Happy Nirvana

Middle aged people who are regular heavy smokers have over double the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and various forms of dementia later in life, Finnish researchers report in an article published today in the peer-reviewed medical journal Archives of Internal Medicine. The authors explain that smoking, and in this case specifically heavy smoking (at [...]

Pregnant women who take DHA fish oil capsules during pregnancy do not reduce their risk of developing post-natal depression, nor do the supplements have any effect on the baby’s cognitive and language development during early childhood, researchers from the Women’s and Children’s Health Research Institute, Adelaide, Australia, reported in an article published in the medical [...]

Osteoporosis patients who take bisphosphonates, a widely prescribed class of drugs which is very effective in lowering bone fractures, may increase the risk of atypical femur fractures – unusual but serious thigh bone fractures – if the medication is taken long term, a study revealed. The study, authored by a Task Force (details below) has [...]

We’ve known for some time that how much sleep we get affects how we eat and how fat we get. Now, there’s solid evidence that sleep quantity is linked to diabetes risk. According to a new National Institutes of Health Study published in the Annals of Epidemiology, people who sleep fewer than six hours a [...]

Young children and infants who do not get enough nighttime sleep have a significantly higher risk of becoming obese later on in life – napping does not reduce the obesity risk significantly, reports a study published in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a JAMA/Archives journal. Over the last 20 years obesity rates in the [...]

There are things everyone knows they should do – such as getting regular exercise, watching their weight, and so on. But even though everyone knows about them, sometimes it’s useful to take a closer look at them. There are two reasons for this: First, to remind us of what we should be paying attention to [...]

Ivabradine (Procorala), a heart-rate-lowering medication, considerably lowers cardiovascular death and hospitalization risk when added to standard treatment in patients suffering from heart failure and a high heart rate (pulse rate), an Article reveals in the medical journal The Lancet. Details of a clinical trial were presented at the European Society of Cardiology Annual Congress 2010, [...]

According to a study published last week in British Medical Journal, which reviewed several studies that explored the link between fruit and vegetable consumption and Type 2 diabetes, eating one and a half extra servings of green leafy vegetables cut the risk of diabetes by 14 percent. As if we needed another reason to eat [...]

Photo via fruitforourchildren.com In May 2010, TreeHugger reported on the research linking pesticide exposure and ADHD in children. A study published recently in Environmental Health Perspectives by U.C. Berkeley School of Public Health researchers found that exposure of children to organophosphates while in utero may result in increased likelihood that the child will have ADHD. [...]

Cave Troll from Lord of the Rings via Wikipedia Dan Blankenhorn of Smart Planet was thinking of his commenters when he suggested that “trolls die young”, based on a study researchers of the US National Institute on Aging. They looked at 5,614 Sardinians from four villages, and found that “those who scored high for antagonistic [...]