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Bad News About Good Cholesterol
Remember good cholesterol? You know, HDL cholesterol, the kind that was associated with reduced risk of stroke? Forget it. Now comes a study from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute suggesting that people with genes that boost HDL levels do not, in fact, have a lower risk of heart attacks. Strange. The Boston Globe reports that the scientists in looked at a gene variation that raises HDL levels, and should consequently give people a 13 percent decreased [...]
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Sports That Don’t Break Your Bones Make Them Stronger
What doesn’t break your bones makes them stronger. Especially if what doesn’t break your bones is a load-bearing sport like basketball or volleyball. How to we know? Because when researchers at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden measured the bone mass of more than 800 young men and studied their exercise habits, they found that after five years, the men who did a lot of load-bearing activities at the start of the study and those who increased their amounts of [...]
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Camel Jumping Strengthens Core
Sports physiologists have yet to analyze the muscle groups that benefit most from the popular Yemenite entertainment plainly named “camel jumping,” but we’re guessing it’s good for the core, and not so good for the ankles. The New York Times’ Lens gives us an enlightening photo essay, shot, admittedly, by a photographer in Yemen who got bored waiting around for actual news. Anyone up for an over-50 team?
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Email Dependence Is Bad For Your Health
Don’t have time to read SportsGeezer because you just got an email? That’s a bad sign, according to researchers at the University of California at Irvine. Researchers at the school attached heart rate sensors to workers in a suburban office, and divided the users into two groups; one with email, one deprived. A university news release reports that people who read email were found to work in a steady “high alert” state, with more constant heart rates. Those removed from [...]
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“Workout Boosters” Boost Blood Pressure Too
The names of the products—Jacked3D, Oxy Elite Pro, Code Red, and Nitric Blast, should offer some clues to the kind of science behind their sales; the science of marketing. Now comes the science of medicine, brought to bear on these “workout boosters” by the Food and Drug Administration, which determined that the active ingredient in the supplements, dimethylamylamine or DMAA, said in marketing materials to increase energy, concentration and metabolism, actually increases blood pressure. The FDA has sent letters to [...]
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Latest Treatment For Chronic Pain: Don’t Think About It
Researchers in the psychiatry and behavioral science department of Johns Hopkins Medical School have some radical advice for sufferers of chronic pain: don’t think about it. Isn’t that what my mother used to say? Futurity reports that researchers at the school surveyed 214 people with myofascial temporomandibular disorder, or TMD, serious facial and jaw pain, about their sleep quality, depression, pain levels, and emotional responses to pain, including whether they ruminate on it or exaggerate it. Guess what? The scientists [...]
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For Heart Health, Coffee Not Soda
Why is is unsurprising that soda has been associated with a higher risk of stroke? Perhaps because it has long been associated with weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and coronary artery disease. Hmmm. Now, finally, comes a study from the Cleveland Clinic’s Wellness Institute and Harvard University, showing not only that sugar-sweetened and low-calorie sodas is associated with a higher risk of stroke, but that coffee, either caffeinated or decaffeinated, is associated with a lower risk. A [...]
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Would You Give Up Your Arms And Legs To Live?
Would you give up your arms and legs to live? Will Lautzenheiser, a 36-year-old instructor at the Montana State University, made that choice after his body was invaded by a flesh eating bacteria. Now Lautzenheiser is in the sites of the limb transplant team and Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who would like to replace some of his sacrificed limbs. Read the whole story here.
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