Hot MedFax

Are you lonely tonight? No, I'm not channeling Elvis.  But a new study says that if you are, that cold is going to feel worse. I suppose it makes sense.  Back when I was single, everything seemed harder because there was no soft place to fall.  Getting sick was the worst (which I often did, in many of my jobs where I traveled often, though I did come home from a vacation in the Bahamas with strep throat -- though it did lead to how I met my husband.  But that's a story for another time). Having a cold is bad enough, but having a cold if you’re lonely can actually feel worse, according to research published by the American Psychological Association, newswise.com reports. By finding lonely people and infecting them with the cold virus (how cruel ), researchers determined that those who had weaker social networks were more likely to report their cold symptoms were more severe than cold sufferers who didn’t feel lonely, according to the study published in ...

We've all had this job.  Nothing you do is ever right, the boss berates you if you're five minutes late (your kid's bus never came), and in meetings, he calls on everyone but you. I've been there.  Even broke out in a rash on vacation, thinking of having to go back. But now a new study says it can be worse than that.  Lousy jobs hurt your health by the time you're in your 40's. Job satisfaction in your late 20s and 30s has a link to overall health in your early 40s, according to a new nationwide study. And while job satisfaction has some impact on physical health, its effect was particularly strong for mental health, researchers have found. Not surprisingly, those less than happy with their work early in their careers said they were more depressed and worried and had more trouble sleeping. And the direction of your job satisfaction – whether it is getting better or worse in your early career – has an influence on your later health, the study showe...

OK.  So you don't go to church.  But you may pay a price for that. A new study has found that people who have negative spiritual beliefs, or, as newswise.com put its, blame karma for their pain feel it, well, more. "In general, the more religious or spiritual you are, the healthier you are, which makes sense,” says Brick Johnstone, a neuropsychologist and professor of health psychology in the MU School of Health Professions. “But for some individuals, even if they have even the smallest degree of negative spirituality – basically, when individuals believe they’re ill because they’ve done something wrong and God is punishing them – their health is worse.” Johnstone and his colleagues studied nearly 200 individuals to find out how their spiritual beliefs affected their health outcomes. Individuals in the study had a range of health conditions, such as cancer, traumatic brain injury or chronic pain, and others were healthy. The researchers divided the individua...

I absolutely hate this.  My husband is right.  Not enough sleep can lead to colds. We've fought for years over this, mostly because our son seems to get sick every time he misses a couple of hours of sleep.  I've always felt that it was mostly myth, or just Larry's crazy view of just about everything (he also believes lack of exercise makes you sick and that tomatoes will stop prostate cancer in its tracks -- and meanwhile, never goes to the doctor). But anyway, now that Phillip's in high school, missing a day here and there is a serious thing.  No longer can he have the three-day stretches where he recovers from strep throat, or a cold.  (I admit, I'm a little scared, too.) But a new study has found that "short" sleepers are four times more likely to get a cold. Makes sense, I guess. People who sleep less than six hours a night are the ones most likely to have this happen to them. This is the first study to use objective sleep measures to conne...

Would you want to know if you had cancer in your future?  Thanks to all the milestones researchers are making in genes and genetic makeup, you probably can. According to newswise.com, using a small amount of blood or saliva, a technology called whole genome sequencing makes that possible – and more than half of parents surveyed  said they’d not only be interested in the technology for themselves but for their children too, a new nationally-representative University of Michigan study shows. For obvious reasons, mothers as a group in the study and parents whose youngest children had more than two health conditions had significantly more interest in predictive genetic testing for themselves and their youngest children while those with conservative political ideologies had considerably less interest. More than three- fourths of parents also showed the same interest in genome sequencing for themselves as they did for their kids. As a cancer survivor, would I have want...

Why does this not surprise me?  Apparently six percent of marriages end in divorce when the wife gets sick. We're not talking tonsillitis or the flu, but major, serious  illness, like heart attack or cancer. I should know.  I was diagnosed with breast cancer 11 years ago, and though my husband went with me to the appointment where we discussed treatment, all I remember is him saying, "This is nothing," as we walked through the parking lot to Tully. Of course, as the surgeon talked on, telling us that though my cancer was non-invasive, it was the highest grade, which meant they weren't totally sure it hadn't spread outside the milk duct, he kept looking at me.  (Thankfully, it turned out not to.)  Walking out of the office, Larry said, "You were right.  It's something." I don't remember much about that time.  We had a three-year-old and I was more concerned about taking care of him (and making sure he didn't notice anything was wrong) ...

I don't know if you're like me but when I get a new symptom or diagnosis from a doctor, I rush online to check out what it is.  Usually, Wikipedia comes up first, and even though I knew better, I usually believe whatever it says. Now doctors are saying that a lot of that information is just, well, wrong. "I think that's the double-edged sword of Wikipedia," Dr. Amin Azzam tells NPR's Arun Rath, as reported at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). "Because anyone can edit, we don't necessarily know the expertise of the people doing the editing. One the other hand, the reason it's so popular is because everyone can contribute." Azzam is a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. He teaches a course that encourages fourth-year medical students to use their knowledge to improve Wikipedia, one article at a time, as RWJF notes. Azzam tells NPR there's a lot of room for improving the quality of Wiki...

I don't know about you but I've always pretty much lived my life like danger was always lurking just around the corner.  Probably because I've experienced a number of traumatic things, but as Mark Epstein writes at The NYT, you can grow up all you want, but " Trauma never goes away completely." He adds that it changes perhaps, "softens some with time, but never completely goes away." Epstein, a psychiatrist, says an undercurrent of trauma runs through ordinary life, "shot through as it is with the poignancy of impermanence." There is no way to be alive without being conscious of the potential for disaster.  Not my words.  Epstein's.  But exactly the way I feel.  " One way or another, death (and its cousins: old age, illness, accidents, separation and loss) hangs over all of us,"he writes. "Nobody is immune. Our world is unstable and unpredictable, and operates, to a great degree and despite incredible scientific advance...

Sadly, our food inspection rules, though somewhat tightened recently, will not prevent you from getting sick if you consume a contaminated food that has somehow slipped through the ropes. Food-borne illnesses cause about one in six Americans to get very sick every year, with 128,000 hospitalizations, and an estimated 3,000 deaths, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as Deborah Kotz reports at The Boston Globe. My sister, who's never met a vegetable she didn't like, became seriously ill with food poisoning (doctors thought it might have been the arugula) about a week before her first son was due.  Happily, the baby was born healthy, though there was some concern initially that the contamination might have contributed to a neurological problem. Kotz writes that the introduction of federal laws to regulate food safety, including rules on how produce is grown, harvested, and distributed throughout the country has officials hoping "they w...

I'm guilty, I admit it. When I get a cold and my chest hurts from coughing, I rush to the computer and know, just know, that I'm having a heart attack.  When I was a kid, I thought every stomachache was the onset of appendicitis.  And I won't tell you how I thought I was having a baby in 5th grade. But now there's a new "illness," and it's called cyberchondria.  It's a heightened awareness of symptoms and illness, thanks to the availability (and gullibility) of the Internet and us.  I definitely think I have it. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-33816_162-57566001/do-you-have-cyberchondria/