Hot MedFax

Big surprise. Men and women react differently to stress . Researchers focused on an area of the brain called the hypothalamus, which has a number of functions, among them helping the body adjust to stressful situations, controlling hunger and satiety, and regulating blood glucose and energy production. When stress hits, cells in the hypothalamus step up production of a receptor. It was known that this receptor contributes to the rapid activation of a stress-response sympathetic nerve network – increasing heart rate, for example. But since this area of the brain also regulates the body’s exchange of materials, the team thought that the receptor might play a role in this, as well.  The receptor is expressed in around half of the cells that arouse appetite and suppress energy consumption. After some pretty complicated experiments involving mice and the receptor, researchers found that male and female bodies may exhibit significant differences in the ways that materia...

Which would you rather have, a bad heart or a bad back? Marital spats can cause either, or both.  Partners who get it all out are at risk of high blood pressure and chest pains while those who go silent and inside themselves can anticipate back problems. Those who rage with frustration during a marital spat have an increased risk of cardiovascular problems such as chest pain or high blood pressure later in life, according to new research from Northwestern University and the University of California, Berkeley, newswise.com reports. Conversely, shutting down emotionally or “stonewalling” during conflict raises the risk of musculoskeletal ailments such as a bad back or stiff muscles, according to the study, published online in the journal Emotion. It’s well known that negative emotions may harm physical health, but it turns out that not all negative emotions have equal consequences. Using 20 years of data, and controlling for such factors as age, education, exercise, ...

I admit I do it.  But then, I was the last one to give up my typewriter for a desktop back when the newsroom switched over. I'm talking about reading on paper vs. on a screen.  I know a lot of people -- maybe most of America -- prefers e-books but I just can't shake the need to hold something in my hands when I'm reading. Now a new study says how you read may just affect how you learn.  The study suggests that it’s not only what you read, but how you read it that matters, according to abcnews.com.  Reading on paper versus on a digital screen may impact what you end up absorbing from the text, according to a study by Dartmouth researchers . This research is being presented at the Association for Computing Machinery conference in San Jose, California, this week, and has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.  "In the study, people who used computer screens for learning did better when it came to understanding concrete details, but t...

Ok, so we're talking about beetles here, but a new study has found that sexual conflict between males and females can lead to changes in the shape of their genitals, according to research on burying beetles by scientists at the University of Exeter, as reported by newswise.com. Genital shape varies enormously across the animal kingdom compared, for instance, to body shape. One reason for this may be that the shapes of male and female genitalia co-evolve as a result of sexual conflict. Dr Megan Head, one of the authors of the new study said: "It takes two to tango, so when changes in shape in one sex leads to corresponding changes in the other sex, this is known as co-evolution." Sexual conflict over mating occurs because, while having lots of sex is usually good for a male -- as it increases the number of offspring he is likely to produce -- it is not so good for a female because she only needs to mate a few times to fertilize all her eggs. In addition too...

That's right.  All the guts and grit and get-up-and-go you have may turn out not to matter so much in the long run, according to a new study. Seems it's been over-hyped, say researchers.   There are many paths to success, but the significance of grit in helping you reach that goal has been greatly overstated, says an Iowa State University psychologist at newswise.com. The study found no evidence that grit is a good predictor of success. While some educators are working to enhance grit in students, researchers say there’s no indication that it’s possible to boost levels. And even if it were possible, it might not matter. Grit is defined as perseverance and commitment to long-term goals. The research – often associated with University of Pennsylvania professor Angela Duckworth, who first studied grit – is relatively new, compared to the decades of work on performance indicators such as conscientiousness and intelligence. Researchers say their analysis of almost 1...

This may surprise you.  I know it did me. But singing the company song in a circle or going to camp with your colleagues, like they used to do at IBM,  may just not be good for you. They did it to instill spirit in workers, but now a new study says inspirational managers may actually harm employees. "Managers who inspire their staff to perform above and beyond the call of duty may actually harm their employees’ health over time, according to researchers from the University of East Anglia," newswise.com reports. The findings suggest that constant pressure from these "transformational leaders" may increase sickness absence levels among employees. They also indicate that some vulnerable employees in groups with transformational leaders may, in the long term, have increased sickness absence rates if they ignore their ill-health and frequently show up for work while ill, known as "presenteeism." Transformational leaders are defined as those wh...

Well, big duh. Relationship satisfaction depends on the mating pool, according to a new study, as reported by newswise.com. Relationship satisfaction and the energy devoted to keeping a partner are dependent on how the partner compares with other potential mates, a finding that relates to evolution’s stronghold on modern relationship psychology, according to a study at The University of Texas at Austin.  UT Austin psychology researcher Daniel Conroy-Beam and his collaborators developed a method to test how mate preferences influence behavior and emotions in relationships in the study “What predicts romantic relationship satisfaction and mate retention intensity: mate preference fulfillment or mate value discrepancies?” he writes in Evolution & Human Behavior. Who hasn't been there?  You want to go to the prom but the only guy you think will ask you is kind of a big jerk.  But you'll go with him, anyway.  And then he doesn't ask you!  This ha...