Public Health
Help comes in the mail for drinkers
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Mailing a simple information pamphlet to interested drinkers in the general population reduced binge drinking by 10 per cent, and is a promising public health approach to reduce the health and social problems associated with heavy drinking, shows a new study led by the University of Alberta.
Brief interventions to help people change their alcohol use have long been recognized as a potentially useful strategy, but past research in this area has focused on college students, problem drinkers screened in clinics and hospitals or people seeking specialized counselling and alcohol rehabilitation treatment.
Mother-child therapy best after domestic violence
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Therapy to help children recover from domestic violence is more likely to be successful if the mothers get help as well, new research suggests.
In a study of 181 children between the ages of 6 and 12 who were exposed to domestic violence in the previous year, researchers found that group therapy was effective at improving the children’s behavioral and emotional difficulties. It was more effective, however, when their mothers also received help with their parenting skills.
TV ads double obese children’s food intake in UK
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Overweight children who watch television advertisements for food are likely to double their intake and the fattest children are most likely to choose the least healthy foods, a study published on Tuesday showed. The study by the University of Liverpool of 60 British children aged 9-11 years, published at the European Congress on Obesity in Budapest, showed the more overweight a child was, the more it would eat when exposed to adverts followed by a cartoon.
Obese children increased food intake by 134 percent and normal weight children by 84 percent, the study said. Obese children consistently chose the highest fat product available in the research, chocolate.
Are Higher Doses of Cholesterol Drugs Worth the Extra Money?
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When it comes to cholesterol-lowering drugs, more is better. At least, that’s what heart doctors and heart patients have been hearing in recent years. And as a result, more patients are taking higher doses of drugs called statins – leading to lower heart and stroke risk, but higher prescription drug costs and more frequent side effects.
Now, a new study looks at whether those higher doses, and higher costs, are really going to pay off for some patients. For those with a recent heart attack or what doctors call ‘acute coronary syndrome’, the answer is yes, the researchers say.
Low blood pressure in elderly linked to mortality
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Aggressive treatment of high blood pressure (hypertension) in patients who are 80 years or older is associated with lower five-year survival rates than their counterparts with blood pressure levels at or higher than treatment target levels, researchers report.
Physicians should therefore “use caution in their approach to blood pressure-lowering in this age group,” they advise in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society.
Social workers can help older smokers
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Getting older smokers to quit can be a tough order, but enlisting social workers in the battle could help, a new study suggests.
Even in old age, quitting smoking can have health benefits, but elderly smokers are less likely to receive smoking cessation counseling than their younger counterparts. One of the obstacles is simply reaching older adults who smoke, according to the authors of the new study.
Violent video games “exhilarating escapism: survey
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Players of violent video games believe they are just “exhilarating” escapism that does not desensitise them to real-life mayhem, according to a new survey of one of the entertainment industry’s fastest growing sectors.
However gamers do concede that people “who are already unhinged in some way” may be pushed over the edge if they play violent games obsessively.
Raise drinking age to 21, says think tank
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Young people should be banned from drinking until they reach 21 or be forced to carry a card that records their alcohol intake, a think tank columnist claims yesterday.
Binge drinking has become such an “overwhelming” problem, argues journal of the left-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research, that policy makers need to practice “tough love” and put drink out of the reach of youngsters.
Male births declining in the U.S. and Japan
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Mother Nature has always ensured that male births outnumber female ones, but the gap has been gradually narrowing over the past three decades in the U.S. and Japan, according to a new study.
Researchers suspect the decline in male births can be explained, at least in part, by paternal exposure to environmental toxins, such as certain pesticides, heavy metals, solvents or dioxins—chemical byproducts produced during incineration or the manufacture of other chemicals.
Childhood Obesity Among Quebec Cree Raises Concerns
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Childhood obesity is increasing among the general population in Canada, but the statistics are even more alarming among First Nations, Inuit and Métis children. In a study published recently in the American Journal of Public Health, University of Alberta researchers found that up to 65 per cent of Cree preschoolers in northern Quebec communities were overweight or obese.
Dr. Noreen Willows, a community nutritionist at the University of Alberta, and her colleagues also studied obesity levels in Cree schoolchildren aged 9 to 12 living in two Cree Nations north of Montreal, Canada.
Only one drug type now knocks out gonorrhea in US
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Due to drug resistance, one class of antibiotics should no longer be used to treat gonorrhea, officials with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Thursday.
They no longer recommend antibiotics called fluoroquinolones—which include ciprofloxacin, ofloxacin, and levofloxacin—for treatment of gonorrhea because fluoroquinolone-resistant gonorrhea is now widespread in the United States.
Mortality Rate Increases for Kidney Recipients with Anemia
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According to a new study in American Journal of Transplantation, kidney transplant patients suffering from anemia, a treatable blood deficiency, are more likely to die or suffer from organ failure than other transplant recipients.
“During a four year period following kidney transplantation, we found that anemic patients were 70 percent more likely to die following their transplant, and two and a half times more likely to again require dialysis,” says study author Dr. Istvan Mucsi.
Your health questions answered
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SHOPPING TRIPS FOR TYLENOL AND MELATONIN
Q. Many of my friends and colleagues, when on holiday, buy “over the counter” medicines not available in the UK - mainly Tylenol and melatonin. Why are these not available in the UK? Is it legal to bring back large quantities for distribution to friends and family?
Grow-your-own Viagra craze hits Britain’s garden centres
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A chance discovery by a Berkshire allotment-holder that a plant widely available in garden centres has the same effect on men as Viagra has been confirmed by experts at one of the world’s leading botanical institutions.
The plant is winter-flowering heather, and botanists at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, many of them heather experts who have recognised the source of its active ingredient, now expect it to be the next must-have plant in British gardens. Demand is already high. Nurseries and garden centres in some areas are having trouble finding sufficient supplies as word spreads of the plant’s unexpected properties.
Warning: feminism is bad for your health
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Since before Germaine Greer published The Female Eunuch in 1970, and even before Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, campaigners have fought for sexual equality, convinced it is the key to a better society. Now researchers have discovered that gender equality may make people unwell.
Researchers in Sweden, arguably one of the most egalitarian countries in the world, have found that equality could be associated with poorer health for both men and women.
