Hot MedFax

Feel like shopping for shoes?  Take a nap. That's what experts are now saying to do when we want to overcome impulses (that's me) and frustration. I can't enter a store without heading straight to the shoe department and, most likely, buying a pair of shoes. But that doesn't mean I don't also stop at the sportswear and designer departments, too. Now all I have to do is take a nap?  That might be a little hard at Lord & Taylor's but I guess it makes sense.  As you're starting to feel the urge, go lie down.  Of course, that's assuming we're near a bed, which, just about 24/7, I'm not. But a new study has shown that taking a nap may be an effective strategy to counteract impulsive behavior and to boost tolerance for frustration, according to newswise.com. "Our results suggest that napping may be a beneficial intervention for individuals who may be required to remain awake for long periods of time by enhancing the ability to per...

They say it's impossible.  Figuring out a teenager's brain.  But in England almost $8 million has been put forward to try. According to smartplanet.com, researchers are scanning the brains of people between 14 and 24 to determine changes that take place as people get older.  According to a BBC report, the study hopes to "settle the question of whether changes to brain structure explains people’s habit of acting less impulsively as they grow older. It “should also shed light on the emergence of mental disorders in young adults,” the BBC story notes. “During the teenage years, scientists believe that the brain rewires itself, and that this rewiring, specifically at the front, will increase the mind’s ability to think ahead and control emotions,” a BBC video explains , It all has to do with white matter and gray matter, but the bottom line is that scientists hope to find out if white matter changes "as the brain starts to regulate strong signals generated by teena...

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...