Hot MedFax

It was probably one of the most painful experiences in my young life.  A man I was deeply in love with cheated on me.   And he wound up marrying the woman he cheated on me with. But now a new study is saying that I was the winner (though not if you include the fact that he cheated on his wife, as he was only separated, with me).  Yeah, he was a real dog. Researchers say that women who are cheated on "win," while the cheating ones "lose."   Women who lose their unfaithful mate to another woman actually win in the long run, according to new research from Binghamton University. I went on to have many more relationships and have been happily married for over 20 years.  (I would never have met my husband if I'd stayed with that one.) "Our thesis is that the woman who ‘loses’ her mate to another woman will go through a period of post-relationship grief and betrayal, but come out of the experience with higher mating intelligence that allows her to bet...

Face it.  We've heard it all. Do 10 sit-ups in 10 minutes and lose 30 pounds.  Walk a quarter mile and have the heart of a 20-year-old.   Now they're saying one minute of exercise can do it. According to newswise.com, it may be one minute but it's a minute of vigorous, heart-thumping exercise.  You know, the kind where you think you're going to have a heart attack.  This happened to me recently on the arc trainer, what seems like a stair-climbing elliptical (I have yet to figure out what exactly it is, but what I do know is it's the only exercise I can do 10 minutes of and feel like my blood pressure has shot off the charts). Researchers at McMaster University have found that a single minute of very intense exercise produces health benefits similar to longer, traditional endurance training. “This is a very time-efficient workout strategy,” says Martin Gibala, a professor of kinesiology at McMaster and lead author on the study. “Brief burst...

I forgot what I was going to write about. Oh, yeah.  I should have drawn it. A new study says if you need to remember something, forget the memorizing of the first letters of the word it starts with -- like, you want to get apples so think America or accessories (my favorite), to put the "A" in your mind, and hopefully, you will link it with apples when you go to the grocery store.  Oh, wait.  The word for that is mnemonic.  Researchers at the University of Waterloo have found that drawing pictures of information that needs to be remembered is a strong and reliable strategy to enhance memory. "We pitted drawing against a number of other known encoding strategies, but drawing always came out on top," said the study's lead author, Jeffrey Wammes, PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology, at newswise.com. "We believe that the benefit arises because drawing helps to create a more cohesive memory trace that better integrates visual, motor a...

I admit it, I'm a pushover for a parent. Fortunately, I got a good kid in the lottery (at least, most of the time), so I've rarely had to discipline him (well, unless you call locking him in his room when he was little and misbehaved, but then I went in my room and cried).  Both my husband and I came from families with very harsh parents and now a new study is saying the harsher you are, the more likely your kid will grow up to maybe not be in such great health, and could become obese, as well. New research shows harsh parenting may increase a child’s risk for poor physical health and obesity as they get olde, according to newswise.com. And attempts by one parent to counterbalance the harsh behavior are not always effective in lessening that risk.  Researchers found the link from harsh parenting to physical health is buffered by a warm and nurturing coparent. However, when they measured the effect on body mass index, the health risk of harsh parenting increased as ...

I admit, the headline caught me.  "Are Children Career Killers ?" This was a study conducted by Washington University in St. Louis and the results?  Women should wait till after 30 to have children if they want career growth, according to newswise.com. I'm not so sure I agree with that.  Now, most women don't wait till their mid-40s like I did, but the thinking is that, for college graduates and even those without a college degree, researchers found lower lifetime incomes for women who gave birth for the first time at age 30 or younger. The hit was particularly stark for women without college degrees who had their first children before age 25. "The findings highlight the financial trade-offs women make when considering their fertility and career decisions,” the web site quotes Man Yee (Mallory) Leung, a postdoctoral research associate at Washington University School of Medicine. “Other studies have focused on the effect of children on women’s wages, ...

When was the last time you were about to say something, then the phone rings and you completely forget what it was? If we're talking about me, yesterday. I couldn't count on both hands all the times that's happened to me lately.  Most would blame it on age but I want to believe it's because I've got so much else in my brain, it crowds other things out. Now experts are finding that our derailed trains of thought have something to do with the brain’s electrical activity and are offering a new explanation of how that happens. Researchers at the University of California San Diego, along with Oxford University in the UK,suggest that the same brain system that is involved in interrupting, or stopping, movement in our bodies also interrupts cognition – which, in the example of the phone ringing, derails your train of thought.  The current study focuses particularly on one part of the brain’s stopping system, a small lens-shaped cluster of densely packed neuro...

I know I do.  A new study says most Americans pray for healing . When my husband had minor surgery several weeks ago, I talked to God continuously.  And now that the surgery was a success, I still do because the knee stiffness he had and hard time walking and getting up doesn't seem to be attributable to the hernia, but something else.  His surgeon wants him to see a cardiologist. I've been burning up the wires to the heavens. Some people even believe in the "laying on of hands."  I first became acquainted with this when I lived in the Midwest and many of my friends were evangelical Christians, who believe that, when someone is ill or in pain, the touching of this person by people who feel divinely inspired will make him better. I have to confess, I never really saw it work, and I'm reminded of a heartbreaking piece on TV about this, a man in a wheelchair who was paralyzed believing desperately, fervently, that he would walk again if just the right hands l...