In one year, 400,000 breast augmentations are done in the United States. This is also the leading cosmetic surgery in North America. The article I read up on was about how studies are finding that breast implants may cause early detection of breast cancer. A group of 40,500 women who got cosmetic surgery between mid 1970s and the end of 1989 and had gotten breast cancer were used to study this topic. They found that in comparing women that got breast implants, and women that got another type of surgery, such as a face lift, had similar yet different forms of cancer. Both groups typically had the same size of tumors, and also the time of diagnosis and treatment of the cancer wasn’t much different either.
What was different was that women who had gotten breast implants were almost 2.5 times likely to have more advanced cancers. This is significant because later stages of cancer tend to be more aggressive. The good news is that 83-84 percent of women in this study survived the cancer.
What do you think about this?
What do you think the publication of this research might lead to?
A recent study that I was reading up on was about the life expectancy of a person, and how it related to their sex life. I found it quite interesting how they compared the average life expectancy of a male or female, and compared it to their responses to sex life-related questions. “One consolidation for women is that many of them seem not to miss it. Men tend to marry younger women, die sooner and care more about sex, the study confirmed” In this article, there were a lot of interesting stats that determined this statement. One of them is that among the people aged 57 to 85 that don’t live with a partner, 57% of the men were interested in sex, and only 11% of women.
Another survey that was done involved two groups of 3,000 people. One group was aged 25-74, and the other was aged 57-85. Of these groups, men who were aged 75-85, 40% were sexually active, and women this age only 17% were. Another peculiar thing is SALE. (Sexually Active Life Expectancy) In men, their SALE was ten years lower than their lifespan, and in women, it was 20 years lower. So, the reason I chose to do this article was I found it amusing, and I’ve never really thought about sexually active life expectancy before.
Does this study surprise you?
Why do you think guys are more sex-driven than women?
A recent study showed that extremes amount of sleep can increase fat accumulation in the body. Who would have thought that getting not enough sleep, or too much sleep would affect your weight? This study showed that people, mostly women, under age 40 are affected by abnormal amounts of fat because they aren’t getting the right amount of sleep. So, it’s not just the fat in food that can make you gain weight.
People who average five hours of sleep or less have an increased amount of fat around the organs, along with people who get more than eight hours of sleep on average. Although, getting less than five hours of sleep tends to cause more damage. They have yet to discover what causes abnormal sleep patterns, but one of the factors is having multiple jobs. Since this discovery, it gives physicians a good reason for considering the sleep patterns of patients, especially those who are facing life transitions, such as college, marriage, or getting pregnant. This article got my attention because I thought it was interesting that sleeping would affect your weight. It also makes me curious about how the normal things we do, like sleep, could change our lives.
Click here to see the article
Do you think you have abnormal sleep patterns?
What do you think are some of the other things that could affect peoples’ sleeping patters?
So, this guy decided to give 21 people who suffer from Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) ecstasy. Turns out, 85% of these people had recovered from their disorder. Not to mention these 21 people had failed to recover from their disorder after taking FDA-approved treatments. PTSD is developed in people who witness something really disturbing, or traumatizing.In this study, the people suffered from PTSD due to experiences from crime or war.
This was the first FDA-approved trial the evaluated ecstasy therapeutic treatment. Additional studies on ecstasy for PTSD are taking place in Switzerland and Israel. This also led researchers to report that treatments disrupt traumatic memories in rats without affecting normal memories. Another finding in Israel reports that an injection of the steroid immediately following a trauma reduces the PTSD-like effects in mice.
What led me to read this article was the possibility that ecstasy could be used as a treatment for a disorder that can be difficult to treat. Can you believe it!?
Click here if you want to read the article
So what do you think about this type of treatment?
What do you think that these sort of studies might lead to?
A recent Oxford University study has identified how cancer cells have the ability to anchor themselves to blood vessels in the brain. The cancer cells have a protein on their outer surfaces called integrin that is necessary for them to have the ability to stick to blood vessels, and begin to grow. Metastasis is the process of cancer breaking out from the initial tumor, and spreads to other parts of the body. So, since cancer travels through blood cells, it’s easy for cancer to travel fast, and grow efficiently because they don’t have to grow a blood vessel themselves for nutrients and oxygen.
Creating a drug to target the integrin will be key in stopping the growth of cancer in the brain. This is significant because 20% of cancer patients will develop metastasis cancer in the central nervous system. Also finding that 95% of cancer cells originate from blood cells, rather than nervous calls, it just takes cancer researchers one stem closer to finding a cure. Dr. Helen George says, “This is an important part of the puzzle. Our research shows that cancer cells which spread to the brain latch on to blood vessels, paving the way for new and much-needed treatments to tackle cancers that have spread to the brain, in the future.”
I thought this was a really cool article because they figured out what was necessary to stop the growth of cancer in the brain. Also, gaining more knowledge about cancer, and understanding how it grows, and functions will only get us closer to finding a cure for something that has the potential to attack and kill anyone.
To check out this article, click here
From: http://www.freeimages.co.uk/jumpto/gallery.htm
The article I read was about people with severe depression. They recently found a treatment that has shown to be pretty successful for the first tests. The treatment is implanting electrodes into the patients’ nucleus accumbens. This is a part of the brain with a major role in the “reward system.” This study has also shown that the reward system in the brain may be impaired in depressed people. The reward system gives the ability to be able to endure a good experience, and creates a pleasant anticipation for the future. Therefore, if a person has an impaired rewards system, they no longer forge plans for the future, and can’t endure the pleasure of anticipation.
The study included ten people who suffer from severe depression. These are people have spent years out of work, unable to recognize happiness, and have tried many other forms of treatment. Out of the ten, five people have had significant recovery. They are involved with a lot more things, and are much happier just days after the study. They say that this finding has the capability to help those who were thought to have no treatment available for their condition.
I thought this was an interesting article because many people don’t consider depression as a disorder, or clinical issue. What I thought was interesting is that they are actually finding the things that depressed people are lacking, or is dysfunctional in them. I thought it was cool that they found something that they could do for people who suffer from such severe depression. I can only imagine what it would be like to have no happiness in life, or nothing to look forward to.
What do you think some major causes of severe depression are?
Do you think this treatment is a success even though only half of the people that had the surgery recovered from depression?
I found some link relating to this topic
To learn more about depression, click here
For knowledge of treatment of depression, click here
I read an article about sitting up straight. I was interested in this because it was sort of hard to believe, and I wanted to see what other people thought about this. Researchers say that after monitoring people who sit up straight, compared to those who sit slumped, there were actually some interesting findings.
Those who sat up straight were more likely to believe thoughts they wrote down for a job qualification. Those who sitting with bad posture were less accepting of the written down feelings about their own job qualifications. These results showed that by simply sitting up straight it affects what you think about yourself, and what others think of you. This included 71 students from Ohio State, and they were all brought into the lab, they were told to do a survey either sitting up straight, or slumped over. When they took the survey for the job qualification, the students sitting up straight rated themselves much higher than those who were slumped over.
I thought this was pretty interesting. Let me know what you think about it.
Click here if you want to read the article.
…and here are some other related links.
Posture experiment
Bad posture
From: http://www.randi.org/encyclopedia/images/hypnotism_hypnosis.jpg
The article I read was about the way the brain functions when it’s under hypnosis. When the brain is hypnotized, they describe the brain as “quiet.” While the brain is under hypnosis, it has an effect on the brain that causes it to be manipulated. The person hypnotizing a person can cause the brain to respond to a real life situation, such as fear, sadness, or relief. It also allows to brain to focus on a specific thought, feeling, or sensation. This has been considered a medical breakthrough because people who have mental disorders, such as depression have experienced dramatic changes in perception after hypnosis.
The brain under hypnosis, when they are told to see colors, the color-processing area of their brain lights up. This is significant because the color-processing part of the brain responds with complete absence of color. When they are told to feel pain, the pain-censoring section of the brain lights up.
I thought this was sort of an interesting medical practice. I saw people get hypnotized one time, and it’s pretty crazy. It’s almost hard to believe that they aren’t pretending. I guess having that experience is what got me interested in picking this topic. I also think the things they are coming up with for medical purposes, such as hypnotism, are pretty creative.
Here are some links that I found that relate to this topic…check them out!
Hypnosis in medicine
More about hypnotism