Hot MedFax

Do you read?  I don't mean The New York Times or The Daily News.  I'm talking about books.  Who has time?  You might want to make it.  People who read live longer. According to The New York Times, reading books is tied to a longer life.  Scientists divided people into three groups: those who read no books, those who read books up to three-and-a-half hours a week and those who read books more than that. The study found, not surprisingly, that book readers tend to be female, college-educated and in higher income groups (maybe they have the time?).  So researchers controlled for those facts, along with age, race, self-reported health, depression, employment and marital status. Unbelievably, those in the middle group -- participants who read three-and-a-half hours a week -- were 17% less likely to die over 12 years of follow-up, and those who read more than that were 23% less likely to die. How's those odds? Book readers lived an average of almost two years longer than

I'm going back to church. People who do this live longer. At least that's what a new study has found, according to The New York Times.  Researchers used data from a long-term study of 75,534 women that tracked their health and lifestyle, including their attendance at religious services, over 16 years through 2012.  After controlling for more than two dozen factors, they found that compared with those who never went to church, going more than once a week was associated with a 33 percent lower risk for death from any cause, attending once a week with a 26 percent lower risk, and going less than once a week a 13 percent lowered risk. Risks for mortality from cardiovascular disease and cancer followed a similar pattern. The researchers statistically eliminated the possibility of reverse causation — that is, that healthy people go to church more than unhealthy ones. And they found that some variables, such as social support and a tendency not to smoke,