Author: Staff (Page 76 of 157)

Very Few Are Spending the Most Health Care Dollars

January 20, 2012 / Staff

White, elderly, women with private health insurance are spending the most health care dollars, the federal government reported.

$2.6 trillion the nation spent on health care in 2010 translated into just over $8,400 per person.

But that is not the whole story.

A different study just released by a separate federal agency shows that second number doesn’t actually mean very much.

Specifically, in 2009, just 1 percent of the non-institutionalized population accounted for 21.8 percent of all U.S. health spending. And just 5 percent accounted for half the total spending.
Meanwhile, the bottom half of the population accounted for a mere 2.9 percent of total health spending in 2009.

Health Care Policy, Health Insurance, Medicare, Research, Resources

Care for the elderly Health Care health insurance health insurance cost insurance premiums National health care

Common Weight Loss Mistakes That Are Keeping You Fat

January 20, 2012 / Staff

The most common weight loss mistakes go against everything we’ve learned about losing weight.

Calories in-calories out, exercise and restriction seem like perfectly reasonable ways to shed unwanted pounds; but that is not the whole story.

Running for hours on the treadmill and eating too few calories could be sabotaging your efforts.

A prolonged calorie deficit causes your metabolism to slow.

This is a survival instinct to prevent you from losing weight in times of famine.

When you do lose weight, you’ll be losing both fat and muscle.

This further slows your metabolism.

Nutrition, Quality Control, Research, Wellness

diet exercise metabolism slow metabolism weight loss

Why Is Alcohol So Addictive?

January 19, 2012 / Staff

What makes alcohol so addictive?

New studies are attempting to understand the nature of addiction and how to break the cycle with help from our brains.

The University of California study included 13 people who identified themselves as heavy drinkers and 12 people who did not.
Using PET imaging, the researchers were able to measure opioid release in the brain before and immediately after the study participants drank the same amount of alcohol.
Drinking alcohol was found to be associated with opioid release in the nucleus accumbens and orbitofrontal cortex — two areas of the brain associated with reward processing.

Research, Wellness

alcohol addiction alcoholism brain studies

Do Men Need Money to Find Love?

January 19, 2012 / Staff

Using money to find a mate isn’t all that new.

“How do humans compete for access to mates? What you find across cultures is that men often do it through money, through status and through products,” Griskevicius said.

When the economics times get tough women are probably more likely to respond to men who are willing to share their resources.

Research

men and money men and women money relationships

Can Deodorant Cause Breast Cancer?

January 18, 2012 / Staff

Women have been alerted to concerns that certain ingredients in under arm deodorant may be a cause of breast cancer.

The new study does not prove that personal care products cause breast cancer. But “the fact that parabens were present in so many of the breast tissue samples does justify further investigation,” said Philippa Darbre, PhD, of University of Reading in the U.K., in a news release.
“Although the environmental exposure to parabens as a cause of breast cancer is a possibility, there is no conclusive data thus far to state this as fact,” says Katherine B. Lee, MD, in an email. She is a breast specialist at the Cleveland Clinic Breast Center in Ohio. “The study suggests that if there is a relationship between parabens and breast cancer, it may be a complex one.”

While there is no direct link between deodorant and breast cancer, eliminating toxic exposure would benefit your health.

Quality Control, Research, Wellness

breast cancer causes of breast cancer causes of cancer deodorant does deodorant cause breast cancer environmental toxins and breast cancer health risk of toxins toxins