Hot MedFax

Okay.  So one boss lets you leave early to go to your kid's soccer game.  She always remembers your birthday.  And when a project you're working on gets, well, screwed up, she considers it just a lesson for next time. Another boss takes the whole department out to lunch, except for you, and makes you work late on your birthday.   And when a project you're working on -- with the whole team -- goes AWOL, guess who's the only one who gets blamed?  I actually had a boss like that. Now, which boss do you think most people would leave? If you guessed both, you'd be right. A new study has found that when fast-rising employees quit their jobs for better pay or more responsibility at another organization, the knee-jerk reaction may be to blame their leaving on a bad boss. Although the common perception is that workers join companies but leave managers, new research by a University of Illinois business professor shows that workers leave good bosses, too, acc...

I know it should come as no surprise.  But teens who text at night do not do as well in school as those who don't. A new study has shown that teens who text at night pay a price in both their sleep (okay, so we knew that) but also, wait for it, their academic performance, too. Now that's a little scary. The study is the first of its kind to link nighttime instant messaging habits of American teenagers to sleep health and school performance, according to newswise.com. “We need to be aware that teenagers are using electronic devices excessively and have a unique physiology,” says study author Xue Ming, professor of neuroscience and neurology at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. “They tend to go to sleep late and get up late. When we go against that natural rhythm, students become less efficient.”  Think about it.  I've been getting up before dawn (4:45 yesterday and 3:30 today, though the garbage men woke me anyway) to finish a project with a tight deadli...

Did you have trouble learning to read? A lot us did.  But we finally mastered it, and now many of us (like me) read about two books a week (more, if I didn't have a teenager!). But a new study now says that those who find it hard when they first begin reading may be at higher risk of Alzheimer's later in life. Older adults with a history of reading problems perform similarly on some neuro-psychological tests to those who show signs of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) associated with early Alzheimer’s disease.  MCI is a term used to identify individuals with memory complaints and poor neuropsychological test performance but who otherwise functional normally. Having MCI has been identified as a risk factor for subsequent diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers assessed the relationship between MCI classification and suspected reading disorder in almost 2,000 participants who were 62 years of age. Individuals with previous dementia, stroke and other neuro...

Admit it.  Who isn't a little sick of all the selfies? People eating in restaurants.  Pouring wine. Throwing a snowball (that's just in the Northeast).  A Real Housewife who claims she has Lyme disease posting IVs and other medical appliances plugged into her pasty body. Now a new study is finding that too many can plug up your romantic life, too. Researchers have found that too many Instagram selfies may create romantic conflict, according to newswise.com.  Florida State University researchers have discovered the more selfies an individual posts on the social media site Instagram, the greater the likelihood he or she might experience romantic relationship conflict and dissolution.   “Although we cannot directly assume cause and effect due to the correlational nature of this study, the results here show that body image satisfaction can be detrimental to Instagram users’ romantic relationships, especially when users’ body image satisfaction is prom...

Listen up, helicopter parents (and yes, that means me). A new study says controlling parents create mean college kids. College students whose parents lay on the guilt or try to manipulate them may translate feelings of stress into similar mean behavior with their own friends, a new study by a University of Vermont psychologist has found. Those students’ physical response to stress influences the way they will carry out that hostility – either immediately and impulsively or in a cold, calculated way, concludes Jamie Abaied, a UVM assistant professor of psychological science, newswise.com reports. Abaied looked at the link between “parental psychological control” and the young adults’ relationships with peers.  Even after they leave home as legal adults, college students often still depend on parents for financial, as well as emotional, support. Some parents will nit-pick and find fault or threaten to withdraw affection (or money) as punishment or to force a desire...

This fall, a friend's husband died of cancer after being diagnosed four months earlier.  Even though the end came so quickly, they were able to plan for a peaceful death at home, surrounded by loved ones. Now a new study says you will die as you live, but for surviving spouses, you will live as your partner died. Say what? A person's quality of life at the time of their death continues to influence his or her spouse's quality of life in the years following the person's passing, according to new research by University of Arizona psychologists, reports newswise.com. What's more, the association between a deceased and surviving spouse is just as strong as the association between partners who are both living, the researchers found. I'm sure my friend finds herself just as married to her spouse now as she was before his death. "If your partner has higher quality of life before they pass away, you're more likely to have higher quality of l...

Quick.  Which affects you more, a woman saying, "Help?"  Or a scream. Clearly we react more immediately to sounds, and that's just what a new study has found.  Human sounds convey emotions clearer and faster than words. It takes just one-tenth of a second for our brains to begin to recognize emotions conveyed by vocalizations, according to researchers from McGill, newswise.com reports. It doesn’t matter whether the non-verbal sounds are growls of anger, the laughter of happiness or cries of sadness. More importantly, the researchers have also discovered that we pay more attention when an emotion (such as happiness, sadness or anger) is expressed through vocalizations than we do when the same emotion is expressed in speech. The researchers believe that the speed with which the brain ‘tags’ these vocalizations and the preference given to them compared to language, is due to the potentially crucial role that decoding vocal sounds has played in human survival....