Main page Cancer blog Health blog Articles Resources
Back to the main page
Archives Of Health Blog
Subscribe To Archives Of Health Blog RSS Feed 
Urgent Need For Worldwide Ban On Lead-based Paint
The report appears in the early online edition of the journal Environmental Research, would be published in September 2006.
The scientists say that this lead-based paint production poses a global health threat, and a worldwide ban is urgently needed to avoid future public health problems.
Lead is a malleable metal previously used to improve the durability and color luster of paint used in homes and other buildings and on steel structures, such as bridges. Now scientifically associated with impaired intellectual and physical growth in children, lead is also found in some usually imported consumer products, including candy, folk and traditional medications, ceramic dinnerware and metallic toys and trinkets.
In a two-year study headed by Scott Clark, PhD, the UC-led research team observed that more than 75 percent of the consumer paint tested from countries without controls-including India, Malaysia and China-had levels exceeding U.S. regulations. Collectively, the countries represent more than 2.5 billion people. In Singapore, which enforces the same lead restriction on new paint as the United States, lead levels were significantly lower.........
Posted by: Emily Permalink Source
Late Talking Toddler Debunking The Myth
The LOOKING at Language project has analysed the speech development of 1766 children in Western Australia from infancy to seven years of age, with particular focus on environmental, neuro-developmental and genetic risk factors. It is the first study to look at predictors of late language.
LOOKING at Language Chief Investigator Professor Mabel Rice said the research found that 13 per cent of children at two years of age were late talkers.
Boys were three times more likely to have delayed speech development, while a child with siblings was at double the risk, as were children with a family history of late talkers.
The study found that a mother's education, income, parenting style or mental health had no impact on a child's likelihood of being a late talker.
Study Coordinator Associate Professor Kate Taylor said the findings debunked common myths about why children are late talkers.
"Some people have wrongly believed that delayed language development could be due to a child not being spoken to enough or because of some other inadequacy in the family environment," Associate Professor Taylor said.........
Posted by: Emily Permalink Source
Dealing With Unexplained Symptoms
"If we know a person likes one type of food, this kind of study helps us better predict what other types of foods he or she might prefer," said Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab that studies the psychology behind what people eat and how often they eat it. By better understanding how various foods, such as sweets, are linked by preference, strategies used to market such sweet snacks as candy bars, for example, could be incorporated into an educational program to increase the consumption of fruit.
To see how much fruit sweet and salty-snack lovers ate, Wansink used the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals. To determine whether fruit lovers eat more sweets than vegetable lovers, Wansink analyzed the results of a snack consumption survey of 770 individuals.........
Posted by: Emily Permalink Source
How Group Dynamics Affect Fitness, Eating Habits
A UCLA-evaluated study of a demonstration project led by Community Health Councils, Inc. (CHC) in Los Angeles shows how incorporating physical activity and healthy eating into an office or other organizational culture pays dividends for participants.
Reported in the July 2006 edition of the peer-reviewed journal Health Promotion Practice, the study finds that a six-week wellness-training program significantly increases vigorous physical activity among participants. A 12-week curriculum, meanwhile, boosts fruit and vegetable intake while reducing feelings of sadness and depression, and can even reduce waistlines.
"Creating a culture of healthy living within an organizational framework requires buy-in by leadership, staff and clientele," said Dr. Antronette K. Yancey, lead author of the study and associate professor of health services at the UCLA School of Public Health. "Both the physical and social environment must change.........
Posted by: Emily Permalink Source
Why Do Statistics About Overweight And Obesity Differ?
Prior studies in the United States have used the 1959 or the 1983 Metropolitan Life Insurance tables of desirable weight-for-height as the reference for overweight.[3] More recently, a number of Government agencies and scientific health organizations have estimated overweight using data from a series of cross-sectional surveys called the National Health Examination Surveys (NHES) and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES). The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conducted these surveys. Each had three cycles: NHES I, II, and III spanned the period from 1960 to 1970, and NHANES I, II, and III were conducted in the 1970's, 1980's, and early 1990's. Since 1999, NHANES has become a continuous survey.........
Posted by: Emily Permalink
First Human Trial Of Antibacterial Contact Lens
The ASX-listed company commercialises a novel anti-bacterial technology identified by UNSW researchers at the Centre for Marine Biofouling and Bioinnovation.
The trial beginning on June 29 will compare the safety performance of an antibacterial contact lens to that of a standard contact lens.
The comparison involving ten people will evaluate eye health, lens performance on the eye and wearers' subjective responses. Biosignal will announce the trial's results to the market in July.
"Adverse events caused by microbial contamination of contact lenses are a major impediment to more convenient, extended wear of contact lenses," says UNSW Professor Mark Willcox, who will supervise the trial. "This trial is the first significant step towards overcoming this significant problem".
Acute red eye occurs in 20 percent per year of the estimated 100 million wearers of contact lenses worldwide. Microbial keratitis, a serous eye disease that can cause blindness, occurs in one in 500 contact lens wearers per year if they sleep in lenses. There is currently no antibacterial contact lens in the market.........
Posted by: Emily Permalink Source
Variable Blood Pressure Increases Risk Of Stroke Death
These researchers studied 71 emergency room patients with ischemic stroke symptoms of less than 24 hours. Blood pressures were checked every five minutes during the patients' stay in the emergency room. Results showed that patients with widely fluctuating blood pressure during the first three hours in the emergency room were much less likely to survive more than 90 days after the stroke.
"These data suggest that additional studies are needed to clarify the optimal management of blood pressure in the setting of acute ischemic stroke," says Latha Stead, M.D., Mayo Clinic emergency medicine specialist and lead author of the study. "Until those studies are performed, health care providers should be careful not to overtreat high blood pressure acutely after ischemic stroke and need to consider urgently supporting blood pressure in those patients in whom the blood pressure is low".
In an earlier study, also published in Neurology, the research team had shown that a low initial blood pressure in stroke patients upon arrival in the emergency department was an early indicator of poorer survival. This new research supports that finding, but clarifies that of all the aspects of blood pressure studied, the variability -- especially in diastolic blood pressure -- during the emergency room stay was the most predictive of a poor outcome. The researchers believe the increased mortality of patients in this study was due to impaired autoregulation of blood pressure and that those who had a more constant blood pressure had better flow of blood to the ischemic penumbra -- the part of the brain that lacked in blood supply, but had enough blood flow that it might still be saved with aggressive treatment. This differs from the infarcted tissue, which is damaged beyond repair.........
Posted by: Emily Permalink Source
New Method For Water-purification
With the new aerobic granular sludge technology (Nereda TM), aerobic (thus oxygen using) bacterial granules are formed in the water that is to be purified. The great advantage of these granules is that they sink quickly and that all the required biological purifying processes occur within these granules.
The technology therefore offers important advantages when compared to conventional water purification processes. For example, all the processes can occur in one reactor. Moreover, there is no need to use large re-sinking tanks, such as those used for conventional purification. Such large tanks are needed for this because the bacteria clusters that are formed take much longer to sink than the aerobic granule sludge.
According to Delft PhD researcher Merle de Kreuk, a Nereda TM purification installation needs only a quarter of the space required by conventional installations. Moreover, Nereda TM uses 30% less energy than the normal purification process. This Nereda TM purification process is suitable for both domestic and industrial waste water.........
Posted by: Emily Permalink Source
Reducing Heart Implant Patients' Anxiety
Just ask Ed Burns, of Ocala, who received an implantable cardioverter defibrillator, or ICD, five years ago. The uncertainty of when or if the device would fire made him wary of driving long distances. Before setting out on a road trip to California to visit family, Burns researched and made a list of every medical center along the route that could treat ICD patients.
Now a new tool from the University of Florida can help health-care providers identify which patients may need psychological services to cope with anxiety. It's called the Florida Shock Anxiety Scale, and UF researchers report on its effectiveness in the current issue of Pacing and Clinical Electrophysiology.
The research was done as part of a continuing series of investigations on ICD recipients' psychological health led by Samuel Sears, Ph.D., an associate professor in the department of clinical and health psychology at the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions, and Jamie Conti, M.D., an associate professor in the College of Medicine.........
Posted by: Emily Permalink Source
How Brain Decodes Complex Smells
In studies in mice, the scientists found that nerve cells in the brain's olfactory bulb -- the first stop for information from the nose -- do not perceive complex scent mixtures as single objects, such as the fragrance of a blooming rose. Instead, these nerve cells, or neurons, detect the host of chemical compounds that comprise a rose's perfume. Smarter sections of the brain's olfactory system then categorize and combine these compounds into a recognizable scent. As per the researchers, it's as if the brain has to listen to each musician's melody to hear a symphony.
Humans may rely on the same smell decoding system, because mice and men have similar brain structures for scent, including an olfactory bulb, the scientists said.
"We wanted to understand how the brain puts together scent signals to make an odor picture. We discovered the whole is the sum of its parts," said Da Yu Lin, Ph.D., who conducted the research as a graduate student studying with neurobiologist Lawrence Katz, Ph.D., a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Duke. Katz died in November 2005.
The research appears June 16, 2006, in the journal Neuron. The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Ruth K. Broad Biomedical Research Foundation.........
Posted by: Emily Permalink Source
Older Blog Entries 1 2 3 4 5 6