Health news
Health news in brief
Heard the one about?
Moderate amounts of alcohol can cause some hearing loss, according
to a study in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
German researchers found that alcohol has a cumulative effect on the
auditory brain stem, so that it takes longer to process sound. It may
mean that drinkers have problems understanding people talking quickly
or in noisy environments.
Love is ... good health
Children who are well-loved have better mental and physical health
as adults, reports Psychology and Aging. Adults who said they had lots
of parental affection tended to have higher self-esteem, better relationships,
and to deal with stress better. Those who felt less loved had more depressive
symptoms and ailments such as arthritis and high blood pressure.
Elixir of life
Switching to a low-calorie diet might extend the life expectancy of
older people, suggests a study published in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences. When mice with the equivalent human age of 60 to
65 years were switched to a low-calorie diet, their life span increased
by an average of 40 per cent.
Doctor's orders
Listen to music while you work out to boost mental powers. A trial
with heart operation patients found that those who listened to Vivaldi
as they exercised were twice as good in verbal tests as those who exercised
only, says the journal Heart and Lung.
Breast cancer
The majority of women presenting with early breast cancer will not
suffer a relapse, thanks to better screening and public awareness, improved
diagnostic facilities and treatments, including surgery, radiation therapy,
chemotherapy and hormonal therapies. Last week’s feature on Bondranat
inaccurately stated that 75 per cent of women who have breast cancer
develop bone cancer: this figure should have referred only to the minority
of patients whose breast cancer has returned. In many of these cases,
the bone cancer is contained.
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