Disease linked with teenage kissing: "Intimate kissing with multiple partners almost quadruples a teenager's risk of developing meningitis, research has suggested. Young children and adolescents face the greatest risks of meningococcal disease, which can cause serious disability and death. Now researchers have found that, in teenagers, kissing is a major factor is helping the disease spread. Rates of meningitis - which is the inflammation of the lining around the brain and spinal cord - increased significantly in England and the US in the 1990s. The introduction of the meningitis C vaccine in the UK has helped numbers drop, but other forms of the infection remain a major problem. The latest research, published in the British Medical Journal, examined possible risk factors in youngsters aged 15 to 19 who were admitted to hospital with meningococcal disease in six regions of England between January 1999 and June 2000."

Money drives us crazy: it's official: "Late at night, in a basement laboratory at Stanford University, Brian Knutson made a startling discovery: our brains lust after money, just like they crave sex. It was May 2004, and Knutson, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the California university, was sending student volunteers through a high-power imaging machine called an MRI. Deep inside each subject's head, electrical currents danced through a bundle of neurons about the size and shape of a peanut. Blood was rushing to the brain's pleasure centre as students executed mock stock and bond trades. On Knutson's screen, this region of the brain, the core of human desire, flashed canary yellow. The pleasure of orgasm, the high from cocaine, the rush of buying Google at $US450 a share - the same neural network governs all three, Knutson, 38, concluded. What's more, our primal pleasure circuits can, and often do, override our seat of reason, the brain's frontal cortex, the professor says. In other words, stocks, like sex, sometimes drive us crazy".


More booze means LESS crime! "Violent crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales fell by 11% at the end of last year in spite of a liberalisation of licensing laws, according to new figures. The Home Office has said figures for the last three months of 2005 show an 11% overall drop in violent crime, with a 21% drop in serious violent crime, compared with the same period in 2004. The figures include a six-week period when the police were given 2.5 million pounds to target alcohol-related crime. New licensing laws came into force in November to allow for extended drinking hours, amid warnings of increased alcohol-related disorder.

How disappointing to the food faddists! "A diet high in fruit and vegetables and low in fat may be seen as the panacea for all ills, but research questions its effectiveness in tackling some of the deadliest diseases in women. Three studies, as part of the Women's Health Initiative study in the United States and involving 50,000 post-menopausal women, indicate that eating at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day and low-fat foods does not reduce the risk of heart attacks, strokes and breast and bowel cancers. The women, who were tracked for more than eight years, showed little evidence of greater disease protection from cutting back on fat - despite theories of the dramatic impact that this can have on health".


'Banned' Aphrodisiac Soda To Be Sold In Stores: "A new soda promising to sexually arouse the person drinking it will soon be available in stores nationwide, according to a Local 6 News report. The drink, called Turn On, is made with guarana, ginseng and caffeine. The soda was banned in France and Denmark, but makers insist it is safe and works as an aphrodisiac. People who have tested the soda said it tastes like cherry soda. "We watched a film and then afterwards I felt like my senses were more like turned on, like I could feel more, I felt more on my skin," a tester said. Doctors have already warned that the drink is not for everyone. Children, pregnant women and people with high blood pressure and diabetes should avoid the drink, according to the report".

Painkiller now bad for you: "The anti-inflammatory drug Ibuprofen, commonly sold as Nurofen, should be banned from supermarket sales because it may be unsuitable for up to one in five people, according to new research. Pharmacist Gregory Peterson, of the University of Tasmania, has warned that sales of the popular drug, which has been widely available since 2003, should be monitored because of links to an increased risk of miscarriage, gastrointestinal problems, heart attacks and asthma. "When you add up all the people for whom ibuprofen may not be suitable -- for example, those with asthma, gastric ulcer, pregnancy, cardiac disease -- it means ibuprofen may not be suitable for one in five adult Australians," Professor Peterson writes in this month's edition of the Australian Journal of Pharmacy. "The ibuprofen manufacturers and self-medication advocates argue that all these warnings appear on the pack. They point out -- rightly -- that ibuprofen has a positive safety profile when used as directed in patients without contraindications.

Drug side effects 'mimic dementia': Common drugs used to treat depression, Parkinson's disease and allergies can produce side effects that can be mistaken for early dementia, scientists said today. They said doctors should be aware the drugs, known as anticholinergics, can cause confusion, memory loss and disorientation and question patients about medication they are taking before prescribing drugs for early dementia. "A large number of elderly people are taking medications that can mimic early dementia and are likely to be classed as having early dementia," Karen Ritchie, of the Hospital La Colombiere in Montpellier, France, said."

Take a Hike, Nick Kristof

Post lifted from The Locker Room

Adding to my annoyances this morning is Nick Kristof's column in today's NYTimes. It's behind the wall of sleep, but I was able to read it here (no guarantees how long it will be available).

Kristof thinks we're all too fat and that this is a public health crisis. He says higher cigarette taxes and mandatory seatbelt laws have done more to improve the health of Americans in the last decade than anything doctors or pharmaceutical companies have done.

He then suggests such prescriptions as:

• Ban soda, potato chips and other unhealthy snacks from American schools, and discourage them in the workplace.


• Sell cigarettes only in pharmacies and raise cigarette taxes.


• Tax junk foods.


• Promote jogging and biking. Since we pay for all the consequences of
  inactivity (like those heart bypasses), we should encourage exercise.
  We should build more bicycle paths and turn more streets over to
  bikers, skaters and pedestrians - starting with Sixth Avenue in
  Manhattan.


• Distribute fruits and veggies to certain low-income people, as Maine does in FarmShare, a potent antipoverty program.


• Expand P.E.


• Design better stairways.

Only the better stairways idea is free of government involvement. Expanded P.E. is one of twenty programs NYTimes columnists have suggested for schools in the past year (together with showing BMI on report cards, encouraging girls to go into math and science, helping boys behave better in class, etc.). The others go back to the moral free-riding of paternalistic liberalism.

If obesity is so bad (and in most cases it isn't), allow health insurance companies to charge bigger people more money.
If physical activity is good, allow health insurance companies to provide different and cheaper policies for more active people. The president's likely call tonight for large Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) might be a first step, so too might John Shadegg's proposal for a national health insurance market.

Now lack of sun can cause schizophrenia: "Women thinking of becoming pregnant have been urged to ensure they are getting enough vitamin D, as findings suggest deficiency in pregnancy may cause the baby to develop schizophrenia in later life. The results, unveiled at a conference in Sydney yesterday, suggests vitamin D - previously associated mainly with building strong bones and preventing rickets - may have a far wider role than experts thought. Vitamin D is made in the skin when exposed to sunlight. Some foods - mainly oily fish and some fortified milk and dairy products - also contain the nutrient, which can also be taken in dietary supplements. Lead researcher Darryl Eyles, of the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research, said that because the latest results were based on work on rats, a link between vitamin D deficiency and schizophrenia in humans remained to be proved. "However, there are compelling indicators that women considering becoming pregnant should ensure they have moderate exposure to sunlight, or supplement their diets with vitamin D-fortified dairy products before they conceive," he said. "It is becoming clearer that low developmental vitamin D is a candidate risk factor for later onset neuropsychotic disease (such as schizophrenia) and degenerative conditions such as multiple sclerosis. This research clearly has emerging implications for public health interventions."


A sheepish Prince: "The Prince of Wales did not feel in the least sheepish about donning a black tie, leaving his wife at home and going to the inaugural dinner of his new club at the Ritz last night. Ever the friend of the struggling farmer, the Prince has become patron of the Mutton Renaissance Club, a body dedicated to restoring elderly sheep meat to its rightful place on the national menu. You can probably guess what they had to eat. John Williams, head chef at the Ritz, conjured up Trilogy of Mutton Prince of Wales, three ways of cooking two-year old Ovis aries using meat from the Prince's own farm at Highgrove and from producers in mid-Wales and Cumbria. A sheep is regarded as a lamb until it is about 10 months old. It then becomes a hoggett, and at the age of 2 its flesh becomes mutton. Most of us can take or leave mutton, the meat of old England until it was usurped by roast beef in the 18th century. The Prince takes it, even telling a group of schoolchildren this week that it was his favourite food".

Now booze gives you cancer: "Another study in the medical journal The Lancet Oncology found that consumption of alcohol was linked to cancers of the oral cavity, pharynx, larynx, oesophagus, liver, colon, rectum and breast. The findings came on top of research by the World Health Organisation which estimated the number of deaths caused by alcohol worldwide at more than 1.8 million. However The Lancet article recommended people should drink in moderation rather than avoid alcohol altogether. Although total avoidance was optimum for cancer control, it could not be recommended for public health in general because of the potential protective effects of moderate alcohol consumption against cardiovascular disease".

Dorian Grey lives! Your face reflects your life: "Your face really is your fortune. If you are married, of a higher social class and have fewer than four children, then you probably look younger than you actually are. By contrast, significant weight loss, a fall in social status and being a lonely singleton can add years to a person's appearance. A new study has quantified the impact that a combination of lifestyle, medical history and diet have on how your looks age. The findings show a youthful face is an accurate indicator of good health. "It is a lot more dangerous looking one year older than being one year older," said Dr Kaare Christensen, of the Danish Twin Registry, who led the study, to be published in the journal Age and Ageing. "If you are not depressed, not lonely, not a smoker and not too skinny, you are basically doing well," she said. By contrast, looking old for one's age was linked to increased mortality. Marriage is more beneficial for a woman, knocking almost two years from her apparent age, but only one year from a man's appearance".