Hot MedFax

Want relief from you allergies? Get stress out of your life. According to newswise.com, " Stress doesn’t cause allergies, but easing your mind might mean less allergy flare-ups this spring." “Stress can cause several negative effects on the body, including causing more symptoms for allergy sufferers,” said allergist Amber Patterson, MD, lead study author and ACAAI member. “Our study also found those with more frequent allergy flares also have a greater negative mood, which may be leading to these flares.” In a recent study , w hile there were no significant findings between allergy flares and stress on the same day, a number of sufferers reported allergy flares within days of increased daily stress, the Web site reports. “Symptoms, such as sneezing, runny nose and watery eyes can cause added stress for allergy sufferers, and may even be the root of stress for some,” said Dr. Patterson. “While alleviating stress won’t cure allergies, it may help decrease episodes of i...

Do you meditate ?  I know, I know.  It calls to mind girls with long dirty hair wearing love beads, VW vans and the sharp acrid smell of mj everywhere.  It's what the Baby Boomers thought they discovered.  And now it's being rediscovered by, well, just about everyone, and for a really good reason. It turns out doing it has actually proven to be good for your health. According to medicalnewstoday.com, it can actually change your genes -- or how they're expressed, or activated.  A new study has found " specific molecular changes in the body after a period of mindful meditation," the Web site reports. You may also have heard of mindfulness, which can be part of meditation, but we'll get to that later.   For the study, researchers compared the effects of a day of intensive mindful-meditation in a group of experienced meditators with a group of untrained subjects who enjoyed a day of quiet, non-meditative activities, medicalnewstoday.com notes. " Aft...

Want to double your chances of a heart attack?  Just make sure you feel stressed all the time. Now, really, who doesn't feel that way?  Between work, family, home, activities -- who can possibly do it all and not feel a smidgin of pressure? But a new study has found that people who feel they are stressed are far more likely to suffer heart disease than those who simply don't.  (I'd like to know who these people are.) The findings, by French researchers, showed that "people who believe that they are stressed—and that the stress is affecting their health—have more than twice the risk of heart attack as those who don’t feel that way," according to Beth Greenfield at yahoo.com. “This indicates that individuals' perception and reality seem to be connected pretty well,” lead author Herman Nabi , of the  French National Institute of Health and Medical Research , told   Yahoo! Shine   in an email. “In other words, people seem to be aware when stress is af...