Hi to all
Here is the newsletter filled with interesting articles that I found online. A lot has been published about depression and anti-depressants in the past two weeks, and a bit on ADHD also (see the Psychology Section). Teen moodiness and anger was also discussed in the media (see the Brain Section). The age old question regarding teaching boys and girls separately was discussed at large (see the Education Section), and a whole pot-pourri of health issues were also published:
TIDBITS
How to Stop Weight Gain: Four common nutrients - the mineral chromium, vitamin B-6, vitamin B-12 and multivitamins - may help slow weight gain in middle-aged adults. In one new study, people who had taken supplements of these vitamins had less weight gain over the previous 10 years than those who didn't, particularly if they were initially overweight or obese.
Taste the Rainbow of Health: The key to eating healthy may be as easy as adding some color to your diet. Researchers have linked the different hues from various foods to different classes of nutrients. So the key to a youthful, healthy exterior, sharp mind, healthy strong bones and disease prevention might start with a healthy rainbow of colorful foods on your plate.
Health Tip: Get Enough Vitamin C: (HealthDay News) - Vitamin C is an antioxidant that's found primarily in citrus fruits, leafy green vegetables, broccoli, potatoes and other fruits and veggies. Significant enough vitamin C deficiency can lead to a condition called scurvy. Here are warning signs that you're not getting enough vitamin C, courtesy of the U.S. National Library of Medicine:
· Excessively dry hair with ends that split easily.
· Scaly, rough, dry skin.
· Bleeding or inflamed gums.
· Wounds that heal slowly, frequent infections, and bruising easily.
· Frequent nosebleeds.
· Pain and swelling in the joints.
· Anemia.
· Weakened tooth enamel.
VIDEOS
“Do Yoga at Work”: This segment talks about Dahn Yoga, also known as Brain yoga. It gives 4 exercises to help with oxygenating the blood, blood flow to the brain, redistributing blood flow in the brain, and possibly assisting in changing brain wave activity. Click on the segment entitled “Do Yoga at Work”.
http://abcnews.go.com/search?searchtext=Dahn%20yoga&type=
Jane Goodall: What separates us from the apes?
Traveling from Ecuador to Africa, Jane Goodall takes the audience on an ecological journey, discussing highlights and low points of her experiences in the jungle. She shows how progress is helping research (DNA analysis) and hurting the environment (clear-cutting). And she draws a dozen parallels between primate and human behavior, making the point that we really aren't all that different. Our big advantage, she says, is the ability to communicate with sophisticated spoken language -- yet, sadly, we are abusing this power and destroying the planet. She urges the TED audience to behave differently, and use their higher powers to correct the planet's course. Duration: 27:35
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/11
AUDIO PODCAST
You can download and listen to the following 60-second podcast, or just read the text online:
Debunking Animal Autism: Animal behaviorist Temple Grandin believes extraordinary animals think much like autistic geniuses. Now, some neuroscientists say it simply isn't true. *This week's podcast guest hosted by Christopher Intagliata, an intern for Scientific American Mind. www.sciammind.com
http://www.sciam.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=3E744D29-DD5A-EB39-EC70F5438254A14A&sc=WR_20080304
ARTICLES
BRAIN
Anger in teenage boys tied to enlarged brain region
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Aggression in some teenage boys may be linked to overly large amygdalas, a region in the brain involved in emotion and other functions, a study by scientists in Australia and the United States has found.
In an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, they report that these boys may also be unable to control their emotions because other parts of the brain that normally control strong emotions don't mature till the early 20s.
"Boys who had large amygdalas spent more time behaving in an aggressive way," Allen said, referring to a part of the brain located deep within the medial temporal lobes that is believed to be involved with emotional responses, including arousal and fear.
These boys also appeared to have small prefrontal cortexes, a region of the brain that has to do with regulating emotions.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080226/hl_nm/anger_teenage_dc
Also see the following article on the subject:
Teen Brain May Be Wired for Moodiness By Miranda Hitti
Brain Changes Might Make for Cranky Teen Behavior
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=87415
Time Out of Mind By STEFAN KLEIN
IN 1784, Benjamin Franklin composed a satire, “Essay on Daylight Saving,” proposing a law that would oblige Parisians to get up an hour earlier in summer. By putting the daylight to better use, he reasoned, they’d save a good deal of money — 96 million livres tournois — that might otherwise go to buying candles. Now this switch to daylight saving time (which occurs early Sunday in the United States) is an annual ritual in Western countries.
Even more influential has been something else Franklin said about time in the same year: time is money. ... But the quest to spend time the way we do money is doomed to failure, because the time we experience bears little relation to time as read on a clock. The brain creates its own time, and it is this inner time, not clock time, that guides our actions. In the space of an hour, we can accomplish a great deal — or very little.
Inner time is linked to activity. When we do nothing, and nothing happens around us, we’re unable to track time. ... To measure time, the brain uses circuits that are designed to monitor physical movement. Neuroscientists have observed this phenomenon using computer-assisted functional magnetic resonance imaging tomography.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/opinion/07klein.html?th&emc=th
Do You See What I See? Translating Images out of Brain Waves By Nikhil Swaminathan
Visual decoder allows researchers to translate brain wave activity into images
File this under futuristic (and perhaps a little scary): In a step toward one day perhaps deciphering visions and dreams, new research unveils an algorithm that can translate the activity in the minds of humans. Scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, report in Nature today that they have developed a method capable of decoding the patterns in visual areas of the brain to determine what someone has seen. Needless to say, the potential implications for society are sweeping.
"This general visual decoder would have great scientific and practical use," the researchers say. "We could use the decoder to investigate differences in perception across people, to study covert mental processes such as attention, and perhaps even to access the visual content of purely mental phenomena such as dreams and imagery."
The scientists say that previous attempts to extract "mental content from brain activity" only allowed them to decode a finite number of patterns. Researchers would feed image to an individual (or ask them to think about an object) one at a time and then look for a corresponding brain activity pattern. "You would need to know [beforehand], for each thought you want to read out, what kind of pattern of activity goes with it," says John-Dylan Haynes, a professor at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences that was not affiliated with the new work.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=translating-images-from-brain-waves
Girl Talk: Are Women Really Better at Language? By Nikhil Swaminathan
New research shows that young girls may learn language more completely than their male peers
Scientific literature has been littered with studies over the past 40 years documenting the superior language skills of girls, but the biological reason why has remained a mystery until now. Researchers report in the journal Neuropsychologia that the answer lies in the way words are processed: Girls completing a linguistic abilities task showed greater activity in brain areas implicated specifically in language encoding, which decipher information abstractly. Boys, on the other hand, showed a lot of activity in regions tied to visual and auditory functions, depending on the way the words were presented during the exercise.
The finding suggests that although linguistic information goes directly to the seat of language processing in the female brain, males use sensory machinery to do a great deal of the work in untangling the data. In a classroom setting, it implies that boys need to be taught language both visually (with a textbook) and orally (through a lecture) to get a full grasp of the subject, whereas a girl may be able to pick up the concepts by either method.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=are-women-really-better-with-language
EVOLUTION
SLIDESHOW: The Social Life of Hyenas
Spotted hyenas, also known somewhat disparagingly as laughing hyenas, live in a hierarchical social structure. Here, high-ranking hyenas get first bite at an African Cape buffalo. The lower-ranking hyenas in the outer circle must wait. Their complex social structure belies their reputation as odd-looking, scavenging misfits. And they are not always scavengers; they often bring down prey on their own.
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/03/03/science/0304Hyena_index.html
Sociable, and Smart
Brain imaging studies have revealed that when people think about other people, parts of the frontal cortex become active. Advocates of the social brain hypothesis say the frontal cortex expanded in our ancestors because natural selection favored social intelligence. “It’s just what the social complexity hypothesis would predict,” Dr. Holekamp said. “The hyenas with the simplest social systems have the tiniest frontal cortices. The spotted hyena, which lives in the most complex societies, has far and away the largest frontal cortex.”
While the intelligence of hyenas may be similar to that of primates, Dr. Holekamp is also struck by the differences. Primates are immensely curious, but she does not see much evidence of inventiveness in hyenas. Dr. Holekamp hopes to determine how innovative hyenas are compared with other carnivores. It is possible that, along with social complexity, intelligence can also evolve in other ways.
By comparing hyenas and primates, as well as other mammals, Dr. Holekamp believes it will be possible to get a full picture of how intelligence evolves. “There’s a tremendous support for the social brain hypothesis,” she said, “but I think that in order to understand the origin of intelligence we have to think more broadly than that.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/science/04hyen.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
EDUCATION
Teaching Boys and Girls Separately By ELIZABETH WEIL
On an unseasonably cold day last November in Foley, Ala., Colby Royster and Michael Peterson, two students in William Bender’s fourth-grade public-school class, informed me that the class corn snake could eat a rat faster than the class boa constrictor. Bender teaches 26 fourth graders, all boys. Down the hall and around the corner, Michelle Gay teaches 26 fourth-grade girls. The boys like being on their own, they say, because girls don’t appreciate their jokes and think boys are too messy, and are also scared of snakes. The walls of the boys’ classroom are painted blue, the light bulbs emit a cool white light and the thermostat is set to 69 degrees. In the girls’ room, by contrast, the walls are yellow, the light bulbs emit a warm yellow light and the temperature is kept six degrees warmer, as per the instructions of Leonard Sax, a family physician turned author and advocate who this May will quit his medical practice to devote himself full time to promoting single-sex public education.
Among advocates of single-sex public education, there are two camps: those who favor separating boys from girls because they are essentially different and those who favor separating boys from girls because they have different social experiences and social needs. Leonard Sax represents the essential-difference view, arguing that boys and girls should be educated separately for reasons of biology: for example, Sax asserts that boys don’t hear as well as girls, which means that an instructor needs to speak louder in order for the boys in the room to hear her; and that boys’ visual systems are better at seeing action, while girls are better at seeing the nuance of color and texture. The social view is represented by teachers like Emily Wylie, who works at the Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem (T.Y.W.L.S.), an all-girls school for Grades 7-12. Wylie described her job to me by saying, “It’s my subversive mission to create all these strong girls who will then go out into the world and be astonished when people try to oppress them.” Sax calls schools like T.Y.W.L.S. “anachronisms” — because, he says, they’re stuck in 1970s-era feminist ideology and they don’t base their pedagogy on the latest research. Few on the other side want to disparage Sax publicly, though T.Y.W.L.S.’s founder, Ann Tisch, did tell me pointedly, “Nobody is planning the days of our girls around a photograph of a brain.”
Next Question: Can Students Be Paid to Excel? By JENNIFER MEDINA
The fourth graders squirmed in their seats, waiting for their prizes. In a few minutes, they would learn how much money they had earned for their scores on recent reading and math exams. Some would receive nearly $50 for acing the standardized tests, a small fortune for many at this school, P.S. 188 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
When the rewards were handed out, Jazmin Roman was eager to celebrate her $39.72. She whispered to her friend Abigail Ortega, “How much did you get?” Abigail mouthed a barely audible answer: $36.87. Edgar Berlanga pumped his fist in the air to celebrate his $34.50.
The children were unaware that their teacher, Ruth Lopez, also stood to gain financially from their achievement. If students show marked improvement on state tests during the school year, each teacher at Public School 188 could receive a bonus of as much as $3,000. “We’re in competition with the streets,” Ms. Connelly said. “They can go out there and make $50 illegally any day of the week. We have to do something to compete with that.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/nyregion/05incentive.html?th&emc=th
At Charter School, Higher Teacher Pay By ELISSA GOOTMAN
Would six-figure salaries attract better teachers?
A New York City charter school set to open in 2009 in Washington Heights will test one of the most fundamental questions in education: Whether significantly higher pay for teachers is the key to improving schools.
The school, which will run from fifth to eighth grades, is promising to pay teachers $125,000, plus a potential bonus based on schoolwide performance. That is nearly twice as much as the average New York City public school teacher earns, roughly two and a half times the national average teacher salary and higher than the base salary of all but the most senior teachers in the most generous districts nationwide.
The school’s creator and first principal, Zeke M. Vanderhoek, contends that high salaries will lure the best teachers. He says he wants to put into practice the conclusion reached by a growing body of research: that teacher quality — not star principals, laptop computers or abundant electives — is the crucial ingredient for success.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/nyregion/07charter.html?th&emc=th
PSYCHOLOGY
Diet change gives hyperactive kids new taste for life in Norway by Nina Larson
STAVANGER, Norway (AFP) - Tears streak Rita's cheek as she recalls what it was like trying to figure out what was wrong with her son more than a decade ago, but she breaks into a smile when she explains how changing his diet made all the difference.
Christoffer, today a normally developed 14-year-old, is one of 23 children suffering from hyperactive disorders who were put on milk-free diets in 1996-1997 and whose development has been tracked ever since by a small group of educators and researchers in the southwestern Norwegian town of Stavanger.
The group set out to prove a theory by Oslo-based scientist Karl Ludvig Reichelt that a metabolic disorder making it difficult to break down certain proteins, including casein (the protein in milk that makes it possible to make cheese), could cause mental problems like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
The accumulation of peptides, which are short compounds containing two or more amino acids, is an indication that the enzyme needed to fully break down certain proteins is inhibited or missing, and can have an opium-like effect on the brain, according to Reichelt.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080224/hl_afp/norwayhealthchildrenmedicinehyperactive
ADHD Brain Matures, but Later By Miranda Hitti
Attention-Related Brain Areas Reach Peak Thickness About 3 Years Later With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
Nov. 12, 2007 -- ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) may delay, but not prevent, the development of the brain's attention center. Researchers from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Canada's McGill University reported that news today. The finding "should be reassuring to families and could help to explain why many youth eventually seem to grow out of the disorder," the NIMH's Philip Shaw, PhD, says in a news release.
Typical kids with ADHD were 10.5 years old when the part of the brain's prefrontal cortex that controls attention and plans movements reached its peak thickness (a sign of maturity). Peak thickness in that brain area happened three years earlier in people without ADHD.
Another area of the brain -- the motor cortex, which carries out orders for planned movements -- reached peak thickness a few months faster in children with ADHD compared to those without ADHD.
http://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/news/20071112/adhd-brain-matures-but-later
Study doubts effectiveness of antidepressant drugs
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Antidepressant medications appear to help only very severely depressed people and work no better than placebos in many patients, British researchers said. Researchers led by Irving Kirsch of the University of Hull reviewed a series of studies, both published and unpublished, on four antidepressants, examining the question of whether a person's response to these drugs hinged on how depressed they were before getting treatment.
They were Eli Lilly and Co's Prozac, also known as fluoxetine, Wyeth's Effexor, also called venlafaxine; GlaxoSmithKline's Paxil, also called Seroxat or paroxetine, and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co's drug Serzone, also called nefazodone, which it no longer markets in the United States.
They are all so-called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. The researchers found that compared with placebo, these new-generation antidepressant medications did not yield clinically significant improvements in depression in patients who initially had moderate or even very severe depression. The study found that significant benefits occurred only in the most severely depressed patients.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080226/hl_nm/depression_drugs_dc
ALSO SEE 60 SECONDS SCIENCE BLOG
What the media misses about antidepressants BY Maia Szalavitz
A new meta-analysis of research on modern antidepressants-- some of it unpublished by the drug companies-- suggests that the drugs have little advantage over placebos.
Why then do so many people consider drugs like Prozac to be miracle drugs for depression-- many putting up with serious sexual side effects in order to take them? Are they simply being duped by a placebo effect or avoiding withdrawal symptoms? And how could drugs which are little different from placebo also produce suicidal or even homicidal thoughts in some patients?
The Medicated Americans: Antidepressant Prescriptions on the Rise By Charles Barber
Close to 10 percent of men and women in America are now taking drugs to combat depression. How did a once rare condition become so common?
· In the past three generations, increasing numbers of Americans have been prescribed antidepressants. In many cases, such prescriptions are the only mental health care the patients receive.
· One cause of the rise in antidepressant use is that many doctors conflate conventional sadness—as from the loss of a loved one or a life-changing event such as a divorce—with the more serious and life-quashing condition of clinical depression.
· A second contributing factor, the author argues, is a change in the standard diagnostic guide, which caused many milder mental ailments to fall under the seemingly neutral label of “disorder.”
I am thinking of the Medicated Americans, those 11 percent of women and 5 percent of men who are taking antidepressants. It is Sunday night. The Medicated American—let’s call her Julie, and let’s place her in Winterset, Iowa—is getting ready for bed. Monday morning and its attendant pressures—the rush to get out of the house, the long commute, the bustle of the office—loom. She opens the cabinet of the bathroom vanity, removes a medicine bottle and taps a pill into her palm. She fills a glass of water, places the colorful pill in her mouth and swallows. The little pill could be any one of 30 available drugs used as antidepressants—such as Prozac or Zoloft or Paxil or Celexa or Lexapro or Luvox or Buspar or Nardil or Elavil or Sinequan or Pamelor or Serzone or Desyrel or Norpramin or Tofranil or Adapin or Vivactil or Ludiomil or Endep or Parnate or Remeron. The pill makes a slight flutter as it passes down her throat.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-medicated-americans&sc=WR_20080304
Persistence found to be key to treating depressed teens
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Teenagers whose initial drug treatment fails to combat depression, which happens in four out of 10 cases, can be helped by switching medicine and adding psychotherapy, a U.S. study published on Tuesday said.
Even if a first attempt at treatment is unsuccessful, persistence will pay off. Being open to trying new evidence-based medications or treatment combinations is likely to result in improvement," he added.
"About 40 percent of adolescents with depression do not adequately respond to a first treatment course with an antidepressant medication, and clinicians have no solid guidelines on how to choose subsequent treatments for these patients," said Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which paid for the study.
The results "bring us closer to personalizing treatment for teens who have chronic and difficult-to-treat depression," he added.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080226/hl_nm/usa_depression_teens_dc;_ylt=AlgZIhifOrbpJUGVWv3hRoIR.3QA
Study: Spanking can bring problems later
DURHAM, N.H. - New research by a University of New Hampshire domestic abuse expert says spanking children affects their sex lives as adults. Professor Murray Straus concludes that children who are spanked are more likely as adults to coerce partners to have sex, to have unprotected sex and to have masochistic sex.
Other studies have shown the link between spanking and physical violence, but Straus said his research is the first to show a link between corporal punishment and sexual behavior. "My underlying motive was to bring this to the attention of parents and of more people," Straus said, "in the hope it will help continue the decrease in the use of corporal punishment."
Straus, co-director of UNH's Family Research Laboratory, conducted a study in the mid-1990s in which he asked 207 students at three colleges whether they'd ever been aroused by masochistic sex. He also asked them if they'd been spanked as children. He found that students who were spanked were nearly twice as likely to like masochistic sex.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080301/ap_on_he_me/spanking_study;_ylt=Ar7ebJIq9srSVbPHzbCoU4QR.3QA
When People Drink Themselves Silly, and Why
The urge to binge mindlessly, though it can strike at any time, seems to stir in the collective unconscious during the last weeks of winter. Maybe it’s the television images from places like Fort Lauderdale and Cabo San Lucas, of communications majors’ face planting outside bars or on beaches.
Or perhaps it’s a simple a case of seasonal affective disorder in reverse. Not SAD at all, but anticipation of warmth and eagerness for a little disorder. Either way, researchers have had a hard time understanding binge behavior. Until recently, their definition of binge drinking — five drinks or more in 24 hours — was so loose that it invited debate and ridicule from some scholars. And investigators who ventured into the field, into the spray of warm backwash and press of wet T-shirts, often returned with findings like this one from a 2006 study: “Spring break trips are a risk factor for escalated alcohol use.”
Or this, from a 1998 analysis: “The men’s reported levels of alcohol consumption, binge drinking and intoxication were significantly higher than the women’s.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/health/04mind.html?th&emc=th
Getting Teenagers Home Safely
There are few things more anxiety-inducing for parents than watching their children learn to drive — and for good reason. Even the most mature teenager can take ill-advised risks, and inexperience behind the wheel can be deadly. Automobile accidents are the leading cause of death for 15- to 19-year-olds.
One way to reduce the risks is called graduated licensing, which is the phasing in of privileges for young drivers. The best state programs have reduced the number of accidents involving 16-year-olds by 20 percent to 40 percent. Research shows that accidents involving young drivers increase significantly after 10 p.m. For a driver under 18, the likelihood of an accident increases with each additional young passenger in the car.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/opinion/05wed3.html?th&emc=th
HEALTH
Blood thinners like aspirin may fight cancer: study
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Blood-thinning drugs such as aspirin may help fight cancer by denying shelter to wandering tumor cells, U.S. researchers reported on Friday.
Experiments in mice showed that combining aspirin with an experimental anti-clotting drug slowed the growth and spread of breast and melanoma tumors.
Blood cells called platelets shelter and feed tumor cells in the bloodstream, making it easier for cancer to spread, or metastasize, the team at Washington University in St. Louis said. Writing in the Journal of Cellular Biochemistry, they said inactivating platelets may help slow or prevent this spread.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080307/hl_nm/cancer_aspirin_dc
Magically delicious: breakfast keeps teens lean By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Teenagers who regularly eat breakfast tend to weigh less, exercise more and eat a more healthful diet than their breakfast-skipping peers, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
The study involved 2,216 adolescents in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area of Minnesota whose eating patterns, weight and other lifestyle issues were tracked for five years. They were just under 15 years old when they entered the study, which was published in the journal Pediatrics.
The more regularly the teens ate breakfast, the lower their body mass index was, according to the study. BMI is a measure of body weight relative to height. Those who always skipped breakfast on average weighed about 5 pounds (2.3 kg) more than their peers who ate the meal every day.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080303/hl_nm/breakfast_weight_dc
Pelvic Floor Disorders Affect 1 in 3 Women
SATURDAY, March 1 (HealthDay News) -- One-third of women in the United States have one or more pelvic floor disorders, and age has no significant effect on these disorders, says a Kaiser Permanente study.
The study of 4,000 women (80 percent had given birth) found that 25 percent suffered from anal incontinence, 15 percent from stress urinary incontinence, 13 percent from overactive bladder, and 6 percent from dropped pelvic organs (pelvic organ prolapse). The women in the study were aged 25 to 84. The findings were published in the March issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology.
"These conditions really affect a woman's quality of life. Many women think this is just something they have to deal with as they age, and there isn't anything they can do about it, but that's not true," study author Jean M. Lawrence, a research scientist at Kaiser Permanente's department of research and evaluation in southern California.
QUIZ: What's Your Nutrition IQ?
National Nutrition Month is a great time to focus our attention on the importance of making smart food choices and practice healthy eating habits. On that note, it's time for a reality check on nutrition. I'm often surprised by the food and diet hype that's out there in the media, on television and in magazines. Some of it is close to the truth and some is so far from veracity that it's unconscionable, in my opinion. Sometimes it's hard to tell hype from truth. Test your Nutrition IQ with this quick quiz.
TRUE/FALSE:
1. Unless you eat organic, you're taking chances with your health.
2. Sugar makes kids hyperactive.
3. Fat-free cookies have less calories than the regular version.
4. Eggs are high in fat, so you need to limit to only three to four per week.
5. Brown sugar is a healthier sweetener than white sugar.
6. High-potency vitamins are better than a multi-vitamin.
7. You must not eat protein and carbohydrates in the same meal.
8. Eating before bed causes weight gain.
9. Drinking liquids with your meal decreases nutrition absorption.
10. Grapes have more carbs than other fruit.
http://blog.ediets.com/2008/02/quiz-whats-your-nutrition-iq.html
Easily Overlooked Lesions Tied to Colon Cancer By DENISE GRADY
An easily overlooked type of abnormality in the colon is the most likely type to turn cancerous, and is more common in this country than previously thought, researchers are reporting.
The findings come from a study of colonoscopy, in which a camera-tipped tube is used to examine the lining of the intestine. Generally, doctors search for polyps, abnormal growths that stick out from the lining and can turn into cancer. But another type of growth is much more dangerous, and harder to see because it is flat or depressed and similar in color to healthy tissue.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/health/research/05cancer.html?th&emc=th
The Claim: Caffeine Causes Dehydration By ANAHAD O’CONNOR
Medical experts have been saying for years that caffeine acts as a potent diuretic. Consume too many caffeinated beverages, and you end up drinking yourself into dehydration.
But research has not confirmed that notion. Most studies have found that in moderate amounts, caffeine has only mild diuretic effects — much like water.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/health/nutrition/04real.html?ref=science
