Greasy food lovers rejoice! Turns out that double helping of bacon at the breakfast buffet isn’t going to catch up to you someday in the form of a heart attack. Well, depending on how it’s cooked anyway.

A new study in the British Medical Journal is turning a conventional nutrition assumption on its head by finding ZERO correlation between the development of heart disease and the consumption of everyone’s favorite fried foods.

But there’s a catch, right? There’s no way our favorite boredom-solving foods are this guilt-free, right?

Well, the study was conducted in Spain. For starters, in Spain foods are usually fried in sunflower oil or olive oil instead of *shudder* lard. Folks in Spain generally eat more healthy overall, too.

The study looked at 40,000 people, paying strict attention to 606 cases of heart disease spread out evenly over the sample population between those who ate fried foods frequently and those who generally tended to avoid them altogether. According to a professor quoted in the study, similar studies conducted elsewhere yielded very similar results:

“Taken together, the myth that frying food is generally bad for the heart is not supported by available evidence,” he said.

But don’t grab the family for a late brunch at IHOP just yet, dear reader. There may not be any correlation between fried foods and heart disease, but such foods are still packed to the gills with calories, and still cause high blood pressure. Exercise with caution! Or, just exercise too. At least that’s something.

Who’s Hungry? New Study Shows Fried Foods Not Linked to Heart Disease is a post from: The Inquisitr

Autism is affecting an ever growing number of children it seems and one set of researchers have discovered an interesting link between the number of nerve cells found in some children and autism.

In some research that has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) scientists at the University of California, San Diego, have found that autistic children have about 67% more nerve sells in a part of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex than children without autism.

The prefrontal cortex is that part of the brain that is responsible for processing things like social skills, communication, cognitive functions, and language; which are all the areas in which autistic children show abnormal development.

This came as a surprise as scientists have assumed that deficits in the social skills of autistic children are typically linked to less nerve cells, or tissue. Instead they found that after studying the brains of seven autistic boys, between the ages of 2 and 16, who had passed away the opposite was the case.

As well the researchers found that the excess of neurons in the prefrontal cortex were not formed after birth but rather during early development in utero. What this suggests to scientists is that the changes responsible for autism are happening a lot sooner than they thought.

The lead researcher Courchesne concluded, “Knowing that we have a specific type of defect that occurs very early in development really helps us to focus and sharpen the next steps in research to determine what caused the excess and hopefully find new treatments that can help children and their families cope better with the symptoms of autism.”

via Know About Health.

Autistic children might have too many nerve cells is a post from: The Inquisitr

Diabetes is very quickly becoming one of our society’s biggest health dangers with the number of deaths resulting from diabetes, and complications arising from the disease, is increasing year after year.

While eating lots of cured meats is associated with greater weight gain and a higher obesity rate it has been found that eating fish is linked to lower glucose concentrations which means a smaller risk of developing diabetes.

This was discovered as a result of the Prevention with a Mediterranean Diet (Predimed) study that was conducted by Mercedes Sotos Prieto in Spain through the University of Valencia.

The study was conducted in the Valencian Community and involved 945 people (340 men and 605 women) between the ages of 55 to 80 and had a high cardiovascular risk.

The aim was to understand the dietary patterns when it came to meat and fish as well as any correlation between the Mediterranean diet and any association with cardiovascular risk.

As with other studies in this area they found part of the reason for the improved insulin sensitivity could be a result of the increase of omega-3 in the cells of the skeletal muscles.

Prieto suggests that a good defense against diabetes would be to decrease the amount of red meat being consumed while maintaining equal levels of fish intake.

via MedicalXpress

Study finds eating fish helps to reduce diabetes risk is a post from: The Inquisitr

President Barack Obama is in top health, according to physical exam results released by White House Dr. Jeffrey C. Kuhlman.

“The president is in excellent health and fit for duty. All clinical data indicate he will remain so for the duration of his presidency.”

Obama, 50, is said to have improved his health, appearing to have quit smoking and pushing his cholesterol level to “ideal” levels.

According to the report, Obama’s total cholesterol level now stands at 193, compared to 209 in February 2010. His LDL (bad cholesterol) is now 110, down from 138 last year. The president at 6-foot-1 weighs 181.3 pounds and blood pressure at 107 over 71, within the normal range.

Obama plays golf and basketball to keep in shape, even sustaining lower lip laceration last year when he received an elbow. He is set to have his next physical exam in December 2012, after the November 6, 2012 presidential election.

It is good to know that your president is healthy and in excellent shape. As for the health of the economy, that is a different story.

Obama in Excellent Health is a post from: The Inquisitr

One in four Americans are concerned about the safety of vaccines. In a poll conducted by Thomson Reuters and NPR to gauge attitudes and opinions on different health issues, 21.4 percent even believe that vaccines can cause autism.

Households with children under the age of 18 showed the greatest level of concern at 30.8%, of which 47.3 percent attributed their fear to future long-term impact on health and 46 percent said they were worried about side effects.

Specific safety concerns include: vaccines can cause autism (21.4%); vaccines can be linked to cancer (9.2%); vaccines play a role in diabetes (6.9%); and vaccines and heart disease are connected (5.9%). Because of these reasons, nearly one in five said they have questioned or refused a vaccine for themselves or their children.

So, why the fear on vaccines? Raymond Fabius, M.D., chief medical officer at the healthcare business of Thomson Reuters, justifies:

“Ironically, these survey results are a testament to the effectiveness of vaccines: older people remember what illnesses like polio did to cripple and kill patients, but the younger generation has never seen someone with polio. Because of the elimination of diseases through immunization, there is a lack of understanding that the benefit of vaccines greatly outweighs the minimal risks of side effects both short and long term.”

This explains why the lowest level of concern (18.5%) was found in respondents 65 years old and up.

How about you, what is your opinion on vaccines?

Americans Believe Vaccines are Unsafe (Do You?) is a post from: The Inquisitr

Betty Lou Sweeney, a 71-year old Wisconsin native, broke the Guinness World Record for holding the abdominal plank with a time of 36 minutes and 58 seconds.  The previous world record was 33 minutes and 40 seconds.

Betty Lou was joined by her trainer, Dave Candra from Anytime Fitness, and cheered on by her husband Tom as she took on the challenge.  

For Betty Lou, the accomplishment capped off an amazing two-year journey. She was severely overweight in 2009 and almost died from complications from an infection that went septic and shut down her kidneys. After defying the odds and surviving, she pledged to make a major life change and start enjoying life.

Working out six days a week with a personal trainer, Betty Lou is now medication-free, 100 pounds lighter and a world record holder.

Betty Lou, in doing the once-impossible for her situation, said:

“I had never imagined being able to work out every day, let alone break a world record for planking — I did not even know what planking was.  I can’t imagine now what my life would be like had I not walked in the door at Anytime Fitness and made a commitment to get healthy.”

Do not mistake her feat for the planking that we are accustomed now. What she did was abdominal planking. What we are to used to seeing now is simply called planking or lying face down. By the way, is there a world record for that one?

71-Year Old Breaks World Record for Holding Abdominal Planking (Not the Stupid Planking That We Know) is a post from: The Inquisitr

I imagine that when I say the word snail you generally think of those slimy things you find crawling around in your garden or on a plate in some fancy restaurant. Well think again because these suckers that are invading Miami would fill a whole plane or demolish your garden, and then go to work on your house for desert.

Yes folks, the Giant African Land Snail has arrived and its hungry, very hungry.

Right now it seems to be only found in one small subdivision in Miami but these snails can grow to be 10-inches long and have a voracious appetite. They also leave a really slimy trail of excrement wherever they go as well as harboring the microscopic rat-lung which can transmit meningitis to humans. Oh and did I say they can eat your house?

As Richard Gaskalla, head of plan industry for Florida’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, said in a recent interview

“They’ll attach to the side of the house and eat the stucco off the side of the house,” Gaskalla says. The snails are also attracted to garbage and pet food that’s been left out.

Giant African Land Snails are restricted in the US. Gaskalla says people often smuggle them into the country in their pockets, because they make popular novelty pets.

“Back in 1965 we had an introduction that was traced back to an elementary-aged child that had put two of them in his pocket in Hawaii and brought them back to Miami,” Gaskalla says. “Seventeen-thousand snails, a million dollars, and ten years, we eradicated them.”

A more recent introduction several years ago was traced to small religious sects in Miami, where the snails are believed to harbor healing properties.

“A young woman had come in with some stomach ailments, and her mother said she had been fed the juices of a live snail as a healing rite,” Gaskalla says.

via NPR

Never mind the garlic butter for this sucker, it’ll probably eat your fork.

These giant snails are looking for a new home – your home. is a post from: The Inquisitr

Exercising can suck big time but for a growing number of people it is a necessary part of their daily routine. Now supposing they found out that small amounts of dark chocolate could be as good for them as all that exercising?

Well it turns out that scientists have found that could very well be the case and it all has to do with something called mitochondria, which apparently is the tiny powerhouse in our cells that generate energy. It also seems that a plant compound called epicatechin, which is found in chocolate, stimulates the same muscle responses as vigorous exercise.

Dr Moh Malek, from Wayne State University in Detroit, who led the US study on mice, said: ”Mitochondria produce energy which is used by the cells in the body. More mitochondria mean more energy is produced the more work can be performed.

”Aerobic exercise, such as running or cycling, is known to increase the number of mitochondria in muscle cells. Our study has found that epicatechin seems to bring about the same response – particularly in the heart and skeletal muscles.”

via Telegraph

The sweetness of chocolate for your health. It’s a good thing it seems. is a post from: The Inquisitr

For every scary story we get regarding technology and human interaction we also get some really cool ones that are making a real difference in people’s lives.

Today’s installment has to do with Nintendo’s Wii and people trying to recover from strokes. Thanks to a team of researchers at the University of Notre Dame stroke sufferers can now continue their rehabilitation at home with the help of remote therapists and Wehab.

Wehab is a a new “game” that utilizes the Wii Balance board to help those patients that are recovering from a stroke to regain control over their balance. This retraining is needed so that patients can perform even the most basic of tasks like walking and dressing.

In the past therapists would work with things like mirrors and guess work to see if stroke patients have made any progress but with the Wehab suite, which includes the Wii balance board and web cameras, therapists can now obtain data on the patient’s movements. As well the therapists can lead stroke victims through normal rehabilitation exercises on the Wehab which then collects all data with customized software.

While therapists have been using Wii games for some time as part of a rehabilitation regime it wasn’t a plug-in-play solution mainly because they were able to fine tune any of the games they used. AS well there was no way for them to collect and store data for analysis at a later time.

Wehab tries to correct these deficiencies and hopes to take the whole setup one step further by creating a take home version so that patients can continue their therapy which is important because of the many health care constraints faced by the patient.

“In the US, the payment system is tight on what and how long a stroke client can receive therapy,” says Jeanne Harper, a therapist at Skills 4 Living Therapy. “Stroke clients can get return of function months and years after their stroke, and often they do not get uninterrupted continuous therapy services, and often not coordinated services.”

Striegel’s solution is to incorporate cloud computing and internet access into Wehab’s design to allow the patient to perform rehab activities from the comfort of their home.

“You plug in the WeHab system to your TV where it automatically connects to the Internet via a 3G or 4G data connection,” says Striegel. “On first starting it up, you are connected to your therapist who video chats with you to answer any questions as you start your rehab in the home setting. Under the watchful eyes of your therapist who can see you and the readings from your screen, you are walked through balance therapy exactly like you experienced in the clinic.”

via Fast Company

Initial units are planned for 2012 and will be priced at around $1,500; which really a small price to pay if it means you can recover from having a stroke quicker and with improvement of your quality of life.

Here is a video demonstrating the Wehab:

The Wii continues to expand its footprint in the medical field now with homework for stroke victims is a post from: The Inquisitr

For every fart app there is an equally incredible one that shows just how much mobile computing is going to change our world.

With summer in full swing and everyone trying to catch all the sun’s rays that they can one of the more important health risks we all need to worry about as we get those tans is the risk of skin cancer. It is a disease, no matter the campaigns advising us to be careful, that has steadily been climbing.

Well thanks to a molecular diagnostics company called Health Discovery Corporation (HDC) we now have an iPhone app called MelApp which is designed to help detect early stage melanoma. It does this by employing mathematical algorithms and image based pattern recognition technology.

Using the app is pretty simple,  take a photo of the unusual mole or freckle you have found on your skin and then upload it to be evaluated against a database that has been licensed from John Hopkins University Medical center.

The app is available at the iTunes store for $1.99

via GizMag

Curious if you have skin cancer? There’s an app for that is a post from: The Inquisitr

E.coli is a known bacteria that can have some pretty serious consequences to our health but there is a brand new strain starting to make the rounds that is downright deadly.

This new strain of E.coli produces what is called a Shiga toxin and it can cause people infected with it to suffer what is called acute renal failure, or in more plain language it causes your kidneys to shut down. So far this E.coli strain has infected 1,800 people across 12 countries resulting in 17 deaths in Europe.

Countries reporting incidents include:

• Germany (first report)
• Austria
• Denmark
• Norway
• France
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Britain
• Spain
• Czech Republic
• Netherlands
• United States

The current strain produces a toxin that causes infection in the various parts of the gastrointestinal (stomach and intestines) system, extending into the hepato-renal (liver and kidney) system. The HUS is characterized by renal failure, aneaemia, andthrombocytopenia (low platelet count), reports WHO. Symptoms are gastrointestinal in nature, mostly severe bloody diarrhoea, but without fever.

Currently, there is no cure for the bacteria. WHO says that this strain this strain of E coli “is a unique strain that has never been isolated from patients before”. It may also be more virulent than many other isolated strains.

via Techie Buzz

While the UN World Health Organization isn’t pressing any panic buttons yet they are very concerned over the rapid spread of the bacteria.

A new e.coli spreading worldwide with deadly consequences is a post from: The Inquisitr

Sniffly types might have a bit more incentive to be environmentally conscious than the rest of us, it seems, as climate change is said to be contributing to a longer season for ragweed and pollen, and consequently, increased duration and severity of seasonal allergy symptoms.

Oh, yes- it’s possibly true. Researchers behind a study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences monitored ten sites across the US and Canada between 1995 and 2009, discovering a marked increased in allergy suffering during that time:

The team looked at pollen counts and weather data from 10 locations spanning more than 1,300 miles of the central part of North America — from Georgetown, Texas (30.63 degrees north latitude), to Saskatoon, Canada (52.07 degrees north latitude)… Five sites, extending north from LaCrosse, Wis. (43.80 degrees north), to Saskatoon had significant increases in the length of the ragweed pollen season of at least 13 days.  Saskatoon’s increase was 27 days — a full month’s worth of facial tissues and antihistamines.

Researchers singled out ragweed as the hardiest and most contributing allergy-inflamer tracked during the course of the study.

[LA Times]

Climate change blamed for increased allergy suffering is a post from: The Inquisitr

We’ve been hearing that some of the things we tend to over indulge in are possibly killing us, then a couple of months or years later suddenly they turn around and say that perhaps they were wrong. Perhaps now that they have studied it a little bit further those things aren’t so bad and even may be good for us – in moderation.

Well the next time someone makes fun of your love of bacon and suggests that bacon is bad for your health you can whip out this little infographic and show them otherwise.

via UrlyBits

And they say bacon is bad for you – think again [Infographic] is a post from: The Inquisitr

How have scientists not figured out that eggs hover between amazing superfood and OMG artery clogging nightmare a few times a year, considering standup comics have been making this observation for well over a decade?

Well, either way, eggs are totally on our good side again. Strangely, all the articles published or posted in the past few days over this debate seem to ignore the fact that eggs have had moments in the sun, and present findings by the USDA that eggs have 14% less cholesterol than previously believed and contain a whopping 64% more Vitamin D than once thought to be groundbreaking news.

Director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center Dr. David Katz says the USDA’s revised opinion was not news to him:

“My research focuses on ways to optimize diet quality, and I have long suspected that eliminating eggs from the diet generally has the opposite effect. In our own studies of egg intake, we have seen no harmful effects, even in people with high blood cholesterol.”

Guidelines on egg consumption levels haven’t changed- the USDA still recommends one egg a day- but USDA nutritionist Jacob Exeler, PhD, did not say if you can bank eggs over a few days so you can sometimes eat three egg omelets.

Update: We are no longer mad at eggs over cholesterol is a post from: The Inquisitr

The government has released new eating guidelines, as it does twice a decade, and it seems under the crushing weight of the obesity epidemic, the advice can be boiled down to a simple, two word set of instructions: “eat less.”

While there are some specific guidelines about what to eat in your smaller portions, the New York Times points out that the USDA has always been a bit reticent to dissuade Americans from shoving food in their collective faces due to the heavy sway held by the food lobby. A NYU nutrition expert lauds the move:

“They are blunter here than they’ve ever been before, and they deserve credit for that,” said Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at New York University and a critic of government nutrition guidance. “They said, ‘Eat less!’ I think that’s great, and to avoid oversized portions. That’s the two best things you should do.”

The changes are many, and some are obvious, such as reducing sodium content and cutting down on trans fats. The guidelines also make the suggestion that 50% of meals be comprised of fruit and/or vegetables. Another nutritionist commented:

“Before, the dietary guidelines said eat more fruits and vegetables but that could mean add a slice of tomato to your hamburger,” she said.

Also recommended is upping your intake of whole grains in lieu of processed ones, and consuming more seafood. Nestle makes some good points in the NYT piece, but she does come off as a bit of a killjoy. After advising readers to “eat less junk food” (breakthrough!) she goes on to say:

“Cut back on cheese, hamburgers, pizza, cookies and pastries.”

Are the new USDA guidelines a step in the right direction, or are they still not enough in the land of eighty-eight cent Cheesy Beef Melts and buck McDoubles?

USDA releases ‘blunt’ new dietary guidelines, tells Americans to just eat less is a post from: The Inquisitr

Let me just say right up front. This is yet another incredibly stupid idea courtesy of meddling politicians who don’t have the first clue about gaming, gamers, or digital living and yet persist in foisting yet another nanny-state piece of legislation in order to get votes come election time.

The newest bit of stupidity comes from Congressman Joe Baca who wants all video games to carry warning labels on their packaging similar to the kind you find on cigarette packages. This attempt at goodie-two-shoes vote getting is going by the name of Video Game Health Labeling Act and the proposed text reads something like this:

WARNING: Excessive exposure to violent video games and other violent media has been linked to aggressive behavior

This of course is a claim made without any absolute scientific proof as pointed out by Chris Pereira at 1UP.com, a major gaming blog, where he writes:

There have indeed been several studies which have claimed something along those lines, but there have also been numerous studies that suggest the exact opposite. Gamasutra notes a recent review by the Australian government which was summed up by Federal Minister for Home Affairs Brendan O’Connor when he said, “Evidence about the effect of violent computer games on the aggression displayed by those who play them is inconclusive.”

While the chances of this bill actually making it through is pretty slim it is just another repeat try and trying to exert government control on the gaming industry.

Good luck with that bill.

image courtesy of 1UP.com

Cigarette-like Warnings Coming To Video Games? is a post from: The Inquisitr

It was one of the bigger wishful thinking ideas of dieting and weight management, a subset of the larger “eating yourself thin” concept- if you just eat a crapton of food for breakfast, you shall spend the rest of the day magically sated and won’t cap off your night sucking down Ben & Jerry’s straight from the carton while tearfully counting backwards to the last time you got laid.

So if you feel guilty for not being that into food in the morning- I’ll cop to being completely nauseated by most food before noon- you don’t have to worry that not being a morning eater is making you fat, or try to shove food down your face to stave off some terrifying binging come 3pm. A study published in Nutrition Journal followed about 400 people (and kind of has a boner for the number 400), tracking their breakfasting habits and recording the results:

People who had a big breakfast, on average 400 calories larger than a small one, consumed around 400 more calories in a day.

Dr Volker Schusdziarra, lead researcher, said: “The results of the study showed that people ate the same at lunch and dinner, regardless of what they had for breakfast.”

Nutritionists commenting on the study noted that presence of a breakfast habit can be an indicator of overall more balanced eating patterns, however. Now if only nutritionists could take down the oft-repeated bit of nonsense about your body going into starvation mode and hoarding calories, frequently cited by people who really just want you to pull over to Taco Bell when they’re high.

[Image]

Experts still say that breakfast has an important role to play.

Turns out chowing down on breakfast doesn’t keep you from eating lots later is a post from: The Inquisitr

A large-scale study by British researchers has revealed that a daily, low-dose aspirin regimen could slash the risk of cancer death by between ten and sixty percent.

The study included more than 25,000 patients and aimed to measure the impact of daily aspirin use on cardiovascular health. The “exciting and potentially findings” were published in the December 7th online edition of the medical journal The Lancet, where researchers were quoted as saying:

“Daily aspirin reduced deaths due to several common cancers during and after the trials… Benefit increased with duration of treatment and was consistent across the different study populations. These findings have implications for guidelines on use of aspirin and for understanding of carcinogenesis and its susceptibility to drug intervention.”

Dr. Alan Arslan, an assistant professor at New York University, said the findings were “very significant,” but cautioned patients to discuss an aspirin regimen with a doctor:

“The take-home message for patients is that if someone is taking low-dose or regular aspirin, it may put them at a reduced risk of death from cancer,” Arslan added. “However, if someone is not already taking aspirin they should talk with their physician before starting. Aspirin has risks of side effects, including bleeding and stroke.”

Daily aspirin could cut cancer risk dramatically is a post from: The Inquisitr

This article was written by Alok Jha, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 5th July 2010 15.40 UTC

An EEG test could one day be used to identify people at risk of developing mental illnesses such as schizophrenia before they show any symptoms.

Scientists have found that a type of EEG (electroencephalography) brain wave is slightly different in people who have siblings with schizophrenia, compared with that seen in the general population. The researchers believe the information could be used to identify those at highest risk and pre-emptively treat them before they develop a full-blown mental disorder.

“Unlike in general medicine where we have lots of reliable [biological] markers, such as blood sugar for diabetes, in psychiatry we still rely very much on the behaviours and symptoms a person reports when they go to see a clinician,” said Maddie Groom of the University of Nottingham, who led the work.

She said markers of mental illness would not only help predict who was likely to be at risk but also how severe someone’s condition is and how well they are responding to medication. “[Markers] would give us a really big handle not only on what’s causing the disorder but also how best to treat and diagnose it,” she said.

In her study, she took EEG recordings from 30 teenagers whose siblings had developed schizophrenia and compared these with EEGs from 36 controls. Schizophrenia is thought to be at least partly inherited, so the siblings of people who have the condition have a slightly increased risk of also developing the disorder.

“Their risk is still very small but, nonetheless, when you compare them with people with siblings who don’t have schizophrenia, their risk is still greater than in the general population,” said Groom.

The volunteers were asked to perform a task where they had to press a button every time they saw a particular image on a computer screen. They then had to inhibit that response and not press the button when a different stimulus appeared on the screen in its place.

“This is a really difficult test to do and people without any mental health problems find it difficult,” said Groom. “But when we measured the brain activity of the siblings of the people with schizophrenia, their brain activity was reduced at the time when they needed to pay attention towards the stimulus and also when they needed to inhibit their response to that stimulus.”

While they performed the task, a particular electrical signal known as the P300 wave was significantly reduced in the siblings of schizophrenia patients and in the patients themselves whenever the stimulus they had to ignore appeared on the screen.

The p300 marker is thought to reflect attentional and inhibitory control aspects of brain processing. When someone needs to focus on something that is particularly important, and when that something requires an inhibition of a motor response, the P300 marker tends to be larger in people with good mental health.

However, Groom stressed that the brain activity of the siblings was not radically different from healthy people and that the marker may be related to the risk of the disorder rather than the disorder itself.

“The difference on a case-by-case basis from our healthy group was very small and you wouldn’t be able to pick them out from a crowd, measure their P300 and say that this person is related to someone with schizophrenia,” said Groom.

The researchers are also investigating P300 in people with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). Groom presented her work today at the Forum of European Neuroscience (Fens) conference in Amsterdam.

Barbara Sahakian, a professor of clinical neuropsychology at the University of Cambridge, said: “If we could identify [people at risk of mental disorders] early with biomarkers and treat them early, we could probably get in there before any damage is done and they become relapsing and chronic.”

In a separate study, also presented today at Fens, Seth Grant of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge created a catalogue that linked brain disorders to malfunctions in genes involved in making synapses, the junctions between nerve cells.

“What we found, in terms of disease, was quite striking – defects in the genes that encode these human synapse proteins are really a major cause of disease,” he said. “There are over 135 nervous system diseases, psychiatric and neurological, that arise because of defects in these synaptic proteins. These are common and rare diseases – schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism.”

He added: “We recognise that these synapse proteins are the molecular basis for many brain diseases. We know no other molecular structure that is responsible for more brain diseases … Clinically, there is a wide spectrum of brain diseases and it is unclear how some of those are related to one another and if they are related at all. We can now see that many of them are related to one another because the molecular underpinnings of those diseases are in the synapse proteins which are physically binding to one another. There is a unifying mechanism that underpins a large number of brain diseases.”

The findings will help target drugs for mental conditions more accurately in future, said the scientists. When the synapses and their role in disease are fully understood, said Grant, scientists will have scores of new targets to develop drugs against. In addition, a drug would no longer be used to treat, say, only schizophrenia or autism, but would instead treat individual characteristics related to the malfunction of particular genes, which might be common to several diseases.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

EEG test may help predict who will develop schizophrenia, claims scientist is a post from: The Inquisitr

What are the limits to the conversation in our social media world?

At what point does it become either too much information (TMI) or cross the line of polite society?

Back near the end of September Penelope Trunk, CEO of BrazeenCareerist.com threw the following message out on Twitter

“I’m in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there’s a fucked-up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin.”

Not only did that one message cause her a lot of flack on Twitter and her blog but she ended up having to defend herself on CNN as well as in the original and follow-up post. Everything from her womanhood to her common sense was questioned in the days that followed. I even had a bit of a hard time with it I will admit but in the end as I discussed on a podcast with my friend Sean I had to giver her credit for being willing to do what she did.

Then today I saw a post come through my feedreader written by Jeff Jarvis where he talks some more about the recent operation he has as a result of his run in with prostate cancer. The post was title Small c: The penis post and my first reaction was as probably with most men as they read the post one of winching.

I didn’t think that it was another case of TMI as Jeff was afraid of and as with Penelope I give the man credit for being willing to lay his life bare like this.

We men have complicated relationships with our penises, of course. We follow them (that’s why they’re in front). They tell us what we like. They have minds of their own. We anthropomorphize them; some give them names (I don’t; it’s just it). So when I see mine looking like an emaciated, depressed, shrunken old man in a hospital bed, well, it’s hard not to empathize.

However when it came to the reaction to Jeff’s post it was the total opposite from what Penelope experienced. Read through the comments to his post and all you see are pats on the back, commiserations with what he was going through, and well wishes for his recovery.

On one hand we have a woman who experiences a traumatic experience and talks about it only to get lambasted for it. Then on the other hand we have a man writing about a traumatic experience but he gets kudos for doing so. Some-one care to explain to me the double standard here?

Why is it okay for a man to write about his dick and not being able to use it – possibly ever again – but it isn’t okay for a woman to write about that she was losing a fetus?

So much for the enlightenment and open conversation that we all seem to be proclaiming is the new social world we are living in. As usual it turns out to be nothing more than a pile of bullshit and if you don’t think so just follow the insanity that is swirling around the death of a gay singer.

Penelope talks miscarriage – gets slammed, Jarvis talks penis – gets patted on back is a post from: The Inquisitr