New Hampshire Health News Digest

SpringerLink - Journal Article : "Carl Goldberg Abstract Our consciousness of time is created by our longing over duration for the care of a nurturing other. By means of a case study, it is shown here that the experience of abject loneliness is dependent upon a disturbed consciousness of time: unmet needs over the passage of time. Loneliness as such is the denial of the present moment—its possibilities and its demands. The loss of the present moment fosters a disturbed judgment of time: the sense that the present moment has stopped—is virtually endless, since the present moment has no future toward which to intend. This time disturbance diminishes the subject's capacity for agency. loneliness - dread - exclusionary conjunctive speech - care - shame"

Fast-food binge harms liver, but boosts good cholesterol: study - Yahoo! News PARIS (AFP) - A month-long diet of fast food and no exercise led to dangerously high levels of enzymes linked to liver damage, in an unusual experiment inspired by the docu-movie "Supersize Me." ADVERTISEMENT But investigators, reporting their findings on Thursday, were also stunned to find that a relentless regimen of burgers, fries and soda also boosted so-called good cholesterol, seen as a key measure of cardiovascular health. Researchers in Sweden asked 12 men and six women in their twenties, all slim and in good health, to eat two meals per day at McDonalds, Burger King or other fast-food restaurants over four weeks. The volunteers were also told to refrain from exercising. The goal was to increase body weight by 10 to 15 percent to measure the impact of an abrupt surge in calorie intake. Blood samples were taken before, during and after the experiment to monitor levels of an enzyme called ala...

SunHerald.com : Antidepressants Can Increase Depression, Impulsivity and Suicide Risk by Decreasing Dopamine

swanksalot: Circadian Riddems and Spare Tires For some people, packing on unwanted pounds might have more to do with the functioning of their internal body clocks than with willpower. Researchers from Northwestern University and Evanston Northwestern Healthcare have been studying how a faulty circadian clock, which regulates different parts of the body, including the mechanisms that control sleep and hunger, can damage the metabolism thus raising the risk for obesity and diabetes. [From Researchers: Faulty body clock may lead to obesity, diabetes -- chicagotribune.com] snip So far, 32 epidemiological studies have shown an association between inadequate sleep and higher body-mass index, a measure of overweight, said Dr. Eve Van Cauter, a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago. Van Cauter studies the effect of circadian rhythms on the endocrine system. Van Cauter and her colleagues have published two studies examining the effects of short-term sleep restri...

Retired Teacher Reveals He Was Illiterate Until Age 48 - San Diego News Story - KGTV San Diego John Corcoran graduated from college and taught high school for 17 years without being able to read, write or spell. Corcoran's life of secrecy started at a young age. He said his teachers moved him up from grade to grade. Often placed in what he calls the "dumb row," the images of his tribulations in the classroom are still vividly clear. "I can remember when I was 8 years old saying my prayers at night saying, 'please, God, tomorrow when it's my turn to read please let me read.' You just pretend that you are invisible and when the teacher says, 'Johnnie read,' you just wait the teacher out because you know the teacher has to go away at some point," said Corcoran.

Al-Qaeda leaders admit: "We are in crisis. There is panic and fear" - Times Online Al-Qaeda in Iraq faces an “extraordinary crisis”. Last year's mass defection of ordinary Sunnis from al-Qaeda to the US military “created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight”. The terrorist group's security structure suffered “total collapse”. These are the words not of al-Qaeda's enemies but of one of its own leaders in Anbar province — once the group's stronghold. They were set down last summer in a 39-page letter seized during a US raid on an al-Qaeda base near Samarra in November. The US military released extracts from that letter yesterday along with a second seized in another November raid that is almost as startling. That second document is a bitter 16-page testament written last October by a local al-Qaeda leader near Balad, north of Baghdad. “I am Abu-Tariq, emir of the al-Layin and al-Mashahdah sector,” the author begins. He goes on to describe how his force of ...

Can Sugar Substitutes Make You Fat? - TIME When it comes to dieting, most of us are willing to resort to a trick or two to help us curb our appetite and eat less — drinking water to fill up when we're hungry, for example, or opting for artificial sweeteners instead of sugar to get the same satisfying sweetness without the offending calories. But new research suggests that the body is not so easily fooled, and that sugar substitutes are no key to weight loss — perhaps helping to explain why, despite a plethora of low-calorie food and drink, Americans are heavier than ever. In a series of experiments, scientists at Purdue University compared weight gain and eating habits in rats whose diets were supplemented with sweetened food containing either zero-calorie saccharin or sugar. The report, published in Behavioral Neuroscience, presents some counterintuitive findings: Animals fed with artificially sweetened yogurt over a two-week period consumed more calories and gained more weight — ...

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- The Sun Also Sets Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles. To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined. And they're worried about global cooling, not warming. Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for evidence of an increase in sunspot activity. Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased a...

Toxins may be linked to early puberty - UPI.com Researchers in Italy suggest environmental toxins may be linked to areas where girls have a high incidence of early puberty. The study, published in The Journal of Pediatrics, looked at whether the naturally occurring mycoestrogen zearalenone, or ZEA, produced by the Fusarium fungus species, may be linked to early onset of puberty, known as central precocious puberty. ZEA can be found naturally in the environment, but it also has properties similar to the female reproductive hormone estrogen and is structurally similar to anabolic growth agents used in animal breeding. The researchers studied a group of girls affected by early puberty in Tuscany -- an area with much higher than average incidence of this condition. Six of the 17 girls studied had elevated levels of ZEA. "Although this finding might be incidental, ZEA may be related to central precocious puberty occurrence in girls exposed to mycoestrogens," lead researcher Dr. Fr...

ABC News: Genes May Trump Diet in Obese Kids Diet and lifestyle play a far smaller role than genetic factors in determining whether a child becomes overweight, according to a British study of twins published on Thursday. Researchers looking at more than 5,000 pairs of twins wrote in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that genes account for about three-quarters of the differences in a child's waistline and weight. "Contrary to the widespread assumption that family environment is the key factor in determining weight gain, we found this was not the case," said Jane Wardle, director of Cancer Research UK's Health Behavior Centre, who led the study. Previous studies have pointed to environmental factors as the main cause of obesity, a major problem worldwide that increases the risk later in life of type-2 diabetes, cancer and heart problems. The World Health Organization classifies around 400 million people worldwide as obese, including 200 million children under t...