Hot MedFax

Well, this is encouraging.  Did you know that when your partner is under stress , you gain weight? Really.  Isn't that depressing?  But according to a new study, older adults gain weight when a spouse is stressed out. Oh my.  A new University of Michigan study looked at how the negative quality of marriage can be detrimental for weight gain—possibly leading to obesity—when couples 50 and older are stressed. The results varied by gender, newswise.com reports. The study specifically focused on chronic stress, which is an ongoing circumstance occurring for more than a year and threatens to overwhelm an individual's resources, such as financial problems, difficulties at work or long-term care-giving. The sample included 2,042 married individuals who completed questions about their waist circumference, negative marriage quality, stress levels and other factors in 2006 and 2010. Couples were married for an average of 34 years. Greater negative quality ...

It was one of the worst days of my life. Last week I learned that exercise may make you gain weight.  That's right.  I said, gain.  Not lose. I had been wondering about that for a while, as, last summer, when I ramped up my exercise routine - running, swimming, doing the elliptical, all in the same day -- I began putting on the pounds. I couldn't believe it.  Someone suggested I wasn't eating enough (yeah, right).  But I didn't start losing weight until I scaled back my exercise in the fall. Now a new study is saying it wasn't all in my head.  (Or the scale.)  I was right.  Gretchen Reynolds writes at The New York Times that this provocative new study shows that a substantial number of people who take up an exercise regimen wind up heavier afterward than they were at the start, with the weight gain due mostly to extra fat, not muscle. Say what? A recent review of studies related to exercise and weight control found that in most of...

Can't they make up their minds?  After finding aspartame to be harmful in the U.S., the European Union (EU) has now found that it isn't, really. According to yahoo.com, even though it's been linked to cancer and premature births, and The Huffington Post's Dr. Joseph Merola calls it "the deadly neurotoxin that everyone uses," the EU has ruled that it's safe, in the amounts people are currently using it in diet soft drinks. After conducting a major review of evidence, the agency said Tuesday it has ruled out any "potential risk of aspartame causing damage to genes and inducing cancer," CBS News reports. U.S. health officials have not supplied any substantial proof that artificial sweeteners, such as NutraSweet and Equal, are associated with death, the network adds. So how much is too much?  The  American Cancer Society  says that means about 3,750 milligrams of aspartame per day for a 165-pound person -- that's about 21 cans of diet ...

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...