Bouncing to Hospital

You know that Bouncy Castle your kid is demanding for his birthday next week?  Well forget it.  Children are bouncing off these things and into ERs like there's no tomorrow.  They have no sense, kids.  Especially boys.  

Source: Pittsburgh Post Gazette

Beer Belly? Not Good.

The good people at Harvard Medical School have done it again, discovering that drinking lots of beer may not be the best for your health.  They tested a bunch of men in their mid thirties, and found out that the ones with beer bellies are turning their bones into dust.  The picture above is the exact one the Daily Mail used to illustrate this report, so I hope they don't mind me reproducing it above.  I hope this gent was handsomely remunerated for donating his image. Anyway, long story short, if you drink so much beer that you are buying your pants in the large man's store then don't expect good things to happen.



Source:  Daily Mail

High Heels, Short Toes

According to the Boston Globe some women are getting little toes surgically removed so as to fit into elegantly tailored high heeled shoes.  Now as any half-way sensible person will tell you, this is a less than wonderful idea.  Is it really worth a lifetime of gimping around the place for the sake of squashing your foot into clearly inappropriate footwear for a sequence of evenings out in your twenties and early thirties?  You know you're only going to be slobbing around the place in those big clompily comfortable trainers when you've got a couple of kids and your idea of a big night out is a bottle of wine and the X Factor final.  I sincerely hope that this story falls under the category of Urban Legend.


Source:  Boston Globe

No Yolking Matter

Eggs are bad for you again.  Particularly the tasty yellow part of the egg.  It's "Worse Than Smoking Cigarettes" (for people over 40, and only if the 'worse' part refers specifically to the rate of thickening of arteries.  Plus it's not actually quite as bad as smoking cigarettes).  

Based upon this article, the scientific community is confused about eggs.  It doesn't quite know what to make of them.  For hundreds of years they were fine, up until the point at which people started to realise that eating some types of food isn't always good for your health.  Then they were awful for a number of years, until they were pretty much fine again, and now not so much. 

Hope that helps.


Source:  Chicago Tribune

Lettuce. Deadly, Killer Lettuce.

When you buy lettuce at the supermarket, please do not start chomping pieces out of it before you get home.  And when you do get home, here's what you need to do:  Wash the lettuce.
This is because about 1 in 40 lettuces in the (U.K.) supermarket are carrying some kind of bacteria.  And if you start recklessly chewing the stuff un-rinsed, and you are young, old, pregnant or any combination of same, you may feel slightly unwell.  Or worse!  Maybe quite unwell.  Or dead.  Depends on the bacteria.  

Wash the lettuce.

Source:  Daily Mail

Eggsterminate

This is one of those studies which connects two things (in this case: eating eggs and prostate cancer) whether they should be connected or not.  They were looking for connections between meat and prostate cancer, ('they' being the good people at the Harvard School of Public Health, who cannot sit still for 10 minutes without knocking out one of these reports).  Anyway, no such link was found on this occasion though they noticed a correlation between those men who eat 3 or more eggs a week and the cancer.  However, Cancer Research UK wasn't getting sucked into this one, perhaps having read previous reports from this institution, and simply say that in general egg/cancer research 'results have been contradictory'.

Source: Daily Mail

Avoid Selenium

This article (see below) is entitled: 'Beware Selenium - too much is harmful scientists warn'.  I picture a scientist standing on the moors , lab-coat fluttering in the wind, moaning "Bewaaaaare!"

Now fair enough, Selenium can be good for you if you are lacking in Selenium.  In other words, should you be unfortunate enough to suffer from a Selenium deficiency then by all means go out and buy some supplements to get you back on track.  But for the rest of us - and I include myself only hesitantly in this group - taking extra Selenium may actually make you less healthy.  So don't go diving into the Selenium jar, or sitting down in front of a movie with a big bowl of Selenium on your knees.  You'll regret it later.


That being said, I have only one question:  

What is Selenium?


Source:  Irish Independent

Facebook is Bad for You

Spending all day looking at those photos of your friends on the beach probably isn't great for you, especially if you have good-looking friends.  This is because you see the carefully posed, reshot and edited photo that has been carefully selected to make said friend look just about as good as is humanly possible, and you start feeling bad about the way you look.  As you may imagine, this is particularly a young female phenomena, as these body image things generally are.  Stop looking at facebook teenage girls!  It's making you depressed and anorexic; your friends are thinking exactly the same things as you anyway, so wise up!


Source:  Miami Herald

Wine. This week it's Bad for you.

Yes, that's right.  A glass of wine a day is now bad for you again, after being good for you for a couple of years.  *sigh* It was good while it lasted.  Now Oxford University tells us that we need to cut down from a glass of wine a day to 'half a small glass of wine'.  Let's face it, that's not going to happen is it.  Who is going to settle down of an evening on the couch, crack open a bottle of Merlot, and pour themselves 'half a small glass' when they sit down in front of the repeat of 'Desperate Housewives'.  Unlikely.




Source:  UK Independent

Lazy Slobs of the World: Rejoice!

Yes, this study reckons that Exercise is bad for you.  Large individuals on straining couches nod knowingly: this was what they have been trying to tell people for years.  Hang on though fatties, it's not quite that simple.  The "heart scarring" referred to in this article applies only to marathon runners and triathletes, not people going down the gym a couple of times a week.  Keep wishing.

Source:   Sydney Morning Herald

Your Shampoo is Poisoned! Look Out!

...only a little bit though, so don't worry really.  Apparently there are lots of chemicals in products like shampoos and sunscreen, even ones advertising themselves as natural, alternative bio-somethings.  And there you were thinking that organic shampoo bottle was filled with flower-perfumed rainwater and baby seal tears (of laughter, obviously).  The Silent Spring Institute did the research here, (apparently they have a great engineering program at that school, football team so-so), and as a result I have no reason to doubt their findings.  


So I guess the message here is: don't drink too much shampoo.  Just one glass a day, and for God's sake don't start binge drinking at the weekend.


Source:  Chicago Sun Times

White Rice Causes Diabetes (Maybe)

Bad Luck Asian people of Planet Earth.  If you eat white rice there's a small increase in the likelihood of your developing type 2 diabetes.  On the bright side however, eating brown rice means that there will be a small decrease in the likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes.  


Maybe mush them up in the bowl together next time?  That should balance you out.  The nutritionist at the Medical Research unit in Cambridge does point out that this study "does not show or prove that white rice consumption causes diabetes", which makes me wonder why they bothered with the thing in the first place.  


Source:  Independent (U.K.)

Put Down the Cinnamon Shaker!

Over in the Great United States, those crazy teens have come up with a new game where they dare each other to swallow a spoonful of cinnamon without any water or liquid.  To me it sounds like the kind of thing the wussiest frat house in the world might come up with.  Or maybe a thing a bunch of Mormon kids might do instead of chugging back litres of beer.  


However, Dr Alvin of the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Centre is alarmed by this trend.  "Don't mess with cinnamon kids", he implores, "just say no!" (I'm paraphrasing).  The poison centre has been inundated with calls this year (number of calls: 139; population of U.S.: 313,326,000) enquiring about cinnamon.  From these, it was suggested that 30 go see their doctor, just to be on the safe side.  


Consider yourself warned.


Source:   Los Angeles Times

Takeaway Pizza is Unhealthy - Whatever Next?

People are eating a lot of takeaway pizzas, and Big Ones at that.  Often with spicy wedges, garlic bread and litres of coke on the side.  Now apparently this is not good for you.  Yes, it's a surprise alright but there we have it.  So next time you find yourself slumped on the sofa, extra-large pizza box dripping grease onto your lap, think twice:  This is NOT health food.  Perhaps this is the wake up call we required, because too many people have been assuming that ordering a 16 inch pepperoni pizza with garlic fries three times a week forms a natural part of a healthy and balanced diet.  And worse, further revelations reveal that those garlic fries do NOT constitute one of your 5-a-day.  Think again people.


Source:  Irish Independent

Some Famous Soft Drinks are a bit Cancer-y

Seems like everyones favourite brown drinks - Coke and Pepsi - may have to make some alterations to their respective secret ingredients.  They both use an ingredient which the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in the U.S. has linked to cancer in mice and rats.  Well rats and mice shouldn't be drinking coke anyway, how did they get the bottle open?  But due to concerns that humans might suffer the same effects, out goes the ingredient.  But Coke and Pepsi reassure us that it will be same great taste we know and love, just a bit less cancer-y.  Or words to that effect.


Source:  Independent UK

Less Sleep Makes You Fat

The first thing that bothers me about this study (by researchers at Brigham and Women's hospital) is that 'optimal sleep' is given as 10 hours.  Ten Hours sleep?  That seems like rather a lot.  I was given to understand that between 6 and 8 was the norm, and any more than that is just lax. 

Anyway, they tried to replicate patterns of sleep which shift workers would get (down to about 5 and a half hours a night/day and changing times) and it's not good for your health and can bring on diabetes and/or slow your metabolism.

'Getting enough sleep is important for health', says Orfeu M. Buxton Phd and BWH neuroscientist,  possibly thumping his desk for added effect, and I for one am not going to argue with him.  



Source:  Times of India

Being an Astronaut is Bad for your Eyes

Now this story was picked up worldwide by all sorts of newspapers - I just happened to read it on 'The Australian' site.  Which begs the question: to whom exactly is this an important issue?  Of the (roughly) 7,000,000,000 people wandering around the planet, there are possibly 25 of them who may be directly affected by these findings.  Are you liable to be blasting out of the clammy embrace of the earth's orbit anytime soon?  And if so, are you planning on being  gone for long?  If the answer to both of these questions is 'yes', then you may wish to schedule a visit to Vision Express on your return, as you may (possibly) have damaged your eyes a little bit.  


Everyone else can relax.


Source:  The Australian

Cleaning the House May Rob You of Your Senses

Senses of smell and taste, that is.  Taste is mostly related to smell you see, so if you lose the first one, the second one goes too.  So try to avoid standing for too long in a small bathroom, dousing the place with pungent bleach.  This may (or may not) 'affect the delicate lining of the nose' on a permanent basis.  Probably not on a permanent basis though, even the article doesn't push it too far.  But definitely don't pour the bleach down your nose or anything like that, because then you'd really be asking for trouble.  Also, try to avoid head injuries, nasal polyps, diabetes, pregnancy, vitamin deficiency, tooth infections, nerve disorders and getting older.  Although granted, avoiding the last one may prove tricky in the long run.  All of these can have a negative affect on your shnozzle powers too - not to worry you or anything.  The last thing the Daily Mail wants to do is to alarm anyone unnecessarily...


Source:  Daily Mail

Junk Food = Junk Sperm

Food preceded by the word 'junk' can be relied upon to be pretty unhealthy.  You would - quite rightly - assume that it is bad for you in a number of different ways.  As such, it will come as little surprise to discover that stuffing your face with McBurgers will not result in lovely shiny new sperm.  The burgers and chips and takeaways will in fact lower your sperm count.  So eat fish if you want more sperm.  If you're not worried either way, then phone up some food people and when they deliver, just pour some melted cheese over whatever turns up in the little plastic tray.


Source:  Daily Mirror

Maybe Vitamins Aren't Good For You(?)

 The article I took this from was 'in conversation' with a Dietician.  Now of course Dietician is not a proper job title, ranking instead alongside such path-breakers as Feng-Shui advisors, Interior Designers, Life Planners and Psychotherapists as first ones to be chucked off the life raft in emergency situations.  Or possibly eaten.  Anyway, this dietician is loathe to give any concrete answers to questions rather than intimating that, yes, too much of certain types of vitamins may pose minor health risks to certain people.  And don't rely on multivitamin pills because we are all special little snowflakes with different vitamin requirements.  She concludes with the revelatory news that it's a good idea to follow a healthy and balanced diet incorporating fruits and vegetables!  "We are capable of healing in a natural way", she says, (in my mind she's probably making some earnest hand-cupping gesture as she says this, head tilted to one side), "if we give our body what it needs to heal".   


I have nothing more to add.




Source:  Dallas Morning News

Ukranian Tick Alert

Apparently there are some microscopic organisms infected with encephalitis in the general area of Ukraine and these may (or may not) tend towards the groin area...
Look: let's be honest here.  There is a football competition on in Ukraine and Poland this year, and the Daily Mail has jumped at the chance to use the expression 'watch your tackle'.  They have even gone so far as to suggest that "England and Ireland football supporters have been warned to 'watch their tackle' in this summer's Euros..." I will tell you now that Nobody Anywhere in the wide world has issued a statement suggesting that football fans 'watch their tackle'.  And to be frank, it really isn't even a half-decent link to football in the first place, not to mention that "Watch your tackle!" is not a phrase heard on a football pitch, except in the mind of the nerdish individual who came up with this shoddy piece.  Disappointing journalism really, from what is normally such a high-minded publication.

Source:  Daily Mail

Cereal Bars. Nope.

What could possibly be the harm in these awful-looking, dried-out, knobbly slabs of squashed grains.  Surely these things must be good for your health, at least.  Surely.
No, of course they aren't good for you.  Cereal bars have too much sugar in them, or else a lot of fats, or else both.  Whereas milk can 'wash away' sugar (just how scientific was this study...), in cereal bar form you are choking down every last molecule.  How can you even bear to look at yourself in the mirror?  You disgust me, wolfing down Mars Tracker Banana Bars like a wild animal.


Source:  BBC website

Women of a Certain Age - Fear the Cakes

A new 'eating fatty foods is bad for you' study has emerged from the United States.  Thank Goodness!  This one is aimed squarely at post-menopausal women, this particular demographic perhaps having been neglected somewhat in the past.  Well anyway, cakes and fried foods are bad for you lot as well, just in case you thought you had some sort of immunity.  Sorry.  Stuffing your faces with trans-fats is not going to do much for your prospects of finishing that marathon, hot flushes or no.  The University of North Carolina School of Public Health has done a Study, so you know it's true.  Those guys don't mess around.


Source:  Times of Malta

Fast Food Makes You Sad

If you fill your face with hamburgers, hotdogs and and pizza all the time, it's not going to do you any good.   According to Research, you are probably also a single smoker who works a lot and then goes home and sits on the couch feeling depressed.  Now this seems like a bit of a chicken and egg situation here.  Which came first, the low paying job with long hours and no exercise, or the fast food?  The being single, or the fast food?  But as usual this type of Research can be twisted around to suit whichever media corporation is publishing it, hence fast food = depression.


Source:  Irish Independent

Don't Drink Alcohol. (Or Coffee, or Soda, even the Diet Version)

Because they are all bad for you, especially the alcohol.  Alcohol sucks B vitamins out of your body like a delightful hoover.  All you're left with is the shell.  Plus it makes you fat.  So do soft drinks.  And so do diet soft drinks because 'studies show they increase your desire for sweets'.  Now I haven't embarked on any studies myself, but might I suggest that the sweets thing is just fat people rewarding themselves for not glugging down a 2 litre bottle of regular Coke?The rather tedious dietician featured in this article (link below) also doesn't like coffee, but it's just a vague dislike, nothing you can hang your hat on.  I imagine all dieticians instinctively distrust coffee.  I also imagine that they do not make great road-trip buddies.

Source:  Chicago Tribune

Australian Suburb Killer!

Now this title is not suggesting that there is a killer at large in Australian suburbia.  In fact, it is the suburbs themselves which are killing people who live in them.  You may scoff, but the article in 'The Age' newspaper gives a harrowing account of one young family's 90 minute commute in order to find an indoor swimming pool for the kids to splash around in.  They had to wait a long time for a bus.  In the rain.  And all because their own suburb doesn't have adequate aquatic facilities.  Which means that people exercise less, become obese, and die in their beds with a half-eaten chicken lodged down their throats.  Hence the title - and you thought I was exaggerating?


Inconsiderate Australian local planning committees: hang your heads in shame. You are murdering innocent Aussies!




Source:  The Age

Shaking Hands is Bad For You

Hands can spread disease you know.  So stop shaking hands with people.  Just give them a curt nod, ignore the outstretched hand, they'll drop it soon enough.  Just stare 'em out.  Don't let social pressures make you succumb to letting their armada of little germs bridge the gap over to you.  Your body is your temple you know, so you might as well build a big giant invisible wall around it.  In fact all temples should probably do this, just in case.


The British Olympic chief medical officer has brought this subject up, just in case you were wondering.  Forget all that fair -play-good-chap business, he says.  Don't let Johnny Foreigner weaken our stout British limbs with his virus ridden paws.   Also stay away from mobile phones, as 1 in 6 of them is carrying faecal bugs.  What are people doing with their phones?


Source:  Guardian

Bread is Salty. Salty is Bad. Bread is Bad.

Guess what's the number one source of salt in the American diet.  Go on guess, you'll never... yes it is bread - obviously - it's in the title of this post.  Fair enough.  'Potato chips' (or 'crisps', as non-American people call them) only come tenth on the list.  This seems wrong, and of course technically it is.  The actual point is that people eat more bread than, for example, popcorn, and as a result they hoover up more sodium from bread than anything else.  Sodium gives you high blood pressure and this is generally looked upon as a bad thing by the medical profession.  Hence we have a news article suggesting that bread is liable to give you a heart attack in the morning.


Source:  Dallas Morning News

Toast Makes You Look Old

Yeah, you heard me.

Stop eating that toast, it's full of AGEs (that's Advanced Glycation End Products).  These cause wrinkling and pigmentation of skin.  Apparently.  How ironic, that such a chronic condition should have such a nifty little acronym!  Almost as if the Scientists who discovered the condition were somehow In Cahoots with the anti-aging products gang.  But I can't believe a Scientist would stoop so low.  So yeah, toast makes you look Ancient, so stop wearing those skinny jeans & tight t-shirts - you're just embarrassing yourself Grandad.  And there are AGES seeping out of your coffee and croissant too, so don't think you can get away with them either you wrinkly old fart.

Source:  Sydney Morning Herald

Ice Cream is More Addictive than Crack Cocaine

Yes it's true, it wasn't your fault at all, just like you always said!  You weren't being greedy, it was your chronic ice cream addiction that led to your crippling Baskins & Robbins habit.  That's why you had to cut the waistband in your track-pants and why you haven't been able to fasten a pair of jeans since stonewash went out of fashion.  The internationally renowned 'Oregon Research Institute' (or, ORI as it's shown on your college application forms) has discovered that your brain is making you eat more ice cream.  Not you, your brain.  You see the ORI team has come up with data showing that parts of your brain really, reeeally like ice cream.  These 'brain bits' get depressed when the ice cream is all gone, so they make you go over to the freezer and get another wedge of it to shove down your gullet.  And just like drugs, the more of it you try, the less the high.  Sad really.  Washed up, living in a box, rocky road smears crusting on your big face.  


No I will NOT give you 50 cents for bus fare.  I know what you'd do with that money...


Source:  Irish Independent

Semi-Skimmed Milk is a Waste of Space

You're better off drinking the real stuff - the milk referred to as 'full fat', in a blatant attempt to scare off dieting women.  In fact 'real' milk isn't that fatty at all, certainly not compared to - for example - a cake, and the low fat stuff isn't going to help you lose any weight because the difference is so tiny that you'd need to be sucking cows dry on a daily basis to notice a difference.  (Nice mental image).  And by removing or reducing the small amount of fat found in the cream, you also remove most of the vitamins and minerals along with it.  And what's the point in drinking milk at all if you're going to do that?


Source:  Daily Mail

Red Meat is Bad for You

If you eat even small quantities of processed meat - like those delicious sausages and bacon strips you like - you will probably die earlier than you otherwise would have.  That's what a Study from Harvard has deduced, and everyone knows that people from Harvard are very, very clever indeed.  Don't eat red meat.  Try to avoid it completely, or else make it an 'occasional part of your diet'.   In fact if you replace the red meat you currently stuff your fat face with with whole-grains or something similar, you will live longer.  Some may wonder what type of a barren existence this would be, but there it is.


The Harvard folk say that if we persist in our processed red meat eating, we are 21% more likely to get heart disease and 10% more likely to get cancer.  Suspiciously precise figures which have nevertheless been repeated unquestioningly by the hundreds of newspapers worldwide which 'covered' this story.  'Covered' as in 'regurgitated'.  By the way, if I am not to die of heart disease or cancer - how exactly am I going to go?  Duck hunting accident?  Tragi-comic piano crushing from above?  Maybe the Harvard guys know.


Harvard.


Source:  Irish Independent (& every other paper in the world)

Soft Drinks are Bad For You

According to a Study, drinking a can of soda a day will increase your risk of heart disease by 20%.  If you are a man. This particular study was a men-only affair, probably due to some undisclosed bias on the part of the surveyors. The 'study leader' is a professor at Harvard - or at least the Harvard School of Public Health, which you, I and everyone else on the planet assumes is the same thing.  And maybe it is.  But anyway this professor and his team (of students?) have come to the conclusion that even one can of Popsi or Cake per day and you massively increase the chances of your heart packing it in.  Or in other words, carbonated drinks containing large amounts of sugar and various other unpronounceable chemicals are bad for your health.  Thanks Harvard Professor!


Source: Irish Independent