Worried that your painkiller could trigger a heart attack or dangerous stomach bleeding? New reports on painkiller risks, based on reviews of dozens of studies including hundreds of thousands of patients, indicate most patients should try naproxen, an older anti-inflammatory drug best known under the brand Aleve. Experts say it doesn’t raise heart attack or stroke risk - a major worry for older people - and naproxen is inexpensive because generic versions have been around for years. Available over the counter, it’s taken by millions of Americans. The drawback is that like most painkillers, it can irritate the stomach, so doctors say some people may also need to take one of the newer acid reflux drugs. ‘I do think we should start with naproxen in the vast majority of cases,’ said Dr. Steven Nissen, head of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic and president of the American College of Cardiology. ‘It’s about balancing the cardiovascular and gastrointestinal risk.’ The new reports were published Tuesday ahead of schedule on the Web site of the Journal of the American Medical Association because of their public health implications. They will be published in the Oct. 4 issue of the […]
Teachers take note: Students who seem to be ignoring you could actually be processing complex information in an attempt to come up with an answer. Researchers recently discovered that when school children avert their gaze away from a teacher or other person’s face, they are much more likely to come up with the correct answer. Turns out facial expressions can be distracting. The research was published last week in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology. Adults, too Scientists have known that adults tend to turn their gaze away from a questioner’s face when asked a thought-provoking question. While adults practice this look-away about 85 percent of the time, children five years old and younger do it just 40 percent of the time. To find out how so-called ‘gaze aversion’ impacts concentration, psychologists recruited 20 five-year-old children from a primary school in Stirlingshire. They trained 10 of the students to look away when pondering a question. ‘We had them look at a blank piece of paper on the floor,’ said co-author Gwyneth Doherty-Sneddon, a psychologist at Stirling University in Scotland. The other 10 students received no training. Then, the scientists asked each child a series […]
New Zealand women now have access to Gardasil, the world’s first cervical cancer vaccine. There is now some debate about how best to deliver the vaccine. The target age for administering Gardasil is about 11 because the vaccine works best when given to girls before they begin having sex and run the risk of HPV infection. It has been licensed for use in females aged between nine and 26. The course of three injections costs $450 and has not yet been approved for inclusion in the government-funded schedule of childhood vaccinations. A Health Ministry committee is assessing whether to add Gardasil to the schedule, along with other vaccinations designed to protect against chicken pox, rotavirus, pneumococcal disease and types of meningococcal disease other than the B strain. Immunisation Advisory Centre director Nikki Turner said she was keen to see all these vaccines, which had been proven safe and effective, added to the childhood schedule. ‘New Zealand has to think very hard and fast about preventive health and where these vaccines fit,’ she told the New Zealand Herald. When Medsafe approved the vaccine in July, principal technical specialist Dr Stewart Jessamine said study […]
The lifespans of the healthiest Americans are more than 30 years longer than those of the least healthy, despite more than two decades of efforts to reduce the disparities, Harvard University researchers reported Monday. At one end of the scale are Asian-American women living in Bergen County, N.J., who have an average life expectancy of 91 years, according to the report published in the journal Public Library of Science Medicine. At the other extreme are American Indians in South Dakota, whose average life expectancy is only 58 years. ‘That’s comparable to the life expectancy in Southeast Asia and in sub-Saharan Africa,’ said Dr. Richard M. Suzman, associate director of the National Institute on Aging, which partially funded the study. The difference is not directly related to income, insurance, infant mortality, AIDS or violence, factors most commonly thought to be associated with such disparities. The most important contributors to increased mortality, in order of importance, are tobacco, alcohol, obesity, high-blood pressure, high cholesterol, diet and physical inactivity, said Dr. Christopher J. L. Murray of the Harvard School of Public Health, who led the study. ‘Those seven are likely to explain a lot of the patterns that […]
WASHINGTON — Humans are largely to blame for the recent trend toward more powerful hurricanes, a group of 19 American and European scientists declared Monday. In a paper appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists claim to have established a solid chain linking human burning of fossil fuels, global warming, higher ocean temperatures, and the intensity and duration of recent hurricanes such as Katrina and Wilma. The scientists’ key finding was that as sea surface temperatures rise and fall, the maximum wind speed of hurricanes goes up and down in step with them. ‘Human-caused changes in greenhouse gases are the main driver’ of warmer waters in the tropical Atlantic and northwestern Pacific oceans, where hurricanes and cyclones are born, the paper says. Its principal author was Benjamin Santer, a senior climate researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. Other contributors come from 11 different laboratories in the United States, Germany and England. Their report is unlikely to end the controversy over the connection between human burning of fossil fuels in cars, buildings and factories, the warming of the world’s air and seas, and the surge in category 4 […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
