Hot MedFax

So what can't coffee do? It wakes us up, maybe wards off diabetes , even Alzheimer's . And now it can help us behave more ethically, according to smartplanet.com. A new study has found that coffee can help sleep-deprived employees resist the urge to go along with unethical behavior.  In an experiment, those who chewed caffeinated gum were less likely go along with deception than the group who chewed regular gum. Alyson Windsor reports that researchers found that their findings built upon previous research by two of the authors who'd found that lack of sleep can make workers more susceptible to social influence, less able to regulate their emotions and more likely to make or go along with unethical choices in the workplace. She adds, in a press release , David Welsh, an organizational behavior professor at the University of Washington, said “When you’re sleep deprived at work, it’s much easier to simply go along with unethical suggestions from your boss because res...

Here's another reason teens need to get their sleep .  Those who are obese and don't get enough heighten their chances of heart attack, stroke and diabetes, according to a new study. Lack of sleep and obesity have been associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases in adults and young children, newswise.com reports. The adolescents were fitted with a physical activity monitor, worn 24 hours a day for seven days, to measure typical patterns of physical activity and sleep. "One-third of the participants met the minimum recommendation of being physically active at least 60 minutes a day," the Web site notes. Most participants slept approximately seven hours each night, usually waking up at least once. Only five of the participants met the minimal recommended eight-and-a- half hours of sleep per night. Even after controlling for factors that may have an impact on cardiac and metabolic risk, like BMI and physical activity, low levels of s...

It turns out that childhood obesity leads to a lot more than just fat adults.  A study has now found that  even in cases in which obese children later lose weight, the health effects of childhood obesity may be long-lasting and profound, according to newswise.com. "The earlier you are exposed to obesity, the earlier we may see the onset of complications including type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome and cancer. That makes sense: these complications don’t happen overnight, and the earlier you start the ball rolling, the earlier and more likely you are to see early morbidity and mortality from them," the Web site reports. But there's more. Kids’ maturing bodies may be especially vulnerable to the detrimental health effects of obesity. "Early exposure can make you much more predisposed to complications than might exposure once the body is done maturing. It may be that childhood obesity changes the way the whole metabolism is working – and ch...

Hey.  Did you know, texting can be good for you? After all the stuff about how the Internet could feed a drug habit, or make us drive off the road and kill someone (actually, I'm not kidding about that) or gain weight or lose our sex drive (made those last two up!), how refreshing to finally find something good it does. True, it's not like curing cancer or stamping out hepatitis C, but it's helping diabetics take better care of themselves. It might also decrease the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes -- you know, the one we get for eating too much, as one out of three does? "An overwhelming majority of surveyed people who enrolled in customized texting service txt4health piloted in Detroit and Cincinnati last year said the free mobile education program made them more aware of their diabetes risk and more likely to make diet-related behavior changes and lose weight," newswise.com reports.  Sadly, though, well less than half made it through the whole 14-w...

We all know sleep deprivation  (SD) can lead to fuzzy thinking, traffic accidents, even weight gain.  But did you know scientists are now finding that it can cause us to age, and maybe even develop diabetes and other serious diseases, as well? A new study has looked at how our organs are affected by SD, which sometimes may even lead to Alzheimer's or Parkinson's in the elderly, who often suffer from disrupted sleep.   The findings suggest that " inadequate sleep in the elderly, who normally experience sleep disturbances, could exacerbate an already-impaired protective response to protein misfolding that happens in aging cells," according to newswise.com. Protein misfolding -- a process where proteins get degraded -- and clumping is what is associated with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, along with many other diseases, the Web site reports.  “The combined effect of aging and sleep deprivation resulted in a loss of control of blood sugar reminiscent of pre-...

Coffee lovers of the world unite!  A new study has found that drinking it may lessen your risk of liver cancer. I don't know about you but my head is spinning from all the studies about this caffeinated beverage.  It causes cancer.  It doesn't cause cancer.  It causes miscarriages.  It's safe to drink during pregnancy.  Makes you sleep.  Keeps you awake all night.  Seems like it's been guilty -- or innocent -- of just about everything except causing planes to crash. But the study shows that " coffee consumption reduces the risk of liver cancer by about 40%. And some of the results indicate that if you drink three cups a day, the risks are reduced by more than 50%," according to medicalnewstoday.com. That could be really good news for the over 100 million people -- or about 56% of the U.S. -- who consume coffee every day.  I know it will make my husband happy!  (He drinks two huge containers of coffee a day, the same size I put smo...

Did you know obesity can lead to cancer?  We've known that for a long time now but recent studies have found obesity "strongly linked with cancers of the gastrointestinal tract, pancreatic cancer and post-menopausal breast cancer," according to Fox News. One study estimates that if current trends continue, obesity will lead to approximately 500,000 additional cases of cancer by 2030. Here's the deal.  One NYU Steinhardt researcher may have put her finger on an underlying biological mechanism responsible for the obesity-cancer link, Fox News reports. "In a large population-based study, nutritional epidemiologist Niyati Parekh found that disturbances in body insulin and glucose levels were associated with obesity-related cancers." But there is some good news.  It's a finding that could lead to better treatments and management of cancer and heart disease and other diseases connected to obesity. “I knew there were a lot of underlying nutritional fa...

According to Nicholas Bakalar, some fruits are better for you than others, but eating a variety is the best. Writing at nytimes.com, Bakalar says, "Recent studies have found that eating a greater variety, but not a greater quantity, of fruit significantly reduces the risk for Type 2 diabetes." This made researchers wonder whether some fruits might have a stronger effect than others, he adds. Tracking diet and disease prospectively over a 12-year period in more than 185,000 people, of whom 12,198 developed Type 2 diabetes, researchers found "some fruits — strawberries, oranges, peaches, plums and apricots — had no significant effect on the risk for Type 2 diabetes. But eating grapes, apples and grapefruit all significantly reduced the risk." The big winner: blueberries, Bakalr reports. "Eating one to three servings a month decreased the risk by about 11 percent, and having five servings a week reduced it by 26 percent." What's interesting is t...

So we're not getting quite as fat.  But more of us are dying from it. That's the consensus of a new report , according to Alexandra Sifferlin. "Obesity is more deadly than previously thought, but a nationwide survey shows that after rising for decades, rates have not increased for the first time in 30 years," she writes at time.com. Only one state showed an increase in obesity rates, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report said, and that was Arkansas. All other states, while still having plenty of obese residents, stayed stable.  Not surprisingly (hey, they have the best food), the South had quite a few states with high obesity rates, as did some in the Midwest, and Pennsylvania (hmm, what's in the water THERE?). Mississippi also handed over its crown for the state with the highest adult obesity rate to Louisiana, 34.7% of adults weighing in with a body mass index (BMI) above 30, Sifferlin reports. Colorado is the thinnest state, with Connecticut not ...

Now this is the best thing yet.  We've all heard how exercise and doing crossword puzzles and eating walnuts (or peanuts or whatever nut it was) will keep our brains healthy into old age.  But guess what the experts are saying now?  Chocolate. How did we get so lucky?  A new study  just out says drinking two cups of hot chocolate a day may help older people "keep their brains healthy and their thinking skills sharp," according to a story at newswise.com. The study looked at 60 people with an average age of 73 who did not have dementia.  The participants drank two cups of hot cocoa per day for 30 days and did not consume any other chocolate during the study, newswise.com reports. Participants were then given tests of memory and thinking skills. They also had ultrasounds tests to measure the amount of blood flow to the brain during the tests. Blood flow in the brain is very important. Different areas of the brain need more energy to complete tasks a...

Here's an interesting fact.   Meatless cafeterias save as many lives as smokeless ones.  Or so According to Neal Barnard, M.D., "Mounting evidence demonstrates that consumption—sometimes as little as one serving a day—of meat and other animal products is associated with increased risk of obesity, diabetes, cancer, and other chronic diseases."  The good news is that meat consumption declined by more than 12 percent between 2007 and 2012—"an unprecedented drop," Barnard writes. Kathy Freston writes at The Huffington Post that our country's t hree biggest killers -- heart disease, cancer, and stroke -- "are linked to excessive animal product consumption."  She notes also that vegetarians have much lower risks of all three. People who live on fruits and veggies also have incredibly lower rates of diabetes and obesity than the general population.  So meat is shaping up as a close second to the dangers tobacco can present to your health. ...

OK.  So we know they're bad for us, NYC's Bloomberg's tried to put an end to them.  But did you know they can kill us? A Harvard s tudy has just found that 180,000 people a year die worldwide, and 25,000 in the U.S., from sugary drinks. "We know that sugar-sweetened beverages are linked to obesity, and that a large number of deaths are caused by obesity-related diseases. But until now, nobody had really put these pieces together," said Gitanjali Singh, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and lead author of the study presented today at the American Heart Association's annual meeting in New Orleans, Bay News 9 reports. The study adds to "mounting evidence that sugar-sweetened beverages, loaded with calories that carry little nutritional value, are a public health hazard," the story notes. You may want to argue the facts a little "but the team tied sugar-sweetened beverages to 133,000 deaths from...

Now I know I must take responsibility for this.  Even though I tried not to, I took being pregnant as license to eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted.  As a result, I gained 50 pounds (that took nine months to gain and over two years to lose). A new study just out says that women who eat high-fat foods while pregnant may not only produce big babies, but actually change their offsprings' brains in the way they think about food. I'm in the stats for the first part -- my son, who was delivered at 39 weeks because of his size, weighed in at nine pounds (though the doctors, who actually set up a betting pool, were thinking a 10- or 11-pounder), but not the second.  This kid, at 12, doesn't even tip the scales at 80 pounds. The study, done by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, found that "exposure to a high-fat diet in the womb and after birth can permanently change the cells in the brain that ...

If you're like me, you use about 10 artificial sweeteners a day.  I drink lots of iced tea, even in the winter, and I couldn't live without my Splenda. But now a new study has found that this fake sugar does more than just make drinks palatable.  It modifies how the body uses sugar.  And it can be harmful. I'm not talking about the cancer scare with saccharine back in the '70s, but i n a small study, according to a press release from Washington University in Saint Louis, researchers analyzed Splenda® in 17 severely obese people who do not have diabetes and don’t use artificial sweeteners regularly, and found that " this artificial sweetener is not inert — it does have an effect,” first author M. Yanina Pepino, PhD, research assistant professor of medicine, said in the release. “And we need to do more studies to determine whether this observation means long-term use could be harmful.” Now, losing weight is hard enough but to take away the one thing th...

This probably shouldn't come as any surprise but a new study has found that we vastly underestimate the number of calories we're eating when we're feasting at fast food chains. Nanci Hellmich reports at usatoday.com that "Teens underestimated the calories in fast-food meals by 34%; parents of school-age children by 23%; and adults by 20%." This, from a survey by lead researcher Jason Block of Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute Pretty scary (and this doesn't include all the "healthy" food we overeat.  The restaurants visited were McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, and Dunkin Donuts, among others. At least one-quarter of all participants underestimated what they were eating by 500 calories (that's a meal, for some of us), Hellmich notes.  Teens' foods contained almost 800 calories but they estimated them at around 200, and adults, while doing a little better, still lowballed an 800-calorie entree by almost 2...

Have you had to move to another bedroom because of your spouse's snoring?  It's possible he (or she) has  sleep apnea , a period of not breathing during the night that can happen hundreds of times during the night.   Not only does this not allow the person to get real sleep, it can also kill him. Experts estimate that between 10 and 20% of the population who are middle-aged suffers from sleep apnea, where breathing is briefly interrupted or becomes very shallow during sleep. But here's where the death part comes in. Sleep apnea can lead to serious health problems over time, including diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and weight gain. And now they're even connecting it to Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Markers for the disease are present 15 to 20 years in people with sleep apnea, before the disease manifests itself, according to newswise.com. You just have to know what you're looking for. Strangely enough, markers for AD were only found in...

Did you know that moving to the U.S. may kill you younger?  It's the truth.  The New York Times reports today that immigrating to this country makes people die earlier than they would if they had remained in their own country. "The longer they live in this country, the worse their rates of heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. And while their American-born children may have more money, they tend to live shorter lives than the(ir) parents," according to Sabrina Tavernise. Sadly, once they're in this country, many immigrants lose their healthy diets, exchanging their traditional meals of corn and peppers and beans for Big Macs and KFC.  Even worse, they take up smoking (though smoking is popular in many European countries, too). “There’s something about life in the United States that is not conducive to good health across generations,”  Robert A. Hummer, a social demographer at the University of Texas at Austin, told Tavernise. Foreign...