While chemotherapy is often a critical component of cancer treatment, its side effects—which can include hair loss, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting and new infections, among other health problems—are often debilitating and painful. Adding to previous findings suggesting that fasting prior to chemo might help decrease side effects,
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Drawing on previous research suggesting that stuttering might have genetic origins, a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine may have identified precisely which genes cause stuttering in certain people. Stuttering, the disorder characterized by repetition, delay and interruptions in speech, impacts an estimated 1% of
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In response to First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative to combat childhood obesity, the American Beverage Association (AmeriBev) announced this week that it will voluntarily add calorie counts to the front of soda cans, bottles, vending machines and soda fountains to better enable consumers to make informed choices. AmeriBev,
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Adding Asperger’s syndrome to the autism spectrum, eliminating the terms “substance abuse” and “dependence” in favor of “addiction and related disorders,” introducing the condition “hypersexual disorder” and introducing an assessment of mental illness based on severity are among the proposed changes for the new edition of the Diagnostic
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Hospital gowns may be functional, but they aren’t exactly cute. After all, while easy access to important body parts may be crucial to medical care, padding around the ward with your backside hanging out doesn’t exactly boost anyone’s confidence. To address the shortcomings of the much-abused medical garb, the U.K.’s Department of Health
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A Texas nurse is on trial this week for reporting a doctor whose practices she believed endangered patients. As Kevin Sack of the New York Times reports, last year Anne Mitchell submitted a report expressing her concerns about Dr. Rolando G. Arafiles Jr.’s prescription and surgical procedures—including sewing a rubber tip onto a
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Dietary silicon can help maintain bone strength and keep connective tissues in good shape, and is found in grains such as oats and barley—which also happen to be key ingredients to brewing beer. Previous studies suggest that, as a rich source of silicon, beer, in moderate amounts, might help fight the bone degradation of conditions
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A moving public service announcement from the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership in the U.K. has quickly become a viral phenomenon—with views in at least 89 countries and a Facebook group of 1,500 members and counting. The “Embrace Life” ad was launched on January 20, and added to YouTube on January 29, where it’s since been seen nearly
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Women who give birth after age 40 face a higher risk of having an autistic child, regardless of the father’s age, according to a comprehensive study of all births in the state of California in the 1990s. Researchers from the University of California, Davis, found that a woman who gave birth after age 40 was 50% more likely to have an
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Generally speaking, past research has shown that children who are highly sensitive to stress tend to be at higher risk for health and behavioral problems compared with their less delicate peers. Yet, a new study finds that sensitivity in of itself may not necessarily be what primes children for struggles. According to new research
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Though sperm are generally considered pretty wriggly little guys, before they are launched into action, so to speak, they aren’t racing around. While researchers have long known that what gets them swimming is a change in internal pH level—the more alkaline their pH, the more aggressively they swim—until now, the mechanism by which
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According to a report from a Fort Worth, Texas newspaper, a previously healthy 26-year-old woman may now be permanently handicapped because long-term exposure to zinc in denture cream eroded her health. At age 26, Elizabeth Gilley, was rushed to the hospital after her unexpected symptoms—numbness in her feet and legs, labored
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Some 40% of cancers could be prevented with simple lifestyle changes and higher levels of protection from cancer-causing infections, according to experts at the International Union Against Cancer (UICC). Cancer-causing infections are responsible for 22% of deaths in the developing world, and 6% of deaths in the developed world, according
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