GLOBAL HEALTH CARE
The Commonwealth Fund ranked health care systems in 11 wealthy nations according to criteria such as quality and access. Below, a sampling of the rankings:
Read moreTag: medical
Mapping human emotions
When you’re angry, your face, head, and arms grow hot When you’re depressed, a cold numbness grips your head and arms. Love triggers a warm glow throughout your upper body, especially around your heart. Human emotions, a new study has found, are directly linked to sensations in specific body parts, and the map is largely the same across different cultures. […]
Read moreAcquire Perfect Pitch From A Pill
Only 1 in 10,000 people have absolute or “perfect” pitch, the ability to hear a tone and tell what note it is. This unusual ability is acquired early in life, typically learned during training at about four to six years of age, and there are no records of adults acquiring the ability. But a new study shows that people who […]
Read moreKim gets a “loub job”
■ Kim Kardashian underwent special toe liposuction so that she could fit into a stylish pair of stilettos for her recent wedding to rapper Kanye West, said Look (U.K.).The reality star spent $5,000 on an operation in which podiatrists “use tiny instruments to remove a small amount of fat— typically from the big toes,” said cosmetic surgeon Wendy Lewis. The […]
Read moreExperimental cancer treatment
Just eight months ago, 6-year-old Emma Whitehead was gravely ill with leukemia and running out of options.Two rounds of chemotherapy had already failed, and a bone marrow transplant was no longer possible, The NewYorkTimes reports. So her parents opted for an experimental therapy developed at the University of Pennsylvania that aimed to enlist Emma’s own immune system in the fight […]
Read morePopping so many pills is killing us
What will it take for France to get serious about regulating prescription drugs? asked Sauveur Boukris. We French love to take pills; we are the biggest consumers of medicines in Europe. French doctors “tend to prescribe far more heavily” than their foreign colleagues, dispensing four or five drugs to treat any given malady, while German or Dutch doctors prescribe two […]
Read morePreventing reefer madness
Marijuana may now be legal in Colorado, said Jordan Weissmann, but do purchasers really know what they’re buying? New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd highlighted that problem last week by describing what happened when she went to Denver to sample edible marijuana. Dowd ate too much of a weed-laced candy bar, which had no dosing instructions, and spent eight hours […]
Read moreA remedy for existential angst
If thinking about your own death freaks you out, there may be over-the-counter solution. A new study shows that the main ingredient in Tylenol, acetaminophen, can help calm existential dread in the same way it reduces the physical pain of a headache. To get volunteers worried about their own mortality, University of British Columbia researchers asked them to watch scenes […]
Read moreThe pill and prostate cancer
Hormones found in birth control pills could be polluting the water supply and increasing men’s risk of prostate cancer. That’s the suspicion of Canadian researchers who found that countries that have the highest percentage of women using oral contraceptives also have the highest rates of men with prostate cancer. Women who take birth control pills excrete estrogen from the medication […]
Read moreKorea’s Deadly Fixation On Plastic Surgery
A fixation on plastic surgery is slaughtering Koreans, said the Chosun Ilbo. “There is presumably no other nation where plastic specialists place advertisements on the sides of buses,” with before and after after the photos enticing individuals to extend their eyes or narrow their noses. Again and again, the genuine “after” photograph would portray a casket. Simply a week ago, […]
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