A hallucinatory party drug could point the way to the first new treatments for depression in a generation. Scientists have discovered that ketamine (“Special K”), which club-goers take for dream-like highs, also improves mood disorders by repairing damaged connections in the brain. What’s more, ketamine works within hours as opposed to weeks— even for people whose mood disorders have proved […]
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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 […]
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Spending evenings in front of a glowing computer, TV, or cellphone screen can put you at risk of depression, Science News reports. Nighttime exposure to light from gadgets has already been shown to contribute to insomnia, cancer, obesity, and diabetes. Now, a new study shows that screen glow can cause mood-related changes in the brain. For weeks, researchers exposed hamsters […]
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A new study has found the strongest link yet between air pollution and autism, which experts now say affects one in 50 U.S. schoolchildren. Pregnant women who lived in areas with high levels of diesel exhaust and airborne mercury were found to be twice as likely to have a child with autism as those living in places with the lowest […]
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If you’re worried about infertility, don’t try to Google the term with a computer on your lap, says the London Telegraph. A new experiment suggests that radiation from a single Wi-Fi-enabled laptop may be strong enough to cause cell damage in sperm. Argentine researchers took samples of ejaculated semen and left them directly under a computer—simulating holding a laptop directly […]
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■ A star college athlete has turned down a chance at sporting glory to donate bone marrow to a stranger. Cameron Lyle, a shot-putter at the University of New Hampshire, added his DNA to the federal bone marrow registry two years ago and promptly forgot about it. But this month, he discovered his marrow matched that of a 28-year-old leukemia […]
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As the world advances with more and more handheld devices, ‘Text Neck’ is becoming a world-wide health concern, affecting millions of all ages and from all walks of life. Widespread overuse of handheld mobile technology is resulting in a harmful and dangerous physical condition on the human body, which is known as ‘Text Neck’. The term, and the health condition, is […]
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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 […]
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People who use sleeping pills regularly are far more likely to die prematurely than those who don’t, according to a new study. Researchers compared the health records of more than 10,000 sleeping-pill users with those of other patients of similar ages and health histories who didn’t use the drugs. They found that the heaviest sleeping-pill users were five times more […]
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Women who are trying to get pregnant through IVF (in vitro fertilization) are finding that if they eat too many fruits and vegetables that are sprayed with pesticides might be the reason they can’t conceive. A study of Pesticides and IVF was conducted on 325 women trying to conceive. They were given questionnaires to fill out with the information regarding […]
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