Health & Medicine
- Health & Medicine
Operation overload: Kids’ backpacks
Sixth-graders in Italy routinely carry school backpacks that equal, on average, 22 percent of their body weight, a finding researchers link to an earlier report that more than 60 percent of children in this age group had experienced low-back pain more than once.
- Health & Medicine
Hysterectomy often improves sex life
A study of more than 1,000 women who had hysterectomies finds that after the operation, women generally wanted and had sex more often, were more likely to reach orgasm, experienced less vaginal dryness, and were less likely to have pain during sex than was the case before surgery.
- Health & Medicine
Glutamate glut linked to multiple sclerosis
The chemical glutamate can overwhelm nervous-system cells called oligodendrocytes, adding to the nerve damage caused by wayward immune cells in multiple sclerosis.
- Health & Medicine
Learning from leprosy’s nerve damage
The bacterium that causes leprosy directly damages a protective sheathing around many nerve cells.
- Health & Medicine
What Activates AIDS?
New studies suggest that a natural process called immune activation—the signaling that alerts immune cells of foreign invaders—plays a key role in explaining why infection with the human immunodeficiency virus progresses to AIDS more quickly in some people than in others.
- Health & Medicine
Sickening Food
If food that was going to leave you with gut-wrenching cramps — or more — tasted sickening, few people would indulge. The problem, of course, is that sickening food can taste quite scrumptious. Foods that look, smell, and taste yummy can still harbor disease-causing pathogens. Mead et al./Emerging Infectious Diseases Indeed, when the hour of […]
- Health & Medicine
The brew for a slimmer you
Green tea contains a compound that triggers the body to burn more fat.
- Health & Medicine
Stem cells repair rat spinal cord damage
Using embryonic stem cells from mice, researchers restored some movement in paralyzed rats that had undergone a crippling spinal injury.
- Health & Medicine
Eat Broccoli, Beat Bacteria: Plant compound kills microbe behind ulcers and a cancer
A chemical abundant in broccoli and certain other vegetables kills ulcer-causing Helicobacter pylori bacteria in the laboratory and inhibits stomach cancer in mice.
- Health & Medicine
Revised Immunity: Drug slows diabetes in young patients
A drug fashioned from a mouse antibody has halted the progression of diabetes in children and young adults who are newly diagnosed with the disease.
- Health & Medicine
E is for Effort from Athletes
It takes a lot of energy to move the body–which is why vigorous exercise burns so many calories. However, both exercise and our body’s conversion of food to usable energy can take a physical toll on muscle. Boston researchers now find that supplementing diets with extra vitamin E can reduce not only muscle damage but […]
- Health & Medicine
Sleep Time
The International Sleep Medicine Association has created a Web site that brings together a wide variety of information sources concerning sleep health and sleep disorders. It includes access to online video lectures on various aspects of sleep, chat rooms and message boards, and links to news stories. Go to: http://www.1sleep.com/
