Hot MedFax

This fall, a friend's husband died of cancer after being diagnosed four months earlier.  Even though the end came so quickly, they were able to plan for a peaceful death at home, surrounded by loved ones. Now a new study says you will die as you live, but for surviving spouses, you will live as your partner died. Say what? A person's quality of life at the time of their death continues to influence his or her spouse's quality of life in the years following the person's passing, according to new research by University of Arizona psychologists, reports newswise.com. What's more, the association between a deceased and surviving spouse is just as strong as the association between partners who are both living, the researchers found. I'm sure my friend finds herself just as married to her spouse now as she was before his death. "If your partner has higher quality of life before they pass away, you're more likely to have higher quality of l...

I certainly know it's better than mine. But did you know that kids can remember tomorrow what they forgot today.  I can't even remember today what I forgot today.  My teenager often has to remind me, "Mom, you went into the kitchen for orange juice." A new study has revealed that small children can remember a piece of information better days later than they can on the day they first learned it. Researchers discovered this by showing a video game to 4- and 5-year-olds.  The object was to   remember associations between objects.  The kids who re-played the game after a two-day delay scored more than 20 percent higher than kids who re-played it later the same day. “An implication is that kids can be smarter than we necessarily thought they could be,” says Kevin Darby, a doctoral student in psychology at The Ohio State University and co-author of the study, at newswise.com. “They can make complex associations, they just need more time to do it.” ...

Want to hear something truly depressing?  Most of us have made our best memories by age 25. According to a new study, " By the time most people are 25, they have made the most important memories of their lives, according to new research from the University of New Hampshire." Newswise.com reports that r esearchers have found that when older adults were asked to tell their life stories, "They overwhelmingly highlighted the central influence of life transitions in their memories. Many of these transitions, such as marriage and having children, occurred early in life." (Of course, not in my case, when I had my son at 47!). “When people look back over their lives and recount their most important memories, most divide their life stories into chapters defined by important moments that are universal for many: a physical move, attending college, a first job, marriage, military experience, and having children,” said Kristina Steiner, a doctoral student in psychology ...