More than half of adults in the European Union are overweight or obese, according to a new report. The European Commission and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development published the report, Health at a Glance: Europe 2010, on Tuesday. The rate of obesity has more than doubled over the past 20 years in most EU countries, which has important implications for health, health systems and the wider economy, the report’s authors said. Among adults, 50.1 per cent are now overweight or obese, based on the body mass index or BMI — a calculation based on a person’s weight-to-height...

A healthy sex life for the elderly may mean getting creative Gramps may not be as spry as he used to be, but in the bedroom there’s a good chance he’s getting it on and wants more, according to an Australian study released yesterday. That goes for great-grandpa, too. What do you know? Elderly men still have a vigorous sex life. It’s true, but not quite in the way portrayed. Media coverage headlined the roughly one-third of the nearly 2,800 men from 75 to 95 years old in the study, which was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, who were found to be sexually active­....

Glenda Kwek Australian experts have hailed as “remarkable” and “significant” a study that found taking aspirin daily cuts your risk of getting cancer, but cautioned the drug should not be regarded as a “magic bullet”. The British study, which was published in the medical journal The Lancet, analysed eight trials involving 25,570 patients, and found a daily dose of aspirin of less than 75 milligrams – about a quarter of an aspirin tablet – reduced cancer deaths by an average of 21 per cent during the studies and 34 per cent after five years. “It’s...

SUNY Scientists Find Longer DRD4 Gene Can Lead to Double Risk for Promiscuity, Infidelity John Coleman, a 22-year-old from Syracuse, N.Y., has been engaged for the last two years and cannot fathom having sex with anyone other than his girlfriend. “I find cheating appalling,” said Coleman. “There’s got to be something going on in your head to cheat.” It turns out Coleman is right. In what is being called a first of its kind study, researchers at Binghamton University, State University of New York (SUNY) have discovered that about half of all people have a gene that...

Among those who developed syndrome, many had later occurrences, study found MONDAY, Dec. 6 (HealthDay News) — Women who experience restless legs syndrome (RLS) during pregnancy are at increased risk for having it again during future pregnancies or developing a chronic form of the condition later in life, researchers have found. RLS causes unpleasant sensations in the legs. Symptoms are generally worse at night and tend to progress with age. Movement generally relieves symptoms. Italian researchers recruited 74 women who had RLS during pregnancy and 133 who did not. Six-and-a-half years later,...

“Nineteen hospital trusts are today exposed as having alarmingly high death rates in a major report that also reveals how hundreds of people are dying needlessly because of substandard NHS care”, reported The Observer. The newspaper story is based on an annual hospital guide, published today by Dr Foster Intelligence, an independently run health information firm that is part owned by the Department of Health. The guide is an annual publication that seeks to measure hospital performance in England with a growing series of comparative indicators. These indicators are constructed in partnership...

Scientists have announced a ‘revolutionary’ discovery which could reverse the nerve damage and paralysis caused by multiple sclerosis, reported the Daily Express. The news story is based on a laboratory study in animal and human cells. The study established the role of particular substances in the natural repair of myelin, the substance that insulates nerve cells in the brain and that is damaged in multiple sclerosis (MS). This type of research is a crucial first step in understanding the neurological processes underlying diseases such as multiple sclerosis. The findings have been called...

The length of men’s digits reveals surprising facts about health, sex and ambition Men across Britain got measuring on Wednesday, after a study was published suggesting the chance of getting prostate cancer could be deduced by finger size. An index finger longer than a ring finger on your right hand (it was written in the British Journal of Cancer) meant less risk. Great, we all thought, taking out rulers – let’s get a potentially depressing glimpse into the future! Further reading revealed that this was not the first time scientists had ascribed incredible predictive powers to the...

By Denise Ryan, Postmedia News VANCOUVER — Thanks to scientist Justin Garcia, you can now blame your promiscuous sexual behaviour on your genetic makeup — but you might not get away with it. Garcia’s research, based on DNA scraped from the cheeks of 181 young, sexually active adults, shows a link between a variant of DRD4 — a gene that affects dopamine receptors — and infidelity, one-night stands, drinking and thrill-seeking. DRD4 was instantly dubbed the “slut gene.” We all have the so-called “promiscuity” or “cheating gene,” Garcia said from...

By Hilary Matheson – The Journal-Standard Freeport, Ill. — Four northern Illinois community colleges were recognized with a state award for their collaboration and development of the Northern Illinois Online Initiative for Nursing (NIOIN). This online nursing program was created in response to a regional shortage in skilled nurses. The shortage was identified years ago in the Workforce Investment Act’s “Critical Skills Shortage Initiative.” Nancy Shuler, NIOIN program coordinator, said along with a shortage in skilled nurses, there was also a shortage of nursing instructors with...