Hot MedFax

I've long found it to be true.  Taking a walk (or a run) is good for your head. Now a new study says taking a walk may lead to more creativity than sitting.  Duh.  I think what they meant to say is that your creativity can really be stirred when you're moving. I jog every morning and a lot of ideas for essays come to me during this time.  I especially like the early mornings now, when it's still dark but the birds are at it, chirping and singing away (they know spring is here, even if we don't).  I often write pieces in my head when I'm running. So what's sitting good for?  Not much.  Other studies have found that those of us who sit too much will die younger.  (Even though I exercise avidly for part of the morning, the rest of the day I tend to sit at my computer or, OK, I'll admit it, the TV.) "Many people anecdotally claim they do their best thinking when walking," said Marily Oppezzo, PhD, of Santa Clara University at newswise.com. ...

Teeth, or maybe I should say mouths, have been in the news lately.   First, vitamin D and cavities.  According to The New York Times, low levels of vitamin D in pregnancy are associated with the development of cavities in babies, researchers say. Children in the study had dental examinations when they were an average of one year old, and their mothers completed another questionnaire on  breast-feeding , introduction of solids and other health and behavioral factors, The NYT reports. "About a third of the women were deficient in vitamin D, 22 percent of the infants had deficient or thinning enamel and 23 percent had cavities," according to The Times. After controlling for other factors, they found that the lower the prenatal vitamin D level in the mother, the higher the number of cavities in the child. Defective enamel and prenatal vitamin D levels were both independent predictors of cavities. So the answer is clear.  Pregnant or planning to be?  Take...

What if success wasn't about doing your best, and beating out everyone else?  But about giving. That's the theory of Wharton professor Adam Grant, who believes that "givers (who help others without selfish motivation), takers (who take without giving in return) and matchers (who strive for equal trades) can affect our success – both as individuals and at the corporate level." Christina Hernandez Sherwood writes at smartplanet.com that "Evidence suggests that in sales, givers begin with 6 percent lower revenue than takers and matchers. But by the year's end, givers finish with 68 percent higher revenue." Why is this so? Grant tells Sherwood that he's noticed a funny thing about the students who come to him: they're not so concerned about making money as they are about doing something for the world.  Giving back. "I started to notice that the most successful people I knew didn’t wait to start giving until they were successful. They ga...

This may shock you (as it did me).  But most crimes are not committed by mentally ill people. According to a new study   of crimes committed by people with serious mental disorders, only 7.5 percent were directly related to symptoms of mental illness, newswise.com reports. Of course, it's the horrific crimes that are perpetrated by the mentally ill that we hear about, I suppose. But r esearchers who analyzed 429 crimes committed by 143 offenders with three major types of mental illness found that 3 percent of their crimes were directly related to symptoms of major depression, 4 percent to symptoms of schizophrenia disorders and 10 percent to symptoms of bipolar disorder. “When we hear about crimes committed by people with mental illness, they tend to be big headline-making crimes so they get stuck in people’s heads,” the Web site quotes lead researcher Jillian Peterson, PhD. “The vast majority of people with mental illness are not violent, not criminal and not dangerous...

Not sure I agree with t his but a new study has found that women who get false positives on mammograms only suffer for a short time.  It doesn't affect their overall well-being. As someone who (twice) received positive positives, I suppose I can't really comment on this.  But I can't believe that some women aren't, if not, scarred for life, at least thinking about life a little differently after that.   According to newswise.com, " Dartmouth researchers have found that the anxiety experienced with a false-positive mammogram is temporary and does not negatively impact a woman’s overall well-being." The Web site goes on to note that a nywhere from 40 to 60 percent of women who undergo routine screening mammography during a ten-year period will experience a false-positive mammogram (guess I beat the stats!).  Such mammograms require additional testing, sometimes involving a biopsy, to confirm that cancer is not present. Researchers have suspected that in...

You're not going to believe this.  An apple a day does not keep the doctor away.  Fatty foods don't cause cancer.  But coffee may have some minimal benefit in warding off the disease. All revealed at the American Association for Cancer Research's annual meeting, according to George Johnson of The New York Times. He reports that many of the supposed tried-and-true benefits of diet and illness just don't, well, hold water. He notes that in 1997 studies showed that " green vegetables helped ward off lung and stomach cancer. Colon and thyroid cancer might be avoided with broccoli, cabbage and brussels sprouts. Onions, tomatoes, garlic, carrots and citrus fruits all seemed to play important roles." But that was completely reversed in 2007. "The hypothesis that fatty foods are a direct cause of cancer  has also been crumbling , along with  the case for eating more fiber ," he adds . "The idea that red meat causes colon cancer is shrouded in ...

Guess who's making house calls again?  If you guessed technical support for your wireless device, wrong.  It's doctors. For many, if not most of you reading this, you're probably thinking, so, what's the big deal?  But I can remember Dr. Cunningham (who smelled like a pipe) coming over to treat my brother for something or other when we were kids and that it was nothing unusual. But the thought of a doctor coming over today, well, they just don't have the time if they're going to make money.  With doctors having to see volumes of patients just to pay the bills, it's been a trend that went out with One Direction (who think they're still bigger than the Beatles). Yet here it is.  "The house call — is returning to favor as part of some hospitals’ palliative care programs, which are sending teams of physicians, nurses, social workers, chaplains and other workers to patients’ homes after they are discharged," writes Milt Freudenheim at The New ...