Hot MedFax

Did you know your body can make its own drugs ? Well, not really, but scientists are finding that our microbes are a rich source of molecules that act like drugs, newswise.com reports.   Bacteria that normally live in and upon us have genetic blueprints that enable them to make thousands of molecules that act like drugs, and some of these molecules might serve as the basis for new human therapeutics, according to UC San Francisco researchers. A bacteria found in the vagina might actually be used as an antibiotic, researchers found.   The antibiotic, lactocillin, is closely related to others already being tested clinically by pharmaceutical companies. Lactocillin kills several vaginal bacterial pathogens, but spares species known to harmlessly dwell in the vagina. This example suggests that there may be an important role for many naturally occurring drugs – made by our own microbes -- in maintaining human health, according to the senior author of the study, Michael Fis...

Want to now if a person is interested in you romantically -- or sexually? His eyes will first focus on your face if he thinks he might fall in love, but if he's more attracted than searching for a relationship, it will be your body.  Duh. But think about it.  A new study has found that it all happens in the blink of an eye, when you first meet someone, according to newswise.com.  The new study found that eye patterns concentrate on a stranger’s face if the viewer sees that person as a potential partner in romantic love, but the viewer gazes more at the other person’s body if he or she is feeling sexual desire. That automatic judgment can occur in as little as half a second, producing different gaze patterns.  “Although little is currently known about the science of love at first sight or how people fall in love, these patterns of response provide the first clues regarding how automatic attentional processes, such as eye gaze, may differentiate feelin...

Did you know your weight can affect your personality?  Really.  Though it's gaining weight that does it. "If mind and body are intertwined, then if one changes the other should change too,” Angelina Sutin, author of a recent study, said in a newswise.com article. According to the Web site, Sutin's study found that participants who had at least a 10% increase in weight also showed a rise in impulsiveness, "with a greater tendency to give in to temptations — compared to those whose weight was stable." The data didn't show whether increased impulsiveness was a cause or an effect of gaining weight, the story reported, "but they do suggest an intimate relationship between a person’s physiology and his or her psychology."     A surprising additional, and, to me, exact opposite finding was that, though those who had gained weight were much more impulsive, they also had a greater tendency to think through their decisions, compared to those who st...

Ever sat in a wobbly chair? According to new research, "It makes us judge others’ relationships to be unstable. Wearing a white lab coat, thought to be a doctor’s coat, helps our concentration and focus. Literally washing our hands rids us of guilty feelings," Christie Nicholson writes at smartplanet.com.  We've known for some time that the body can affect the mind -- relax and you'll get pregnant (not true!), think of the audience in underpants when nervous before a speech, don't walk under a ladder.  Oh wait, that's a superstition. But still we believe it and it can sometimes actually make us trip or fall down stairs or have some kind of accident, when we do. But now it's becoming clear to researchers that our bodies can affect our minds.  Nicholson did a Q&A with Art Glenberg, who she described in her story as one of the "founding fathers of the embodied cognition field," and a pyschology professor at Arizona State University. In the i...