Possible Blood Test for Depression

clipped from www.reuters.com Protein discovery could lead to depression test CHICAGO (Reuters) - Changes in the location of a single protein in the brain could be used to tell whether a person with depression is responding to an antidepressant within days of taking the drug, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday. People with depression now must wait weeks before they learn whether the drug they are taking will bring relief. But researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have discovered that a single protein in the brain changes its location within a cell membrane when an antidepressant is working, and this change could be identified with a simple blood test. In people with depression, this protein is trapped in what Rasenick called a "lipid raft" inside the cell membrane. While stuck in this thick, gluey area of the cell, the signaling protein seemed less effective at directing the action of message-carrying chemicals.

Legal Drug Overdoses 2nd Higest Killer in USA

clipped from www.alternet.org Overdose Death Rate Surges, Legal Drugs Are Mostly to Blame Drug Oxycontin, Lorcet, and other pain control drugs are the leading cause of the tens of thousands of annual drug overdoses -- why the silence? January report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), drug overdoses killed more than 33,000 people in 2005, the last year for which firm data are available That makes drug overdose the second leading cause of accidental death, behind only motor vehicle accidents (43,667) firearms deaths (30,694 According to the CDC, some 10,000 died of overdoses in 1990; by 1999, that number had hit 20,000; and in the six years between then and 2005, it increased by more than 60% "The death toll is equivalent to a hundred 757s crashing and killing everybody on board every year, but this doesn't make the news," "So many people have died, and we just don't care." the official and press response to the CDC report has been "utter silence." it is the middle-aged not the young who are doing most of the dying

Irritable Bowel Syndrome - A Solution!

Great lens on squidoo

clipped from www.squidoo.com You don't have to put up with gut pain anymore. I have found a treatment that is guaranteed to work! Wayne Pickstone, an Australian Naturopath, Acupuncturist and Herbalist, is finding himself constantly inundated with enquiries from both patients and other health professionals. They all want to know the secrets to his success in treating this complaint. You can find his website here at Irritable Bowel Treatments, or read on for more information below.

Pacemakers can be hijacked by radio

Not such a funny trick.

clipped from technology.newscientist.com IT GIVES new meaning to the term "heart attack". Last week researchers led by William Maisel at Harvard University used a commercially available radio transmitter to hijack the software on a device that acts as both a heart pacemaker and defibrillator. The device was not implanted in anyone, but the experiment raises the prospect of hackers being able to disrupt a person's heartbeat or stealthily administer damaging shocks. Is the threat of a hacker-instigated heart attack imminent? "The chances of someone being harmed by malicious reprogramming of their device is remote," says Maisel. However, implanted drug pumps and neurostimulators, which deliver electrical pulses to the brain, could be more vulnerable to such attacks in future as they increasingly have wireless capabilities built in.

Grape Skin Compound Fights The Complications Of Diabetes

Hope this one works. Will be the treatment for the sugar hangover - which I've found to be worse with fats than sugar.

clipped from www.sciencedaily.com ScienceDaily (Mar. 20, 2008) — Research carried out by scientists at the Peninsula Medical School in the South West of England has found that resveratrol, a compound present naturally in grape skin, can protect against the cellular damage to blood vessels caused by high production of glucose in diabetes, according to a recently published paper in the science journal "Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism." The elevated levels of glucose that circulate in the blood of patients with diabetes causes micro- and macrovascular complications by damaging mitochondria, the tiny power plants within cells responsible for generating energy. When they are damaged they can leak electrons and make highly damaging 'free radicals'. Complications that can result when this happen include nephropathy (kidney disease), heart disease and retinopathy (which if left untreated can lead to blindness).

Things you didn't know about your penis

"His brain is in his dick" partly true

clipped from www.cbsnews.com No. 1: Your Penis Does Have a Mind of Its Own the penis answers to a part of the nervous system that's not always under your conscious control Sexual arousal usually isn't voluntary impulses from the brain during the REM phase of sleep cause erections, whether you're dreaming about sex or about a test you forgot to study for When you're relaxed and feeling well, your flaccid penis looks bigger than when you're stressed out. "How's it hanging?" is more apt than you might have realized. no consistent relationship between the size of the flaccid penis and its full erect length shorter flaccid penises tend to gain about twice as much length as longer flaccid penises In an MRI picture, the penis looks distinctly boomerang-like, as noted by a French researcher who studied men and women having sex inside an MRI scanner. No. 4: You Can Break Your Penis there's "an audible pop or snap," Montague says. Then the penis turns black and blue. And there's terrible pain No. 5: Most Penises in the World Are Uncut

Peppers cure diabetes

clipped from www.naturalnews.com A new Canadian animal study published in Friday's issue of the journal Cell found that mice injected with capsaicin -- the chemical that makes chili peppers hot -- were rapidly cured of Type 1 diabetes. Researchers from the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto believe that Type 1 diabetes -- the most serious form of the disease that usually appears in childhood -- is caused by malfunctioning pain nerves that surround cells in the pancreas. In patients suffering from Type 1 diabetes, the pancreas fails to produce sufficient levels of insulin, causing inflammation and death of insulin-producing islet cells in the pancreas.