Health & Medicine

Nov

2020

Do Chubby Babies Make for Chubby Toddlers and Overweight Adults?

Discover, January 3 2011.

Most children shed their “baby fat.” But researchers say that in more and more cases, chubby babies (which are about 30 percent of all babies) are primed for obesity later in life.

“We are certainly not saying that overweight babies are doomed to be obese adults,” study researcher Brian Moss, PhD, of Detroit’s Wayne State University tells WebMD. “But we did find some evidence that being overweight at 9 months of age is a predictor of being overweight or obese later in childhood.” Read More >

Nov

2020

Are Antibiotic-Infused Products Causing Allergies in Kids?

Discover, November 30 2010.

Cleanliness is a virtue, but it’s possible to overdo it–that’s the message from a new study, which found that antibacterial soap may be doing teenagers more harm than good. The study found that the more teenagers are exposed to the antibiotic triclosan, the more likely they are to suffer from allergies and hayfever.

The researchers also looked at the effects of the widely used plastic chemical Bisphenol A (BPA), and found signs that teenagers with more BPA exposure may have immune system problems. The study was the first of its kind to examine the link between these two chemicals and immune dysfunction, which had only previously been studied in animals. Both chemicals are endocrine-disruptors, which means they may mimic or interfere with the body’s natural hormones. Read More >

Nov

2020

Once-a-Day Pill Reduces HIV Infections—Would People Actually Take It?

Discover, November 24 2010.

A drug called Truvada seems to be able to prevent HIV infection from taking hold in the body when taken regularly. The once-a-day pill combines two anti-retroviral drugs, and was found to reduce new HIV infections in a study of 2,500 gay men. But there are two big issues: compliance and cost.

In the study, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, men who took the pill were 44 percent less likely to contract the disease than those on placebo. But when the researchers looked only at the men who took the pill faithfully, the number jumped to 90 percent. Read More >

Nov

2020

Study: A Redesigned Combat Helmet Could Prevent Brain Injuries

Discover, November 23 2010.

Traumatic brain injury has become the signature war wound for soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan–and new research suggests that soldiers may not be adequately protected against the explosions that cause these injuries. By modeling how blast waves propagate through a soldier’s head, an MIT research group found that current combat helmets don’t offer much protection, because the blast waves from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) can enter the skull through the face.

“There’s a passageway through those soft tissues directly into the brain tissue, without having to go through bone or anything hard,” said Raul Radovitzky, an aeronautical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Read More >

Jan

2011

Young Adults and Monogamy: ‘It’s Complicated’

LiveScience, January 20 2011.

To many young adult couples, the status of their relationship is a little vague. In a small study, about 40 percent of young couples had differing opinions about how exclusive their relationship was, and even among those who were on the same page, about 30 percent reported having cheated.

While monogamy is rare in the animal kingdom, for humans it has the practical value of being one of the easiest ways to protect against sexually transmitted diseases. Cheating and miscommunication in ostensibly exclusive relationships could trigger health issues, the study researchers say. Read More >

Jan

2011

River Blindness Parasite Relies on Bacteria to Fool Host

LiveScience, January 19 2011.

Even in the strange world of symbiosis, in which a pair of organisms can depend on each other to live, this one’s a whopper: Bacteria living inside a parasitic worm help create a cloak, shielding the worm from the immune system of its hosts (which, in this case, turn out to be us).

The worm in question is Onchocerca volvus, a parasitic nematode that causes river blindness. The worm is transmitted to humans by blackfly bites, and it has infected about 18 million people, most of them in Africa. It causes an itchy rash, nodules and, in some 270,000 cases, blindness. Read More >

Jan

2011

Cocaine Vaccine Could Stop Addiction in Its Tracks

Discover, January 6 2011.

By combining a cocaine analog with part of a common cold virus, researchers have created a “cocaine vaccine” that tricks the body into attacking the drug, neutralizing its high-giving powers. It has only been tested in mice so far, but the results are good:

“Our very dramatic data shows that we can protect mice against the effects of cocaine, and we think this approach could be very promising in fighting addiction in humans,” study researcher Ronald Crystal, a professor of genetic medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, said in a statement. Read More >

Jan

2011

Drug Users Are Mining the Scientific Literature for “Legal Highs”

Discover, January 5 2011.

When it comes to recreational drugs, many assume that most of the dangerous compounds that people get high on are illegal. But drug makers, dealers, and users know better. They are mining the scientific literature for psychoactive drugs, making them in kitchen labs, and selling them to users on the street. And though this poses a real risk for users, it’s perfectly legal.

Purdue University chemist David Nichols says he’s haunted by the knowledge that his scientific research has led to unsafe–and sometimes even deadly–drug use. Read More >

Jan

2011

Power Balance: Our Product Is Backed by “No Credible Scientific Evidence”

Discover, January 5 2011.

In a completely shocking and unexpected turn of events, the company behind Power Balance wristbands has officially admitted that the product isn’t backed by any scientific studies–and that the company’s advertisements were misleading. And right after the holographic technology to improve “balance, strength and energy” was named CNBC’s Sports Product of 2010! Did you catch that? That was sarcasm.

And while we here at DISCOVER may have our own opinions, the product was endorsed by SHAQ (whose name is also spelled in all caps). SHAQ, how could you lie to us after we supported you through the Kazaam! days? Power Balance claims that the holograms (which are exactly like the ones in your credit cards) embedded in their wristbands or pendants have some sort of “energy flow” which can be manipulated to “resonate” with the body’s natural “energy flow.” Read More >

Nov

2010

Airline Passenger Refuses to Be Groped by Security; Becomes a Folk Hero

Discover, November 15 2010.

John Tyner missed his flight to South Dakota for a pheasant hunting trip with his father-in-law. He wasn’t late to the airport, he didn’t get lost in the terminal. He never made it into the terminal because he wouldn’t partake in either a whole body scan or a physical pat-down of his genitals. A

fter arriving at the airport, Tyner was pulled aside to go through a “whole body scan,” an radiation-based machine that takes an image of your body under your clothes. He “opted out” of the scan only to realize the alternative is just as bad. He asked the TSA officer who was patting him down not to touch his privates. Actually, he said: “If you touch my junk, I’ll have you arrested.” The matter quickly escalated, according to his blog post about the incident. Read More >