Hot MedFax

Cows can read. Chocolate makes you lose weight.  Sunbathers live longer. I know, I know.  If only.  But it's actually true..  Sunbathers live longer. New research is looking into the paradox that women who sunbathe are likely to live longer than those who avoid the sun, even though sunbathers are at an increased risk of developing skin cancer, newswise.com reports. An analysis of information on 29,518 Swedish women who were followed for 20 years revealed that longer life expectancy among women with active sun exposure habits was related to a decrease in heart disease and non-cancer/non-heart disease deaths, causing the relative contribution of death due to cancer to increase. Whether the positive effect of sun exposure demonstrated in this observational study is mediated by vitamin D, another mechanism related to UV radiation, or by unmeasured bias cannot be determined, so researchers believe additional research is warranted. I run outside year-r...

A new study has found that as little as 20 minutes in the sun can harm your children's eyes, according to newswise.com. What can it do?  Age the lens or damage the retina, the Web site quotes James McDonnell, MD, medical director of pediatric ophthalmology at Loyola University Health System and professor of ophthalmology at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. Either can lead to blindness down the road. McDonnell says if a child is going to be in the sun-- playing softball, swimming, even just hanging out with friends -- he should wear sunglasses.  Now I have a 12-year-old and I know how hard it is to get kids that age to do just about anything. Even before he got contacts, and wore glasses, anyway, my son refused to wear sunglasses. I've known for some time that over-exposure to the sun can lead to cataracts in older people But I didn't know it could also affect kids' eyes. And here's the next difficult part.  Not all sunglasses are crea...

We've all been warned about skin cancer , how melanoma is rapidly increasing as our earth warms and the ozone gets stripped away.  But now we may want to get it.  A study has found that people with skin cancer are less likely to get Alzheimer's, though not those with melanoma. True, the study participants were 79 years old.  But people who had skin cancer were 80% less likely to develop this dreaded dementia. In the study, only 2 of the 141 participants was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. One of the study's authors puts it down to outside activity.  "“Physical activity is known to protect against dementia, and outdoor activity could increase exposure to UV radiation, which increases the risk of skin cancer," Richard B. Lipton, MD, of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, NY, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology, told newswise.com.  It could also be from Vitamin D, which we get from the sun and being outdoors. But don't stop wearin...