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...

In college, when you had an exam coming, did you back away? Or how about when you were about to get married, did you feel the need to move off? According to scientists, these are very natural reactions, at least, initially.  Newswise.com reports that whenever we see something coming that feels threatening , even if just for a moment, we tend to, well, back away. "In our long struggle for survival, we humans learned that something approaching us is far more of a threat than something that is moving away," the Web site explains. This makes sense, since a tiger bounding toward a person is certainly more of a threat than one that is walking away. Though we modern humans don't really consider such fear, it turns out that it still plays a big part in our day-to-day lives. "In order to survive, humans have developed a tendency to guard against animals, people and objects that come near them," newswise.com quotes University of Chicago Booth School of Busine...