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Hey, blue eyes.  Do you like to drink?  A new study says it's more likely you'll be an alcoholic.   People with blue eyes might have a greater chance of becoming alcoholics, according to a unique new study by genetic researchers at the University of Vermont. The work, led by Arvis Sulovari, a doctoral student in cellular, molecular and biological sciences, and Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics Dawei Li, Ph.D., is the first to make a direct connection between a person’s eye color and alcohol dependence. The authors found that primarily European Americans with light-colored eyes – including green, grey and brown in the center – had a higher incidence of alcohol dependency than those with dark brown eyes, with the strongest tendency among blue-eyed individuals, newswise.com reports. The study outlines the genetic components that determine eye color and shows that they line up along the same chromosome as the genes related to excessive alcoh...

This is truly shocking. Almost half the kids in this country have been exposed to violence or a traumatic situation in their families in their childhoods. According to newswise.com, nearly 50% of all children in the United States are exposed to at least one social or family experience that can lead to traumatic stress and have an impact on their healthy development – be it having their parents divorce, a parent die or living with someone who abuses alcohol or drugs – increasing the risk of negative long-term health consequences or of falling behind in school, suggests new research led by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  Growing up, parents were expected to hit their kids, some with belts, others (like my mom) with whatever was handy!  And we've all heard the outcry, right or wrong, against Adrian Peterson.  Today we know better, supposedly.  But looking at the results of this study, clearly, it still happens.  The good news is...

Sad but true.  Adults are at higher risk of suicide if one parent, or both, were alcoholics. A new study has found that " People who grew up with a parent who abused alcohol may be 85 percent more likely to attempt suicide than people whose parents did not abuse alcohol, according to research published by the American Psychological Association," reports newswise.com. Having divorced parents increased by 14 percent the risk that a person would try to take his or her own life when compared to people whose parents did not divorce, the study found. But having both -- parents who abuse alcohol and are divorced -- did not increase suicide attempts, according to the study.  One good thing! In the study, almost 14,000 participants reported they had suffered major depression at some point in their life and of those, 1,073 said they had attempted suicide. In the group that reported attempted suicide, 25 percent said they had parents who divorced and 46 percent said one or both p...

It's not much of a stretch.  Addiction is addiction, after all.  But a new study links alcoholism and eating disorders, according to newswise.com. "Part of the risk for alcohol dependence is genetic, and the same is true for eating disorders. Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found it’s likely some of the same genes are involved in both," the Web site reports. But what the study uncovered, which is a little more disturbing, is that people with alcohol dependence may be more genetically susceptible to certain types of eating disorders and vice versa. I suppose it makes sense. Researchers in Australia found that common genetic factors underlie alcoholism and certain eating-disorder symptoms, "such as binge eating and purging habits that include self-induced vomiting and the abuse of laxatives," newswise.com notes. “The symptoms can cut across multiple eating disorder diagnoses,” Melissa A. Munn-Chernoff, PhD,...

When was the last time you saw someone smoking in a movie?  Used to be that everyone smoked on-screen.  But today it seems only the bad guys are the ones who smoke, almost as if that's another reason we shouldn't like them. But alcohol, on the other hand, has become much more visible at the movies, according to a story by Reuters, as reported by Fox News. Movie characters smoke less since 1998 regulations that stopped tobacco companies from buying on-screen brand placements, according to a new study. But the number of times alcohol brands appear has exploded in movies rated PG-13 and below, while the amount of time characters spend drinking hasn't changed. I love "Two and a Half Men," at least, when Charlie Sheen was on, and there was never a scene where he didn't have some kind of glass in his hand. A lot of people see this as a real problem.  "In movie reality, it seems like every occasion is right for a drink," David Jernigan, head of t...