Health News - Friday, January 19, 2007
Daydreaming seems to be the default setting of the human mind and certain brain regions are devoted to it, U.S. researchers reported on Friday. When people are given a specific task to do, they focus on that task but then other brain regions get busy during down time, the researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
"There is this network of regions that always seems to be active when you don't give people something to do," psychologist Malia Mason of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital said in a telephone interview. Continue reading
Women who breast-feed may need to be careful about getting enough calcium to keep their teeth and gums healthy, new animal research suggests.
In experiments with rats, researchers found that lactating rodents were particularly susceptible to the effects of low calcium intake on the bones that support the teeth. Such bone-density loss can speed the progression of any existing gum disease. Though the findings come from animals, they do suggest it's important for breast-feeding mothers to include enough calcium in their diets, lead researcher Dr. Kanako Shoji told Reuters Health. Continue reading
Exercising regularly may help prevent women from developing uterine fibroids, a new study shows. Fibroids, also referred to as uterine leiomyomas, are benign tumors that grow in the uterus and can cause infertility, bleeding, pain and pregnancy difficulties. They are the leading reason for hysterectomies among US women, and are particularly common among African-Americans, Dr. Donna Day Baird of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina and colleagues note in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
Little is known about how fibroids might be prevented, Baird and her team add, but hormones appear to trigger the tumors' onset and growth. Research has suggested that exercise can help prevent other hormone-related conditions, such as breast and endometrial cancer. They therefore determined if exercise might have any effect. Continue reading
Taking small, doses of cold remedies containing phenylpropanolamine (PPA) appears to increase the risk of hemorrhagic stroke in women, Korean researchers report. Co-author Dr. Byung-Woo Yoon of Seoul National University Hospital and colleagues point out there have been previous reports that appetite suppressants containing PPA increase the risk of hemorrhagic stroke in young and middle-age women.
Woo told Reuters Health that the "association between diet pills containing large doses of PPA and brain hemorrhage was already proven, our study reveals that even smaller doses of PPA in cold remedies can increase the risk of hemorrhagic stroke." Continue reading
Among older adults with elevated levels of blood homocysteine, 3 years of folic acid supplementation improves cognitive function to levels generally seen in people several years younger, results of a Dutch study suggest.
High levels of the animo acid homocysteine are associated with an increase risk of heart disease, stroke and other vascular disease. Evidence also suggests that homocysteine affects atherosclerosis by damaging the inner lining of arteries and promoting blood clots. Furthermore, previous studies have found that folic acid supplements lower homocysteine levels. Continue reading