveys show that teenagers who drink at home with their families go on to drink less than those who sneak beers with friends. Imagine 16-year-olds receiving a drinking permit upon passage of a mandatory course about alcoholism. The permit would allow a tipple only at family gatherings or school functions for two years — until you graduate or leave home.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/06/opinion/06kamenetz.html?th&emc=th
GENETICS
The Identity Dance By: Gunjan Sinha
The idea that genes determine identity has been replaced with a new view in which DNA and life experience work together to mold personalities.
Sandra and Marisa Pena, identical twins, seem to be exactly the same. They have the same thick dark hair, the same high cheekbones, the same habit of delicately rubbing the tip of the nose in conversation. They had the same type of thyroid cyst at the same age (18) in the same place (right side). When San Diego is mentioned, they both say, simultaneously and with the same intonation, "Oh, I love San Diego!" They live together, work one floor away from each other at MTV, wear the same clothes, hang out with the same friends. They even have the same dreams.
We've come to believe that genes influence character and personality more than anything else does. It's not just about height and hair color—DNA seems to have its clutches on our very souls. But spend a few hours with identical twins, who have exactly the same set of genes, and you'll find that this simplistic belief crumbles before your eyes. If DNA dictates all, how can two people with identical genes—who are living, breathing clones of each other—be so different?
To answer such questions, scientists have begun to think more broadly about how genes and life experience combine to shape us. The rigid idea that genes determine identity has been replaced with a more flexible and complex view in which DNA and life experience conspire to mold our personalities. We now know that certain genes make people susceptible to traits like aggression and depression. But susceptibility is not inevitability. Gene expression is like putty: Genes are turned on and off, dialed up or down both by other genes and by the ups and downs of everyday life. A seminal study last year found that the ideal breeding ground for depression is a combination of specific genes and stressful triggers—simply having the gene will not send most people into despair. Such research promises to end the binary debate about nature vs. nurture—and usher in a revolution in understanding who we are.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-3301.html
Nature and nurture play role in mental illness By Julie Steenhuysen and Ben Hirschler
CHICAGO/LONDON (Reuters) - Variations in a gene helped shield adults who had endured child abuse from becoming depressed as adults, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that helps explain how nature and nurture give rise to mental illness.
And a British team has found that pregnant women who have a major emotional loss in the early months of pregnancy give birth to babies with a higher risk of schizophrenia.
The studies, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, add to a growing understanding of how genetics and environmental distress sometimes act together to produce mental illness.
"It is not a question of genes versus environment. It is a question of how genes interact with whatever the environmental factors might be. And that is probably true of all of the disorders that we call mental illness," said Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institutes of Mental Health.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080204/hl_nm/genes_mental_dc;_ylt=Al8SFWv8ccj5ekBcMj2eyJxa24cA
Embryos created with DNA from 3 people
LONDON - British scientists have created human embryos containing DNA from two women and one man, a procedure that could potentially prevent conditions including epilepsy, diabetes and heart failure.
Though the preliminary research has raised concerns about the possibility of genetically modified babies, the scientists say that the embryos are still only primarily the product of one man and one woman.
"We are not trying to alter genes, we're just trying to swap a small proportion of the bad ones for some good ones," said Patrick Chinnery, a professor of neurogenetics at Newcastle University involved in the research.
The process aims to avoid passing onto children bad mitochondria genes, which are contained outside the nucleus in a normal female egg. Mitochondria are a cell's energy source, but mistakes in their genetic code can result in serious diseases like epilepsy, strokes, and mental retardation.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080205/ap_on_sc/embryo_research;_ylt=ArEXpchizX5rlwS2ztyXwepa24cA
MUSIC
Under the Influence of…Music?
Teenagers listen to an average of nearly 2.5 hours of music per day. Guess what they’re hearing about?
One in three popular songs contains explicit references to drug or alcohol use, according to a new report in The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. That means kids are receiving about 35 references to substance abuse for every hour of music they listen to, the authors determined.
Studies have long shown that media messages have a pronounced impact on childhood risk behaviors. Exposure to images of smoking in movies influences a child’s risk for picking up the habit. Alcohol use in movies and promotions is also linked to actual alcohol use.
“Music is well-known to connect deeply with adolescents and to influence identity development, perhaps more than any other entertainment medium,'’ said the study authors.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/under-the-influence-ofmusic/
Music on the Mind By: Nancy K. Dess
Interviews Norman M. Weinberger, a professor of neurobiology and behavior at the University of California at Irvine, on the role of music in brain function. Elements of music; Fundamental aspect of music perception; Role of musical experience in the human brain.
Music and science may seem to inhabit different universes--one of beauty andemotion, the other of logic and reason. But now, neuroscientists are placing them in the same solar system. Norman M. Weinberger, Ph.D., professor of neurobiology and behavior at the University of California at Irvine, explains how new research is beginning to reveal the role of music in brain function--and our lives.
Nancy K. Dess: Is music in our genes?
Norman M. Weinberger: Music exists in every culture, and infants have excellent musical abilities that cannot be explained by learning. Mothers everywhere sing to their infants because babies understand it. Music seems to be part of our biological heritage.
NKD: So our brains evolved to process it?
NMW: Not in the sense that a particular chunk of brain is musical. It's complex, because music has many elements--rhythm, melody and so on. For example, certain cells in the right hemisphere respond more to melody than to language.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20000901-000029.html
PSYCHOLOGY
A Child’s View of Attention Deficit
What does it feel like to have attention deficit disorder?
The answer to that question can be found in a fascinating new report from the Journal of Pediatric Nursing called “I Have Always Felt Different.'’ The article gives a glimpse into the experience of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or A.D.H.D., from a child’s perspective.
Assistant professors Robin Bartlett and Mona M. Shattell, from the School of Nursing at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, interviewed 16 college students who had been diagnosed with A.D.H.D. as children. The investigators talked to them about how the disorder affected life at home, school and friendships.
Like most kids, the students described a life of both conflict with and support from their parents. But in their case, fighting with parents was often triggered by attention-related problems like failing to complete laundry chores or cleaning their rooms.
ADHD's Outdoor Cure By: Willow Lawson
Finding relief in wide open spaces. Playing outdoors may curb the disorder.
For the 7 percent of American kids who suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), relief may come in the form of green fields, leafy trees and open sky.
Andrea Faber Taylor and Frances Kuo, researchers at the Human Environment Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, have found that spending time in ordinary "green" settings—such as parks, farms or grassy backyards—reduces symptoms of ADHD when compared to time spent at indoor playgrounds and man-made recreation areas of concrete and asphalt. The findings were consistent regardless of the child's age, gender, family income, geographic region or severity of diagnosis.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20040406-000015.html
How to Remain Calm During Uneasy Times By: Hara Estroff Marano
A few physical routines can keep you in balance. We need to engage in activities that maintain anxiety at manageable levels so that we can continue to function, and so that we can respond rationally if push comes to shove and we face crises in our midst.
No doubt about it. We are living in troubled and troubling times. The economy feels remarkably uncertain. It's not just a highly erratic stock market, but the high cost of oil and the incredibly shrinking job market. Without jobs our very identity seems to shrink, to say nothing of our means for enjoying life. And the American consumer economy is threatened even further.
War talk is all around us and scenes of preparation face us on the daily news. Whether you are for or against war, America's stance on Iraq is certainly forcing this nation into unchartered waters and creating new alliances of power in the world. It is bringing on us a torrent of criticism that is at best difficult to endure and undermines whatever security we had in our position in the world. Color-coded alerts may come and go, but we also all now live with the threat of terrorism in our midst.
How do we stay sane in all the midst of all these anxiety-provoking developments?
It takes an effort.
We need to engage in activities that maintain anxiety at manageable levels so that we can continue to function, and so that we can respond rationally if push comes to shove and we face crises in our midst.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20030401-000004.html
Middle age is truly depressing, study finds
But good news is that most grow happy again during golden years
LONDON - Middle age is truly miserable, according to a study using data from 80 countries showing that depression is most common among men and women in their 40s.
The British and U.S. researchers found that happiness for people ranging from Albania to Zimbabwe follows a U-shaped curve where life begins cheerful before turning tough during middle age and then returning to the joys of youth in the golden years.
Previous studies have shown that psychological well-being remained flat throughout life but the new findings to be published in the journal Social Science & Medicine suggest we are in for a topsy-turvy emotional ride.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22896014/
Dad baboons help their daughters mature
WASHINGTON - Having daddy around when they are growing up is good for little girls — even if they are little baboon girls. While that's well known for people, it's a bit of a surprise for non-human primates.
But a report in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that female baboons in Kenya raised in groups with their fathers matured earlier and had a longer reproductive life than other baboons.
Males had not been thought to be engaged in a level of care that would make any difference to their offspring, said Susan Alberts, an associate professor of biology at Duke University.
Alberts and colleagues studied groups of yellow baboons living near Kenya's Mt. Kilimanjaro. In these groups both males and females have several partners.
The presence of the father in a group gave the daughters a jump-start on sexual maturity, a measure of fitness, the researchers said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080204/ap_on_sc/daddy_s_little_girl;_ylt=An4hERFle3j0hRVD2J40qaxxieAA
Coping With the Caveman in the Crib By TARA PARKER-POPE
If there is such a person as a “baby whisperer,” it is the pediatrician Dr. Harvey Karp, whose uncanny ability to quiet crying babies became the best-selling book “The Happiest Baby on the Block.”
In his latest book, “The Happiest Toddler on the Block,” Dr. Karp tries to teach parents the skills to communicate with and soothe tantrum-prone children. In doing so, however, he redefines what being a toddler means. In his view, toddlers are not just small people. In fact, for all practical purposes, they’re not even small Homo sapiens.
Dr. Karp notes that in terms of brain development, a toddler is primitive, an emotion-driven, instinctive creature that has yet to develop the thinking skills that define modern humans. Logic and persuasion, common tools of modern parenting, “are meaningless to a Neanderthal,” Dr. Karp says.
The challenge for parents is learning how to communicate with the caveman in the crib. “All of us get more primitive when we get upset, that’s why they call it ‘going ape,’ ” Dr. Karp says. “But toddlers start out primitive, so when they get upset, they go Jurassic on you.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05well.html?em&ex=1202446800&en=71c8f193a5fde0ee&ei=5087%0A
HEALTH
Caffeine ups blood sugar level in diabetics: study By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cutting down on caffeine could help people with the most common form of diabetes better control their blood sugar levels, researchers said on Monday.
Giving caffeine to a small group of people with type 2 diabetes caused their levels of the blood sugar glucose to rise through the day, especially after meals, researchers at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, found.
"Caffeine appears to disrupt glucose metabolism in a way that could be harmful to people with type-2 diabetes," James Lane, a Duke medical psychologist who led the study, said in a telephone interview.
The new findings seem to run counter to previous research regarding diabetes and caffeine. Earlier studies indicated that people who drank coffee had a reduced risk of type-2 diabetes, and those who drank the most coffee had the lowest risk.
The researchers used new technology -- a tiny glucose monitor embedded under the abdominal skin -- to monitor the glucose levels continuously in 10 people, average age 63.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080128/sc_nm/diabetes_caffeine_dc
Diabetes Study Partially Halted After Deaths By GINA KOLATA
For decades, researchers believed that if people with diabetes lowered their blood sugar to normal levels, they would no longer be at high risk of dying from heart disease. But a major federal study of more than 10,000 middle-aged and older people with Type 2 diabetes has found that lowering blood sugar actually increased their risk of death, researchers reported Wednesday.
Among the study participants who were randomly assigned to get their blood sugar levels to nearly normal, there were 54 more deaths than in the group whose levels were less rigidly controlled. The patients were in the study for an average of four years when investigators called a halt to the intensive blood sugar lowering and put all of them on the less intense regimen.
The results do not mean blood sugar is meaningless. Lowered blood sugar can protect against kidney disease, blindness and amputations, but the findings inject an element of uncertainty into what has been dogma — that the lower the blood sugar the better and that lowering blood sugar levels to normal saves lives.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/health/07diabetes.html?th&emc=th
Despite Risks, Vitamins Popular With Cancer Patients
Vitamin use is common among the nation’s 10 million cancer survivors, despite little evidence that supplements help and worries that some may actually fuel the disease.
Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle reviewed 32 studies conducted between 1999 and 2006. The investigators found that 64 percent to 81 percent of cancer survivors overall reported taking extra vitamins or minerals (excluding multivitamins). In the general population, only 50 percent of American adults reported taking dietary supplements.
The findings, published this month in The Journal of Clinical Oncology and funded by the National Cancer Institute, are worrisome because little is known about how megadoses of vitamins affect cancer. Some lab studies have suggested that antioxidants can improve the effectiveness of cancer treatments. But many more studies raise questions about the use of these supplements. A 1995 report in The Journal of Biological Chemistry showed that cancer cells in a petri dish thrive in the presence of vitamin C.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/06/despite-risks-vitamins-popular-with-cancer-patients/
The Sex of Your Surgeon May Matter
Whether a woman receives radiation treatment after breast cancer surgery may be influenced by the gender of her surgeon, according to a new report from The Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
The study, from researchers at Columbia University, set out to determine why breast cancer treatment still varies among similar patients. In particular, they looked at radiation treatment given to women after lumpectomy. The treatment is considered a standard of quality cancer care and has been shown to reduce breast cancer recurrence and mortality. However, many women still don’t receive it.
Women who received radiation were more likely to have a female surgeon. Women who were treated by more experienced surgeons were also more likely to receive radiation treatment, as were women treated by doctors trained in the United States.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/the-sex-of-your-surgeon-may-matter/
Doctors use Wii games for rehab therapy By LINDSEY TANNER
CHICAGO - Some call it "Wiihabilitation." Nintendo's Wii video game system, whose popularity already extends beyond the teen gaming set, is fast becoming a craze in rehab therapy for patients recovering from strokes, broken bones, surgery and even combat injuries.
The usual stretching and lifting exercises that help the sick or injured regain strength can be painful, repetitive and downright boring.
In fact, many patients say PT — physical therapy's nickname — really stands for "pain and torture," said James Osborn, who oversees rehabilitation services at Herrin Hospital in southern Illinois.
Using the game console's unique, motion-sensitive controller, Wii games require body movements similar to traditional therapy exercises. But patients become so engrossed mentally they're almost oblivious to the rigor, Osborn said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080209/ap_on_he_me/wiihabilitation_medicine
