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Contence:
1. Aspartame Safety Concerns
2. Bad Marriages Take Health Toll on Women.
3. Cosmetic Quiz.
4. Epilepsy: Mysterious and Sometimes Misunderstood.
5. Medicines and Health.
6. New Method to Find Alzheimers Disease.
7. Obesity as a Social Disease?
8. When Medicines Become a Risky Mix.
9. An allergy.
Text 1. Aspartame Safety Concerns
There are few people who can resist the taste of sweet foods. We are born with a preference for sweets, and it remains with us throughout our lives. However, too much of a good thing can lead to problems such as dental cavities, obesity and the health complications related to being overweight and obese (for example, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, hypertriglyceridemia, and heart disease). Problems such as osteoporosis and vitamin and mineral deficiencies can also occur when high-sugar foods replace more nutritionally balanced foods. The solution for being able to satisfy our sweet tooth, without the disadvantages of sugar, was the invention of nonnutritive sweeteners.
In response to research published by Italian scientists that suggest that the artificial sweetener aspartame can cause cancer, the U.S. consumer organization Center for Science in the Public Interest requested an urgent Food and Drug Administration (FDA) review of the product's safety in June 2007.
Aspartame, which has been on the U.S. market since 1981, is composed primarily of two common amino acids, aspartic acid and phenylalanine. Each of these is also a building block for conventional foods such as protein and natural flavor molecules. Before its FDA approval, the safety of aspartame was tested in over 100 scientific studies. These studies were carried out in both humans and laboratory animals and included studies of rats that were fed aspartame in doses greater than 100 times the amount that humans would normally consume.
The data that sparked the controversy were from a report by researchers at the European Ramazzini Foundation (ERF) in Bologna, Italy, published in 2005. The scientists carried out tests of over 4,000 rats that regularly consumed high doses of aspartame and were allowed to live until they died naturally. Scientists from ERF concluded from their study that aspartame causes cancer and that current uses and consumption of the sweetener should be reevaluated.
Text 2. Bad Marriages Take Health Toll on Women
Women in tense, strained marriages are more likely than men to suffer from mental problems like depression, but also dangerous physiological conditions, such as high blood pressure and obesity, a new study shows.
Strained marriages also cause depression in men, says study researcher Nancy Henry of the University of Utah.
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But she says that men in such relationships, unlike women, aren't at increased risk of developing the physiological conditions of metabolic syndrome. Aside from having excess belly fat and elevated blood pressure, other characteristics of metabolic syndrome include elevated triglycerides, elevated blood sugar, and low levels of HDL "good" cholesterol.
If you have at least three of the five characteristics, you qualify as having metabolic syndrome, which is known to increase risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.
For the study, Henry and her colleagues recruited 276 couples married an average of two decades, in which men and women were between 40 and 70 years old. Participants filled out questionnaires that covered positives, such as emotional warmth and mutual support; and areas of tension, such as frequency of arguments and extent of disagreements over issues like sex, kids, and money.
Participants also had medical screening that included blood tests and measurements of blood pressure and waist circumference.
The researchers found:
Women reporting more marital strain were more likely to report depressive symptoms.
Women with marital strain had more metabolic syndrome symptoms.
Men in bad marriages reported depressive symptoms unrelated to any signs of metabolic syndrome.
Why Bad Marriages May Affect Women's Health?
"Women seem to be more relationship oriented," says Henry, a doctoral student at the University of Utah who also works at the Veteran Affairs Salt Lake City Medical Center. "We know by research that women tend to base their self-concept on relationships, how they are doing, how things are going for them. And we think that's the reason we've shown that negative relationship issues seem to take a greater toll on women emotionally and physically."
Text 3. Cosmetic Quiz
