News about the health effects of alcohol had been distressingly negative of late. First came  a study from Oxford which showed that one lousy alcoholic beverage per day increased the risk of cancer in women.

Then, Harvard scientists reported that people who consume 2 or more alcoholic drinks per day had a 22% higher risk of developing pancreatic cancer.

But now, there’s some news we can toast: moderate drinking, scientists say, reduces dementia  in older adults!

Kaycee Sink and colleagues at Wake Forest University found that over a 6-year period, people with normal cognition who were at least 75 years old and drank 1-2 alcoholic beverages per day had a 37% lower risk of developing dementia than teetotalers.

The type of alcohol did not impact these findings.

“We have no cure for Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, so it is important to look for things that might help prevent the disease,” senior study author Kaycee Sink, a geriatrician told BurrillReport.

Sink presented the findings at last month’s annual meeting of the Alzheimer’s Association.

For the study, Sink’s group examined and interviewed 3,069 individuals at study onset and then again every 6 months for 6 years. They tracked changes in memory and cognition during each visit.

Ah, but there’s a catch. For older adults who had mild cognitive impairment at study onset, alcohol consumption in any amount was associated with more rapid cognitive decline.

The finding was pronounced among subjects classified as heavy drinkers.  For those who consumed more than 2 drinks per day, the likelihood of developing dementia during the study was nearly twice that for abstainers with mild cognitive impairment.

The scientists concluded their findings support current recommendations to not exceed two drinks per day in men, and one drink per day in women.

New York-based Pfizer Inc. has agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges of illegally promoting the sale of its painkiller, Bextra and other drugs for non-FDA approved uses.

Terms of the agreement call for the drug giant to fork over $2.3 billion in fines. That’s the largest penalty ever assessed for such marketing shenanigans.

Pfizer announced last winter that it had taken a $2.3 billion settlement-related charge for Q4, 2009, but details of the agreement hadn’t been made public until now.

The details are that Pfizer encouraged physicians to prescribe Bextra for off-label uses like acute pain, its atypical antipsychotic Geodon for off-label use by children, and similar behavior involving Zyvox, an antibiotic, and Lyrica, an epilepsy drug.

US physicians are permitted to prescribe FDA-approved drugs for anything they want,  but drug companies are not allowed to market drugs for unapproved uses.

The settlement involved Pfizer’s Pharmacia & Upjohn unit and the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services.

Pfizer yanked Bextra in 2005, shortly after Merck had pulled the plug on its painkiller, Vioxx, after the latterwas shown to increase the risk of heart attacks.

Terms of the settlement also resolve allegations that Pfizer comped doctors for meals, subsidized their travel and paid honoraria for speaking engagements to induce them to prescribe these drugs for off-label uses.

Remarkably, the settlement represents the third time in which Pfizer has been required to sign a “corporate integrity” agreement pledging to clean up its act. It signed similar agreements in 2002 regarding Lipitor and in 2004 for Neurontin.

The news cycle, a process by which information becomes news, gains attention, and then fades from the public eye has been impacted by technology ever since Gutenberg invented the printing press.

Radio and TV had dramatic effects, and to the surprise of no one, Cornell scientists have concluded the Internet has as well.

Yet even in the Internet era, the scientists found that most of the time, traditional news outlets are out first with news stories, followed approximately 2.5 hours later by blogs.

To reach these conclusions, John Kleinberg and colleagues used computerized meme-tracking software to scan 1.6 million media sites and blogs during the final 3 months of last year’s presidential campaign. In all, they scrutinized nearly 90 million articles and blog posts.

The research is “a step toward understanding why certain points of view and story lines win out, and others don’t,” Kleinberg told the New York Times.

The most widely captured phrase was “lipstick on a pig,” which many will remember was the Big O’s response to claims by Top Gun that he represented the real voice for change in the campaign.

At the time, Republicans felt the comment represented a jab at McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin. 

Only 3.5% of the story lines originated in the blogosphere, with the most memorable one being Obama’s response to a question about when life begins after conception. That’s “above my pay grade,” he said.  Blogs ran first with that story.

The blogs found to be quickest to identify stories that subsequently gained wide attention were Hot Air and Talking Points Memo.

But Sreenath Sreenivasan, a professor at the Columbia Journalism School said that the findings may already be outdated due to the rise of Twitter as a news recommendation and distribution network.

“Even from last fall to today, the dynamics of the news cycle are very different, because of Twitter,” Sreenivasan told the Times.

Who says Aromatherapy is simply a New Age fad?

Japanese scientists have recently shown that inhaling fragrant scents like lemon, mango, and lavender alters gene activity and blood chemistry, with the net effects being reduced stress levels, resistance to inflammation and depression, and improved sleep… in lab rats.

The beneficial effects seem to be caused by linalool, a chemical previously thought to contribute nothing more than a pleasing odor associated with foods and flowers such as basil, grapes, oranges, tomatoes and tea.

In their experiments, Akio Nakamura and colleagues from the Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Science at the University of Tokyo showed linalool does far more than that.

The scientists divided rats into 3 groups. The control group was exposed to neither stress nor odor. The second was exposed to stress only, in the form of mildly restraining their free movements for a period of 2 hours. The third group was exposed to both stress and inhaled linalool.

In all 3 groups, the researchers assessed stress hormone levels, blood cell counts and gene expression. 
 
The simply stressed-out rats were found to have elevated levels of circulating white blood cells as expected, but those exposed to both stress and linalool had normal WBC counts.

In other words, the linalool attenuated stress-related bumps in white blood cell counts.

Similarly, stress-related elevations in heart rate were blunted by linalool, and the stuff was also shown to down-regulate the activity of 109 genes that normally get turned on during stressful situations, and up-regulate the expression of 6 genes that are normally turned off during such situations.

Investigators attributed much of the physiological impact to sedative effects of the compound. The write-up appears in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Cursing out loud during a painful experience makes it hurt less, according to scientists at Keele University in Staffordshire, England.

To reach this conclusion, Richard Stephens and colleagues asked 67 undergraduate students to submerge one hand in a bucket of ice water. They instructed half the participants to curse at will during the experience, and told the others to repeat a word that could be used “to describe a table.”

The scientists measured pain tolerance by assessing how long members in each group left their hands in the ice bath. They also tracked pain perception and heart rate following the experience.

The swearing group, it turned out, had significantly increased pain tolerance and heart rate, and lower levels of perceived pain.

“If they swore, they held their hands in cold water for longer,” Stephens told MedPageToday.

The impact of cursing on pain tolerance was the same for men and women, but it caused a larger reduction in perceived pain and a larger bump in heart rate among women.

Stephens’ group concluded the findings might be related to the well-known “fight-or-flight” phenomenon, in which increased release of catecholamines triggers a slew of physiological responses including temporary increase in heart rate, exercise  capacity and so on.

Gail Saltz, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia agreed that the fight-or-flight response can distract people’s attention to a point where they aren’t as cognizant of pain.

“If you’re screaming obscenities, you’re not thinking about your pain,” she told MedPageToday. “The distraction compartmentalizes the other experience.”

Of course, swearing has been a common response to pain for eons. “Many a woman in the delivery room has already figured that out,” Saltz said.

The write-up appears in NeuroReport.

It’s back-to-school time for hundreds of thousands of middle school girls, which means stocking up on Gelly-Roll pens and new clothes, and nowadays, rolling up their sleeves to get their first Gardasil shot.

The vaccine is designed to protect them from HPV, the cause of genital warts and cervical cancer.

For the first time since the FDA green-lighted the spike in 2006, many schools have begun asking girls entering sixth grade to get it. 

In Virginia and the Washington DC, parents can opt out of the program. District parents need to complete a form if they wish to do so. This is not required for parents in surrounding communities.

Gardasil supporters believe it will prevent millions of cases of STD. The CDC estimates for example, that 20 million people are HPV-positive in the US, and that nearly half of sexually active people will become infected with the virus during their lives.

“Certainly in terms of preventing the most common strains of the disease that cause genital warts, this vaccine is effective,” Kathy Woodward told the Washington Post. “As opposed to being resigned that everyone will get HPV, we now have a tool that can prevent it,” added the STD specialist at Children’s National Medical Center.

Opponents of the spike believe it has not undergone enough testing and that parents have not been fully educated about its potential side effects. “They are using our girls as guinea pigs,” warned Tracy Lloyd, a member of the Parents and Citizens Committee to Stop Medical Experimentation.

Gardasil works best if vaccinations begin before girls become sexually active.  The vaccine is given in 3 shots over a 6-month period and costs about $375. Most of these costs are covered by Medicaid and private insurers.

A few years back, Jason Newsom, a former Army doctor returned to Panama City to oversee the Bay County Health Department. He was tasked to educate the public about health issues like swine flu and AIDS. He decided to take aim at the obesity problem as well.

He began by barring doughnuts from department meetings and threatening to trash any similar products he happened to find in the break room.

Then he removed candy bars from all vending machines in the building.

Next, he took his cause to the streets. On an electronic billboard outside the department, he ran banners like “Sweet Tea = Liquid Sugar….Hamburger = Spare Tire….French Fries = Thunder Thighs….”

But eventually, Newsome tangled with the wrong hombres.

“America Dies on Dunkin’,” read his latest creation, a slap at Dunkin’ Donuts’ iconic tag, “America Runs on Dunkin’.”

That didn’t sit well with County Commissioner Mike Thomas, who happened to own a doughnut shop in town, and a pair of lawyers who owned a Dunkin’ Donuts down by the beach.

The lawyers (what else?) threatened to sue, and before long the Florida Health Department forced him to resign.

“I picked on doughnuts because those things are ubiquitous in this county. Everywhere I went, there were two dozen doughnuts on the back table. At church, there were always doughnuts on the back table at Sunday school. It is social expectation thing,” Newsom, a lean 6-foot, 167-pounder, told the AP.

“I think he was…a zealot,” concluded Thomas. “I don’t have a problem with him pushing an agenda, it’s the way he did it. People borrowed money to go into business and they are being attacked by the government.”

“My method was…provocative and controversial,” retorted Newsome. “But there wasn’t a person in Bay County who wasn’t talking about health and healthy eating.”

Newsom now performs physical exams on inmates at the local prison.

Back in August, 2005, physicians at Urological Associates ordered 9 CT scans for patients covered by the local BCBS carrier. They ordered 8 in September. That rate was lower than most physicians in the community.

But in October, the Iowa-based group ordered 35 scans and then 41 and 55 in the ensuing 2 months. That was about 3 times higher than local norms.

The sudden jump began when the practice purchased its own CT scanner, according to the Washington Post, and the tale repeats itself all over the US. 

The bump in imaging does not translate to improved health outcomes, as numerous studies have shown.

And the excessive radiation from the scans may cause up to 1% of all cancers in the US.

The self-referral problem was thought to be solved in 1992 with passage of the Stark Law, but a loophole allowed physicians to keep up the practice, so long as the devices were housed under the same roof as their practice.

The exception was intended to permit physicians to use the machines for expedited diagnoses of fractures, pneumonia and the like, but soon after Stark passed, CT and MRI scanners shrank magically in size.

“Physicians who purchase machines for their offices have a financial incentive to refer patients for additional services,” MedPAC stated in a recent report. “Physician ownership could influence the judgment of some physicians, particularly when there is not strong evidence to guide their decisions.”

Meanwhile the Web site of GE Healthcare posts testimonials from physicians about the nifty return on the imaging devices. “We’re already beating our pro forma in terms of the return on investment,” says one West Virginia physician.

Congress, by the way, is considering a proposal to prohibit the practice.

Feeling knackered? You’re not alone. On any given day, about 34% of US adults admit grabbing a quick nap, according to a report released by the Pew Research Center.

That number went up, by the way, among folks who reported sleeping difficulties the previous night or having exercised within the last day.

Napping was also more common among those who reported being unhappy, blacks and the poor. 

Men tend to nap more (38%) than women (31%) on any given day, with most of the disparity seen among people who are at least 50 years old. In this group, 41% of men  said they had napped in the past day, while only 28% of women fessed up to the simple pleasure.

Unemployed people tended to nap more frequently on week days than on weekends, while the people fortunate enough to be in the workforce were just slightly more likely to take naps on weekends.

The Pew study did not actually define a nap. Some respondents say they’ve just closed their eyes for a moment when in fact they’re completely conked out. Others will call it a nap when they nod off while reading a particularly boring blog post, or fall prey to the gentle swaying of the 6 train headed to the Bronx.

“Are we accurate reporters of our own habits?” Paul Taylor asked a New York Times reporter. The Pew center’s director then answered his own question. “If you asked my children whether I nap, their answer is yes. Their defining image of me is in an easy chair with a newspaper in my lap, dozing off. If you ask me, my answer is no. That’s my story, and I’m sticking with it.”

Napping is stigmatized by some as a sign of illness or lack of drive, but they are left to explain the puzzling pastime of well-known non-slackers like Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, and Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.

For its part, the National Sleep Foundation states on its Web site that “while naps do not necessarily make up for inadequate or poor quality nighttime sleep, a short nap of 20-30 minutes can help to improve mood, alertness and performance.”

Stress causes people to gain weight, but only if they’re overweight to begin with, according to a Harvard University Study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

To reach this conclusion, Jason Block and colleagues followed a nationally representative cohort of 1,355 US men and women for 9 years.

They examined the relation between body mass index changes and multiple domains of psychosocial stress including those related to finances, work, life constraints and personal relationships.

The scientists controlled for other factors known to be associated with weight gain.

For people who had normal BMI at study onset, there was no relationship between stress and weight gain.

Overweight men packed on additional pounds when exposed to stress associated with a lack of decision authority at work, a perceived inability to learn new skills on the job and to carry out fulfilling job responsibilities, as well as personal financial difficulties.

Overweight women also gained weight when encountering job-related and financial stress, but unlike men, also gained weight when confronted by perceived constraints in home life and strained family relations. 

“Today’s economy is stressing people out, and stress has been linked to a number of illnesses—such as heart disease, high blood pressure and increased risk for cancer,” Block told BurrillReport.

The scientists posit that individuals change their eating behaviors when they are under stress, and that precipitates weight gain. As a result, they recommend that stress reduction should become part of workplace-related weight-loss programs as well as various public health programs.

“Our findings show that stress should be recognized as a threat to the well-being of American adults, especially those who are already overweight,” Block concluded.