It’s true-you might die of loneliness, but not until you’re older. In a new University of Chicago study of men and women 50 to 68 years old, those who scored highest on measures of loneliness also had higher blood pressure. And high blood pressure is a major risk factor for heart disease, the number one killer in many industrialized nations and number two the United States. Lonely people have blood pressure readings as much as 30 points higher than non-lonely people, said the study leaders Louise Hawkley and Christopher Masi. Blood pressure differences between lonely and non-lonely people were smallest at age 50 and greatest among the oldest people tested. Richard Suzman of the National Institute on Aging, which funded this research, said he was ‘surprised by the magnitude of the relationship between loneliness and hypertension in this well-controlled, cross-sectional study.’ Nothing worse The researchers separated loneliness out from depression, age, race, gender, weight, alcohol consumption, smoking, blood pressure medications, hostility, stress, social support and other factors. Also, loneliness does eat at you. The morbid health effect of loneliness accumulates gradually and faster as you get older, the study found. Loneliness was worse for […]
ST. LOUIS — Going to the hospital is rarely fun. If you weigh over 300 pounds like Beth Henk, it can be embarrassing. ‘I’ve flipped an exam table - I sat on the end of it and it just flipped up,’ said Henk, whose weight peaked at 745. When her son was born three years ago, ‘I had to sit in the hospital bed the whole time - the hospital’s rocker wouldn’t fit my butt.’ Today Henk helps Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis find better ways to deal with the growing number of very obese patients, an issue for many U.S. hospitals. Barnes-Jewish is replacing beds and wheelchairs with bigger models, widening doorways, buying larger CT scan machines, even replacing slippers and gowns. Last year, patient care director Colleen Becker decided to check the numbers. She looked at a daily hospital census - about one-third of the 900 patients weighed 350 pounds or more. Startled, Becker checked another date, then another. The numbers were consistent. On some days, half the patients were obese. Some weighed 500 pounds or more. ‘We ran the data again to make sure we weren’t hallucinating,’ Becker said. ‘We weren’t. So […]
Every year, thousands of British babies who should be boys are born girls. The answer to this mystery could lie in a small town in Canada. Something very strange is happening in a small but highly polluted Canadian community. And it may explain why every year thousands of British babies who should be boys are born as girls instead. Young boys are becoming hard to find on the Chippewa Indian reservation in the gritty town of Sarnia, in Ontario’s ‘Chemical Valley’. It boasts four children’s softball teams, but three of them are made up entirely of girls. Research shows that the number of boys being born to the community has been dropping precipitously for the past 13 years, while the proportion of baby girls has risen. Now there are twice as many female births as male ones, though nature normally keeps the sexes in balance. Scientists increasingly believe that pollution is to blame and that what has happened here – and among some other highly contaminated groups of people in other countries – may solve an enduring mystery of ‘missing boys’ in maternity units throughout the industrialised world. Normally, and with remarkable consistency around […]
BAGHDAD — The war in Iraq has entered a bloodier phase, with American casualties steadily declining over the past five months while the killings of Iraqi civilians have risen tremendously in sectarian violence, spurring tens of thousands of Iraqis to flee from mixed Shiite-Sunni areas. The new pattern, detailed in casualty and migration statistics and in interviews with American commanders and Iraqi officials, has led to further separation of Shiite and Sunni Arabs, moving the country toward a de facto partitioning along sectarian and ethnic lines – an outcome that the Bush administration has doggedly worked to avoid over the past three years The nature of the Iraq war has been changing since at least late autumn, when political friction between Sunni Arabs and the majority Shiites rose even as American troops began to carry out a long-term plan to decrease their street presence. But the killing accelerated most sharply after the bombing on Feb. 22 of a revered Shiite shrine, which unleashed a wave of sectarian bloodletting. About 900 Iraqi civilians were killed in March, up from about 700 the month before, according to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an independent organization that tracks deaths. Meanwhile, […]
The Dalai Lama says that were Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden killed that hatred would cause another 10 like him to spring up, in an interview with a British newspaper. The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader told The Daily Telegraph that terrorists should be treated humanely. He also revealed the workings of his relationship with US President George W. Bush, said Westerners had become too self-absorbed and repeated his opposition to homosexuality in a wide-ranging interview. The Dalai Lama said modern terrorism was born out of jealousy of Western lifestyles. ‘Fundamentalism is terrifying because it is based purely on emotion, rather than intelligence,’ the 70-year-old monk said at the seat of his government-in-exile in the northern Indian hilltop town of Dharamsala. ‘It prevents followers from thinking as individuals and about the good of the world. ‘This new terrorism has been brewing for many years. Much of it is caused by jealousy and frustration at the West because it looks so highly developed and successful on television. Leaders in the East use religion to counter that, to bind these countries together.’ Terrorists, he warned, must be treated humanely. ‘Otherwise, the problem will escalate. If […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
