Month: July 2014

Bookstore chain Barnes & Noble Inc has pledged to make its stores friendly to nursing mothers as part of a settlement with New York State after a woman who was breastfeeding was asked to cover herself or leave one of its locations. The agreement, announced by New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, called for Barnes & Noble to educate its employees about the chain’s own policies on public breast-feeding and to strengthen customer complaint procedures. The settlement followed a complaint by Shereen Matera of Oakland, New Jersey, who said she was breastfeeding her infant son in the children’s section of a Barnes & Noble store in Nanuet, New York when an assistant manager asked that she cover her breasts. “We’ve provided safe environments for women to breastfeed since we opened our first store,” a representative for Barnes & Noble, which also issued her a $50 gift card, said.

By Daniel Wallis DENVER (Reuters) – A Colorado judge on Wednesday delayed the planned trial in October of accused movie theater gunman James Holmes to allow more time to conduct a second sanity review. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Holmes, who has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to killing 12 people and wounding 70 others in 2012. "The Court has little choice but to grant the examiner's request," Arapahoe County District Judge Carlos Samour said in an order.

By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) – That obesity can cut life short by causing strokes and other illnesses comes as no surprise, but a study reported on Tuesday quantifies the toll: The most extreme cases cut a person’s lifespan more than cigarettes. The analysis, published in the journal PLOS Medicine, is the largest-ever study of the effect of extreme obesity on mortality. It found that people who are extremely obese — for someone of average height, carrying an extra 100 lb (45 kg) or more — die 6.5 to 13.7 years earlier than peers with a healthy weight. The study, based on data from 20 large studies of people in the United States, Sweden and Australia, comes as rates of obesity have soared.

“The reason why people lose so much more weight on low carbohydrate … dietary patterns and food choices known to, along with a healthy lifestyle, …

The view of antibiotics as a panacea for every illness is replaced with the awareness of the vital importance of the bacterial flora of the body in health. The downside of antibiotic use is revealed, and doctors discover that antibiotics can play a role in creating disease in the body, as well as preventing it.

By Ronnie Cohen NEW YORK – (Reuters Health) – Most doctors do not recommend flu shots to their pregnant patients, who are more likely to develop serious complications if they do get the flu, according to a new report. In the review of past studies, researchers also found that pregnant women had concerns about the safety of the flu vaccine and tended to underestimate the risk that the virus posed to themselves and their fetus.   “The research is clear that healthcare providers are not providing advice to pregnant women about the importance and benefits of getting vaccinated,” Marie Tarrant told Reuters Health in an email. She worked on the study at Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong.   “In addition, they are not making influenza vaccine available to their pregnant clients,” she said. “By their silence, they are sending a message that influenza vaccine is actually not that important.” One study found pregnant women were five times as likely to be hospitalized with the flu as other women, Tarrant said.   Flu vaccines given to pregnant women not only immunize them but protect their infants against the flu until they are six months old, the researchers write in the journal Vaccine.   The World Health Organization recently identified pregnant women as the highest priority group to receive seasonal flu vaccines.

By Shereen Lehman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Seniors who have a stroke or heart attack are more likely to end up living closer to their adult children afterward, according to a new study. Adult children often serve as informal caregivers when their parents become disabled after an illness, researchers note. “This study shows a major health problem of an older person – like a stroke – leads to a significant increase in the family relocation for closer residential proximity between (family members who don’t live together),” HwaJung Choi told Reuters Health in an email. “This suggests that the growing older population with disability in the U.S. and elsewhere can have a significant effect on residential choices of both older adults and their middle-aged children,” Choi said.

Let's take some time to exercise our well-being. Learning to love ourselves should be one of the highest priorities of all because it's the only way to truly love others.

In a first of its kind study, researchers at Tel Aviv University's School of Psychological Sciences established a causal link between interrupted sleep and compromised cognition, attention span and humor, concluding that interrupted sleep is roughly equivalent to four hours of consecutive sleep. According to study author Dr. Avi Sadeh, who directs a sleep clinic at TAU, previous studies have established an association between night waking and the aforementioned negative consequences, but his is the first to establish a causal link. The sleep patterns of 61 healthy adults, 40 of which were females between the ages of 20 and 29 years old, were traced at their homes using actigraphy and sleep diaries. Participants were assessed after both a normal (control) night's sleep and after a night during which sleep was either restricted to four hours or interrupted four times over the course of eight hours in bed.