Hot MedFax

Having trouble getting your team to work well together?  Maybe, call a friend. A new study has found that teams work better with a little help from your friends, according to newswise.com. Workplace teams are better when they include your friends.  Researchers analyzed the results of 26 different studies and found that teams composed of friends performed better on some tasks than groups of acquaintances or strangers. Teams with friends were particularly effective when the groups were larger and when their focus was on maximizing output. “Working with friends is not just something that makes us feel good – it can actually produce better results,” says  Robert Lount , co-author of the study and associate professor of  management and human resources  at The Ohio State University’s  Fisher College of Business , at newswise.com. The researchers analyzed studies about teams that used participants with established friendships and that included teams ...

Your genes give you blue eyes.  Your genes give you dark hair.  Your genes, in some cases (no pointing fingers!), also make you fat. But did you know they can determine how many friends you may have?   According to newswise.com, r esearchers have found that the genes that regulate oxytocin, the supreme human social hormone, are associated with the sociality of young individuals. Why some individuals seek social engagement and friendship while others shy away, may well be dependent on the expression and sequence of two genes in their bodies, the web site reports. These genes appear in people who   have more close friends and show greater social skills.The hormone released by these genes in humans are involved in primary social behaviors such as pair-bonding, mating and child-rearing, to more sophisticated behaviors such as empathy, trust and generosity. “We believe that studying the expression of genes captures more information than simple structural studi...

I find this a little hard to believe but a new study has found that social networks are as important in our lives as diet and exercise. The more social ties people have at an early age, the better their health is at the beginnings and ends of their lives, according to a new study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, newswise.com reports. The study is the first to definitively link social relationships with concrete measures of physical wellbeing such as abdominal obesity, inflammation, and high blood pressure, all of which can lead to long-term health problems, including heart disease, stroke and cancer. “Based on these findings, it should be as important to encourage adolescents and young adults to build broad social relationships and social skills for interacting with others as it is to eat healthy and be physically active,” says Kathleen Mullan Harris, James Haar Distinguished Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and faculty fellow at the Carolina Population ...

Here's an interesting thought.  Happiness spreads, but depression doesn't. According to a new study, having friends who suffer from depression doesn’t affect the mental health of others. Research led by the University of Warwick found that just the fact of having friends can help teenagers recover from depression or even avoid becoming depressed in the first instance, newswise.com reports. The findings are the result of a study of the way teenagers in a group of US high schools influenced each others’ moods. The academics used a mathematical model to establish if depression spreads from friend to friend. “Depression is a major public health concern worldwide," says professor Frances Griffiths, head of social science and systems in health at Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick. "But the good news is we’ve found that a healthy mood among friends is linked with a significantly reduced risk of developing and increased chance of recovering from ...

I admit I do it, too.  In fact, I just did it last week, when my son gave a brief talk at Princeton (yes, University) at age 13.  The reality is that Princeton was just the location of the talk, but he did give it to an audience of IEEE members. That's The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (to people like me who can't even pronounce double-precision floating point format), and yes, we were very proud. So, of course, the minute we got home, I put it up on Facebook, and went on to get over 30 likes (hey, I know, not much, but it's the most I've ever gotten!). And now researchers are saying this isn't such a good idea.   “By the time children are old enough to use social media themselves many already have a digital identity created for them by their parents,” says Sarah J. Clark , M.P.H., associate director of the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health and associate research scientist in the ...

I don't know whether to be delighted -- scared-- but supposedly your friends know how long you'll  live.  That's according to a new study by Washington University in St. Louis.  Apparently, close friends  may have a better sense of whether you'll live a long life, suggests new research on personality and longevity. “You expect your friends to be inclined to see you in a positive manner, but they also are keen observers of the personality traits that could send you to an early grave,” says Joshua Jackson, PhD, assistant professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences, at newswise.com. The study demonstrates that your personality at an early age (20s) can predict how long you will live across 75 years and that close friends are usually better than you at recognizing these traits. Male participants seen by their friends as more open and conscientious ended up living longer. Female participants whose friends rated them as high on emotional stability and ...

I recently had a friend suggest to me that I write about community. He was referring specifically to a small intimate Italian restaurant in town where, because it's so popular, and there's often a waiting list, he (and his wife) met and fell in love with another friend of mine, someone who's had a great influence on my life, and become very important to him, too.  This restaurant is very popular (I won't say the name but it's very near Cummings Beach), and on Saturday nights, people have to wait for a table.  Seems both sets of friends ran into each other all the time because they each went to this restaurant on Saturday night and had to sit in the tiny alcove to wait for your table. Our mutual friend got very hungry one night and asked if they could have something to eat while they waited.  A small platter of cheese and crackers was presented and she and her friend asked the couple if they'd like to share. And a beautiful friendship was born. Here...

Have some really good friends?  You may be closer to them than you think. A new study has found that we may share genes with our friends.  A genome-wide analysis has shown that we share some genetic similarities with our friends, according to newswise.com. A study from the University of California, San Diego, and Yale University finds that friends who are not biologically related still resemble each other genetically. Hmm.  I wonder how good a friend you have to be?  Anyway. . . "We have more DNA in common with the people we pick as friends than we do with strangers in the same population," the Web site quotes study coauthor James Fowler, professor of medical genetics and political science at UC San Diego. The study is a genome-wide analysis of nearly 1.5 million markers of gene variation, and relies on data from the Framingham Heart Study.  The researchers focused on 1,932 unique subjects and compared pairs of unrelated friends against pairs of un...

After battling all the issues that come with being overweight -- poor health, body image concerns, even mobility problems for some -- a new study has found that overweight kids may have a problem getting friends, too.  The study showed that overweight kids are less likely than their thinner counterparts to be chosen as a friend by their peers. Newswise.com reports that t he study, involving data from almost 60,000 students from 88 middle and high schools, used a social networking approach asking adolescent participants, at an average age of 15, to identify their five closest female friends and five closest male friends. "Body mass index was self-reported and participants were categorized as underweight, healthy weight, overweight or obese," the Web site notes.. Results from the study indicate that non-overweight youths were more likely to select non-overweight friends than friends who carried extra weight.  But while the heavier students didn't pay much attention to...

Got a migraine that won't quit?  Your five-year-old won't stop bashing his sister in the head with a truck? Your 20th high school reunion is coming up and you're 40 pounds heavier? Tweets can temper your problems.  According to a new  study , sharing your pain with other sufferers can help alleviate some of the discomfort and stress. "As technology and language evolve, so does the way we share our suffering," newswise.com quotes principal investigator Alexandre DaSilva, assistant professor and director of the Headache and Orofacial Pain Effort at University of Michigan School of Dentistry. "It's the first known study to show the instant and broad impact of migraine attacks on modern patients' lives by decoding manually each one of their individual attack-related tweets." Say what?  Simply put, put your agony out there and you are sure to find fellow sufferers. I remember the old bulletin boards that were the precursor of Twitter and Faceb...