Health Bites

Tidbits on measuring blood pressure, the importance of exercise, diet, cancer prevention, premature birth prevention, memory, and emotional scars.

By PT Staff, published on March 01, 2005 - last reviewed on April 21, 2005

CHECK YOURSELF

The best way to reliably track blood pressure is with a home device rather than a visit to the doctor, according to the American Heart Association. Home devices encourage healthy living. They also counter so-called white-coat hypertension, patient nervousness that skews blood pressure readings in the doctor's office.

BRING BACK RECESS

Unstructured outdoor playtime needs to be incorporated back into children's lives, say researchers from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. From 1981 to 1997, playtime decreased about 25 percent, while childhood obesity and attention deficit diagnosis has climbed.

THE OLIVE OIL EFFECT

The Mediterranean diet -- rich in olive oil -- reduces breast cancer because a key component of olive oil, oleic acid, blocks the action of a breast cancer-causing gene. The gene is found in 30 percent of breast cancer patients.

SAFE, BUT NO RELIEF

Many men who are told they don't have cancer after a prostate biopsy continue to worry that they will develop the disease. The high rate of false positives from the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test, and its psychological toll, should be considerations in cancer screening, say researchers. About 60 percent of men with a positive PSA test don't have cancer.

PREEMIE PREVENTION

Women who take multivitamins before becoming pregnant are less likely to give birth prematurely, according to a study of American women. Previous studies indicate that folic acid helps fetal growth in the last months of pregnancy.

DOWNHILL FROM HERE

Americans may not, as a group, be any slimmer after the low-carb craze, but we are also not any fatter, which is itself a kind of progress.

A survey conducted by the NPD Group found that after climbing consistently for a decade, the number of Americans classified as overweight has held steady at 62 percent last year. With more Americans also reporting mindful eating, perhaps 2004 will be the year our weight peaked.

THE TROUBLE WITH NAMES

You shake hands and look into his face but promptly forget his name. According to Lori E. James, psychology professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, that's because proper names really are more difficult to remember than, say, a person's occupation. In a study, James used the same words -- cook and farmer -- as a person's name and occupation. Subjects were less able to remember the word when it was given as a person's name, regardless of the subject's age.

The reason is simple, says James. With a livelihood, the brain makes more links to the memory -- considering, for example, whether a person looks like a farmer -- than with only a name.

IF BELLY RINGS COULD TALK

Some teenagers view nose studs and navel barbells as the perfect ways to accessorize hip-hugger jeans or vintage sneakers. But Eric Storch, an assistant professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the University of Florida, thinks they're more than just adornments.

His recent survey of college students suggests piercings can be outward manifestations of inner scars. Study subjects who had multiple piercings were much more likely than their less-pierced peers to have experienced stressful events such as severe injury, illness, abuse or the death of a close family member. The findings appear in Personality and Individual Differences.