Jun 25
Scientists have identified the molecular players central to an incurable brain injury common in premature babies, and have shown how such injuries might one day be treated, sparing people from lifelong conditions such as cerebral palsy.
In babies born before their lungs are fully developed, lack of oxygen can disrupt nerve cells’ ability to make a protective coating, called myelin, that makes up the brain’s ‘white matter’. Without myelin, brain cells die, leaving children vulnerable to neurological deficits such as cerebral palsy.
Some 20% of babies born before 6.5 months gestation experience lasting brain damage (see The most vulnerable brains).
Full article…
Tags: Injuries, Premature Babies
Jun 24
Heres a piece of wisdom Ive learned from the most spiritual guy on earth, my metaphysical hero of sorts, Mike Leach: you, and you alone are responsible for your happiness.
No one person, place, or thing can do the job for you.
I remember how relieved I was the first time he said that to me as if my fate didnt depend on picking the winning lotto number, or right relationship, or proper career, or on growing up in the perfect nuclear family where two stable, profanity-free parents would gather their emotionally nurtured, well-adjusted offspring around a cozy fire to discuss Homers the Iliad and the Odyssey that I could be happy even in the midst of dysfunction.
Yah!
Because there are lots of that where I live.
But the second part of this adage requires substantial perspiration and a love relationship with dirt.
Full article…
Jun 23
But it was only the biggest imbibersmen who said they had more than 50 drinks a weekwho were at higher risk of catching the infection.
The study isnt the first to draw a line between alcohol and pneumonia. Yet researchers cant be sure that drinking by itself leads to pneumoniait could be that alcohol-linked chronic diseases like liver and heart problems may be at play, for example.
In the current report, Dr. Reimar Wernich Thomsen, of Aarhus University Hospital, and his colleagues used data from a large Danish health study, including more than 45,000 people age 50 to 64, who had never had pneumonia.
All participants filled out surveys at the beginning of the study, which included questions on how often they drank beer, wine, and hard liquor.
Full article…
Tags: Risk
Jun 23
Sitting too much will probably shorten your life.
That might sound ridiculous — or obvious — depending on your perspective, but the findings don’t come from a fringe study. They come from the American Cancer Society, whose researchers studied 123,216 people’s health outcomes during a 14-year period.
In particular, the American Cancer Society study finds that women who sit for more than six hours a day were about 40% more likely to die during the course of the study than those who sat fewer than three hours per day. Men were about 20% more likely to die.
That large study focused on the numbers of people who died. Other studies have focused on specific conditions affecting the most Americans, things such as cardiovascular disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes and depression. Full article…
Tags: Life