Category Archives: Health

Giving refuge, advancing research

Yale Stress Center head promotes healing of the body, mind, and brain

Rajita Sinha, Ph.D., says that the emotional expressiveness of the Indian classical dance studies of her youth laid the foundation for a lifelong interest in the brain-body tango that regulates mood and behavior. As an undergraduate in her native Delhi, she studied biopsychology, conducting research on the effects of marijuana and working at a counseling center. For her graduate work at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, she studied how emotion is manifested physiologically, a thread that she has carried through her subsequent work on the brain-altering effects of drugs and alcohol. (more…)

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Tingling sensation caused by Asian spice could help patients with chronic pain

The science behind the tingling sensation caused by eating a popular Asian spice has been explained by researchers at UCL.

The study, which is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, helps shed light on the complex interactions between the senses of taste and touch, and could lead to a greater understanding of the causes of the tingling sensations experienced by many chronic pain patients.

Widely used in Asian cooking, the Szechuan pepper was found to mimic the sense of touch in the brain. It chemically activates light-touch fibres on the lips and tongue and sends the equivalent of 50 light taps to the brain per second. (more…)

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Rabies Research Designed for Prevention

UA undergraduate researcher Robert Clark, his public health mentor and Pima County officials collaborated on an investigation of rabies cases in Pima County.

In a volunteer opportunity turned research project, University of Arizona undergraduate researcher Robert Clark has developed a comprehensive, multi-year snapshot of animal cases of rabies in Pima County.

Clark began working with a mentor in the UA Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health and county officials to learn about the seasonality of rabies in animals and identify exactly where rabid animals were most often found. (more…)

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Love thy neighbor: It could lower your risk of stroke

ANN ARBOR — Here’s some neighborly advice for adults over age 50: Stay friendly with your neighbors.

A new University of Michigan study shows that adults in this age bracket who live in a good neighborhood with trustworthy people lowered their risk of stroke up to 48 percent.

Feeling connected with neighbors builds what researchers describe as “neighborhood social cohesion.” The trust and connection with neighbors was associated with a reduced risk of stroke above and beyond the effects of negative psychological factors—such as depression and anxiety, said Eric Kim, a doctoral student in the U-M Department of Psychology and the study’s lead author. (more…)

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How Yale doctors are making CT scans safer for kids

Greater awareness and careful usage are bringing down the numbers of pediatric CT scans and cutting radiation exposure. Parents should weigh the benefits and risks.

(September 2013) If your child had a CT scan last year—perhaps to assess damage from a hockey injury or rule out appendicitis—he or she added to a huge statistic: more than 4 million pediatric CT scans were performed in the U.S in 2012. (more…)

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Ancient secrets which save your sex life

Man has two basic requirements – food and the sexual gratification. In order to enjoy a healthy lifestyle it is important to suffice these two requirements or else you can see chaos and disaster seen among the people. Food we all know and have been consuming since we were kids, however, this is not the case with sex. The desire to have sexual gratification comes when kids turn adolescent.

So, when it comes to sex life, there are different ways to enjoy it, however, if you look at the core, nothing really has changed since past centuries. Though the lifestyle has changed a lot and would continue changing, however, sex life seems to remain unchanged. You will find various ancients secrets, which can help you in having a good sex life. So how about checking some of the ancient secrets that can really save your sex life in the following paragraphs: (more…)

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Effects of Climate Change on West Nile Virus

A study projects how climate change may affect virus-carrying mosquitoes across the southern U.S. Changes are expected to vary with region, and the southern states should see a trend toward longer seasons of mosquito activity and smaller midsummer mosquito populations

The varied influence of climate change on temperature and precipitation may have an equally wide-ranging effect on the spread of West Nile virus, suggesting that public health efforts to control the virus will need to take a local rather than global perspective, according to a study published this week in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (more…)

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UCLA researchers describe new form of irritable bowel syndrome

UCLA researchers have described a new form of irritable bowel syndrome that occurs after an acute bout of diverticulitis, a finding that may help lead to better management of symptoms and relief for patients.

The discovery of this new condition, called post-diverticulitis irritable bowel syndrome (PDV–IBS), validates the irritable bowel symptoms that many patients report long after suffering a bout of diverticulitis but that many physicians have waved off as being part of the original condition, said Dr. Brennan Spiegel, an associate professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and senior author of the research. (more…)

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