Regrets? We've had a few (our love lives, health, childhoods, finances, smoking and careers...)

Regrets? We've had a few (our love lives, health, childhoods, finances, smoking and careers...)- We spend three quarters of an hour dwelling on our regrets every week, a study has found.

The most common cause for remorse is not having saved more money, followed by a wish that we had put more effort in at school.

Starting smoking, not exercising enough and not seeing more of the world also feature in the survey’s top five regrets.

Pondering: We spend 45 minutes a week dwelling on our regrets, according to a survey

Three quarters of those surveyed said they did not believe it was possible to live a life without regrets, perhaps explaining why, on average, we spend 44 minutes a week thinking about things we could or should have done differently.

Our main areas of regret are our love lives (20 per cent), family (18 per cent), career (16 per cent), health (14 per cent) and finances (14 per cent).

On average, we have two main regrets in life – and 17 per cent of those interviewed laid the blame at someone else’s door.

But two thirds of those interviewed said they thought their regrets had led them to act more positively and that they had learnt from their mistakes.

A quarter of the 2,000 people questioned by Electric Zebra, an electronic substitute cigarette firm, said their regrets had made them into the person they are today.

Common regrets range from not getting on the property ladder sooner to not being more promiscuous when younger. Others include regretting not telling someone we loved them and wishing we had repaired a damaged friendship.

The top ten regrets were:

1. Not having saved more money
2. Not having worked harder at school
3. Not having exercised more
4. Not seeing more of the world
5. Taking up smoking
6. Not staying in touch with people more
7. Not having taken more care of our bodies when younger
8. Not having appreciated an elderly relative more before he or she passed away
9. Not having taken more photos of experiences growing up
10. Getting married too early. ( dailymail.co.uk )

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Fewer Babies Born on Halloween

Fewer Babies Born on Halloween - "Happy Halloween" and "Happy birthday" may not be sentiments heard very often in the same breath, according to a new study. The research finds that the number of babies born drops on Halloween day, but spikes on Valentine's Day, a day with more positive associations.

Most surprisingly, the birth decrease occurred not just among moms who scheduled C-sections or induced labors; spontaneous births rose and fell along with holidays as well.

The researchers aren't sure how this holiday-birthday difference comes about, but the findings suggest that moms have some control over when they'll go into labor, said study researcher Becca Levy of the Yale University School of Public Health.

"We know from other kinds of research that an individual's will can have an impact on different hormonal factors," Levy told LiveScience. "It's possible that there's something going on with mothers either wanting to give birth or not wanting to give birth on a certain date, and that might affect a hormonal cascade, which could have an impact on the timing."

Holiday labor

Levy and her colleagues began investigating the birth-timing question as a way to understand how personal beliefs are related to health. Some studies have suggested that the human will can triumph over the body, including in cases where terminally ill people seem to "hang on for the holidays" — though findings on whether that is the case have been mixed.

Levy chose Halloween and Valentine's Day because neither holiday is major enough to affect hospital staffing, but both holidays have strong emotional connotations: Valentine's is associated with happiness and love, while Halloween's associations are considerably darker. [Read: 13 Halloween Superstitions Explained]

The researchers used birth certificate data to look at the timing of births taking place one week before and after both Valentine's Day and Halloween from 1996 to 2006. That made for a total of more than 1.6 million births around Valentine's Day and 1.8 million births around Halloween. The researchers then compared the day-to-day differences in natural, induced and Cesarean births on the actual holiday with those on days around the holiday.

What they found was striking: On Valentine's Day, the likelihood of giving birth went up by 5 percent compared with the weeks before and after the holiday. Births from spontaneous labor spiked 3.6 percent, while induced births went up 3.4 percent. Cesarean births were 12.1 percent more likely on Valentine's, which might suggest women deliberately schedule C-sections to have Valentine's Day babies.

Halloween showed a mirror-image effect. All types of births decreased on Halloween as compared with the surrounding two weeks, the researchers reported this month in the journal Social Science & Medicine. The chance of giving birth on Halloween went down by a total of 11.3 percent, with 16.9 percent fewer C-sections, 18.7 percent fewer induced births and 5.3 percent fewer spontaneous births.

Mind matters?

There's no way to tell whether the changes in spontaneous birth happen because mothers consciously hope against Halloween babies and dream of Valentine's-themed birthday parties, or whether the process might be unconscious, Levy said. Either way, the findings do suggest that psychological and cultural factors may be at play in the seemingly spontaneous process of labor, she said.

"We don't know the mechanisms, so that's certainly something that needs to be explored," Levy said, adding that since the study was based on birth certificates, there was no way to tell how the moms in the study felt about Halloween or Valetine's Day births.

To find out why the holidays seem to influence birth timing, the researchers would need to conduct a much smaller study on expecting mothers, monitoring their hormone levels and feelings about certain potential birth days, Levy said. ( LiveScience.com )

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Paradox of modern life: so many choices, so little joy

Paradox of modern life: so many choices, so little joy - As a person who manages creatives at an ad agency, I'm in a constant battle to provide my teams with the right amount of input. Too much information is paralyzing. But surprisingly, too much freedom is even worse. Give a creative team the world of potato chips to explore, and they freeze. Give them the word "crunchy" and watch them go. Creatives think they hate boxes, but it's in boxes that the creative process thrives.

And not just boxes: really small boxes. I use a technique you might call "Making the problem harder." I tell teams working on print ads to start by creating a billboard. If you have a TV campaign with a $300,000 production budget, try solving the problem for $10,000. Or do the whole spot only using type and sound effects.

Too much freedom can be bad for creatives, but there's significant evidence that it makes regular folks unhappy, too. I've long been fascinated by the arguments put forth by Barry Schwartz in "The Paradox of Choice." He says that when people have too many choices, especially in small matters, they freeze. And when they do choose, they're often left with buyer's remorse, convinced they missed a better opportunity.

It's not as counterintuitive as it sounds. The theory explains why you might be avoiding the smoothie place down the street with 98 flavors, not including the add-ons and power boosts. And in part why Chipotle is so successful. They present a limited range of options that makes choosing easy – just enough variation to make you feel it's your burrito but not so many that your head explodes.

But can the paradox of choice tell us something about the big issues in our lives? I think so.

Let me give you an example. My wife and I have five kids, which means that we spent the better part of 20 years with very limited choices in our personal lives. We were simply too busy to join book clubs, take glass-blowing classes, or even stay late at the office. Then our last kid went to college, and we weren't as happy with all that freedom as we expected to be. We missed the structure that our kids' schedules provided. Empty Nest Syndrome? Maybe Unlimited Choice Syndrome is a better name.

I suspect the paradox of choice also explains why so many people are disappointed with retirement. There's no structure for choices. (In design, this is called choice architecture.) And conversely, the paradox of choice also explains why so many of the workaholics I know seem so happy. They have fewer choices to make. They don't have to pick which TV show to watch because they're returning e-mail. Their lives are focused and purpose-driven – which is a big part of what makes humans happy.

The truth is most of us hate it when the world is our oyster. Exhibit A: recent liberal arts grads, who don't know what they want to do with their lives. We've provided them with such poor choice architecture – telling them they could do anything – that they can't seem to imagine themselves doing anything but working at Starbucks.

We humans are so complicated. Give us too little freedom and we'll stand up to dictators in Cairo and fighter planes in Libya. Give us too much freedom (and too many channels), and we'll sit in front of the TV, mindlessly flipping through our options, watching nothing. ( Csmonoitor.com )

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So What Are the Secret Lives of Married Men?

So What Are the Secret Lives of Married Men? - Has anyone sat down yet with New York's cover story, a long essay entitled "The Affairs of Men: The Trouble with Sex and Marriage," pegged to the Eliot Spitzer scandal? Inside, however, is not an outré confession but a fiftysomething baby boomer's long-winded attempt to rationalize his desire to screw a variety of women despite being married. Though it presents itself as provocative and edgy, the piece is inflected with the naïve, wishful rhetoric of 1970s thinking about sex.

Philip Weiss, the author, explains that men "hunger for sexual variety" and determines that this hunger is "a basic and natural and more or less irresistible impulse." He comments on Ashley Dupre's "luscious body." He reports that men are using more porn than ever and quotes Mark Penn wondering what will happen when women "realize it." He notes that sexless marriages among power couples are endemic. He harps on his own desire for "some strange." Yet when his exasperated wife proposes an open marriage in response to all his bellyaching, he flinches at the thought that she might avail herself of the new rules, too: "No thanks." Throughout, he presents a view of men as virile, prowling predators and of women as gentle, jealous keepers of social calendars who simply don't feel monogamy to be as much of a challenge as men do. (His wife tells him that the women she knows aren't that interested in sex.) And thus he frets over a "never-ending battle of the sexes," which might be boiled down to: "Men Like To Spread Seed, Women Get Jealous." My god, the man has put his finger on it! And only how many decades after Charles Darwin did it better?

The piece has myriad problems. But the main problem is that it offers nothing new. Weiss is deeply enamored of what he takes to be his own willingness to challenge cultural mores about sex, yet the piece could have as easily been written in 1978 as today. Weiss' cultural references are antiquated—Yoko and John, Gay Talese's Thy Neighbor's Wife—and so are his attitudes. (Prime example: He fantasizes about persuading waitresses in New York that it would be "cool" to have an affair.) There's certainly plenty still to be said about the complexities of monogamy in married life, but at this point the starting point for the conversation should be a lot more advanced than Weiss'. It certainly would have to include the fact that women may well find monogamy to be almost as difficult as men do. One 2007 study found that among married couples with children, some 37 percent of women and 40 percent of men cheated. That's not a huge discrepancy. I pressed to the end hoping for some, any, fresh insight (For example: Has feminism changed women's relationship to sex and marriage? Do couples raised in the post-feminist age deal with their sexual appetites with more clarity than boomer couples do?)—but I kept finding only the same "truth" you find in Philip Roth novels of late: a rather fuzzy picture of the darkness of sexual desire.

To put it plainly, it's tiresome to read men dilate at length on their own hemmed-in libidos while refusing to seriously examine three things: 1) the possibility that unfettered sexual freedom might not actually solve all their emotional problems or satisfy their fantasies, 2) the possibility that their wives might feel the same complicated desire for sexual novelty, and 3) that one consequence of sexual freedom is jealousy. Weiss coyly refers to his desire to have a threesome with a blogger named Debauchette and waxes enthusiastic about breaking down sexual taboos and setting up free-loving polyamorous compounds. (Been there, done that, circa 1971, no?) He goes on and on about sexual variety but doesn't characterize just what it is about variety that's appealing to him and his anonymous peers: the possibility of a brutal, depersonalized sexual encounter? The sheer bounty of potential partners? Novelty itself? All of the above? I'd love to read some, well, probing writing about this.

Basically, the piece lost me as soon as it became clear that Weiss wanted to have zipless fucks while his wife was home planning his social calendar. (Talk about presenting yourself in an anti-erotic light.) It lost me again when I reached the end and found that he never paused to complicate his assumption that having sex with more women would make him happier—and be as mysterious and thrilling as his fantasies. Sex is rarely frictionless. Let's assume that—and then ask what it might be like to be more honest about it. ( slate.com )

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Happy marriage cuts fatal stroke risk for men

Happy marriage cuts fatal stroke risk for men - If you are a man, marriage can cut your risk of stroke, unless you are in an unhappy one, say researchers.

A study of 10,000 Israelis found both bachelors and those in loveless marriages had a far higher risk of fatal stroke than happily married men.

Experts said the work, presented at the American Stroke Association's International Conference, showed the power of loving relationships.

But they said a healthy lifestyle was the best way to avoid a stroke.

A happy marriage could bring health benefits

Marital satisfaction

The study, carried out by Uri Goldbourt from Tel Aviv University, analysed questionnaires filled out in the early 1960s by male civil servants and municipal employees.

The participants, who had an average age of 49, were asked to rate the success of their marriage.

The quality of people's relationships has a real knock-on effect on many aspects of their lives including their health. Mel Merritt , Relate

The researchers looked at those who died from strokes during the subsequent 34 years and compared it with the questionnaire findings.

After adjusting for factors like socio-economic status and taking into account stroke factors like blood pressure and smoking, the researchers found a striking link between fatal stroke risk and marital status.

Single men had a 64% higher risk of fatal stroke than men who were married.

But when the researchers delved further, they found the quality of the marriage was important.

Men in unhappy marriages also had a 64% higher risk when compared with those happily married.

"I had not expected that unsuccessful marriage would be of this statistical importance," said Professor Goldbourt.

The research is a snapshot of Israel from more than four decades ago, he said.

I had not expected that unsuccessful marriage would be of this statistical importance Professor Uri Goldbourt, Tel Aviv University

"How much this reflects associations between being happily or relatively happily married and stroke-free survival in other populations, at later times, is not readily deduced."

But previous research has suggested the quality of relationships can impact on health.

Studies have shown that stressful relationships can boost the risk of heart problems, and that being happy can reduce the risk of heart disease.

Knock-on effect

The findings of the Israeli study are not surprising, according to Mel Merritt of the relationship charity Relate.

She said: "This research reaffirms what we already know that the quality of people's relationships has a real knock-on effect on many aspects of their lives including their health.

"As a society we should invest in relationship support because happy relationships benefit us all by contributing to people's wellbeing, increasing productivity at work and improving people's health."

Lifestyle matters

Strokes cause many deaths each year. Experts say there are many contributory factors besides marital status.

Dr Peter Coleman, Deputy Director of Research at the Stroke Association said: "Around 50,000 men will have a first stroke in the UK every year and out of all people who have a stroke about a third are likely to die, a third will make a recovery within one month and a third will be left with a severe disability.

"No matter what your marital status, leading a healthy lifestyle, taking regular exercise, consuming a diet low in saturated fat and salt and having your blood pressure checked regularly are all ways to significantly reduce your risk of having a stroke." ( bbc.co.uk )

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Finding love in bookstores

Finding love in bookstores - Love in Bookstores - Browsing customers often circle each other like timid sharks - Several years ago, when I was not a bookstore employee but merely a regular customer, I wrote up BookCourt, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, for the Village Voice's Best of New York. My entry posited, though I had no evidence to support it, that single people claimed the bookstore was good for finding romance.

It seemed to me the sort of thing that was probably true, in the same way that I assume good-looking waitresses and bartenders often get phone numbers slipped to them on cocktail napkins. Bookstores are magnets for people with an hour to kill, and isn't that when one's eyes are most likely to wander, to scan other people's faces for signs of friendliness? The wide tables of alluring, face-up hardcovers and paperbacks invite lingering fingers and quiet conversation. Surely, Brooklyn's single population was using the bookstore (and others like it) as a backdrop for finding true love.

I started to work at BookCourt a year-and-a-half ago—already an old, married lady of 29. Many of my co-workers, however, are in their early twenties, single as can be, and they often get asked out on dates by customers, and vice versa. The encounters often start with a question about Haruki Murakami or Roberto Bolano or Don DeLillo, which tells you something about both the literary taste of Brooklyn's youth and the writers most likely to be name-dropped by people who don't read very many books but who want to see you without your clothes on.

I have occasionally wondered why no one ever asks me on dates, but when a 23-year-old co-worker laughed hysterically at the thought of me going to her New Year's Eve party, I realized that I probably don't exude the glowing flares of someone who would go home with a stranger after a witty conversation about the lesser works of Philip Roth. Nevertheless, I watch it happen regularly: the shy approach, the careful hand-selection of a novel or a volume of poetry, the hand-off, the sweet ringing of the cash register, the slip of paper with the telephone number, the awkward good-bye.

Of course, it's not just staff members who find bookstores and their bookish patrons appealing. There are many reasons why bookstores are naturally romantic environments: the smell of paper, the soft lighting, the baseline understanding that those inside like to read, and are therefore probably not morons. Browsing customers often circle each other like timid sharks, the piles of books in their hands their only weapons. Heidegger implies late-night conversations over coffee and cigarettes; Rumi, a bathtub surrounded by candles. Ayn Rand indicates a need for a wide berth; Sarah Vowell means mornings spent listening to NPR while baking gluten-free cupcakes.

I've seen strangers start conversations over the newest arrivals, and maybe they're also checking one another's hands for tell-tale bands of gold. Well-established couples shop together, the bookstore clearly a part of their routine. Later down the line, they come back with dogs and strollers, but at the beginning, all they need is each other and a room full of potential conversations. Teenage couples curl up together in the children's section and read aloud to each other from their not-too-distant memories, and pairs in their twenties try on adulthood by merging their bookshelves, filling in the gaps by adding an Infinite Jest here, a Middlemarch there.

There are readings several nights a week at BookCourt, and the endless, free plastic cups full of Malbec stir the feeling of being in one's elementary school after hours, with the dark sky visible through the skylights and the room lively with possibility. I also feel this way when I go to other bookstores, whether its day or night, where I know the books on the shelves less intimately, and am more likely to be surprised by an unfamiliar spine. There is that tactile pleasure, the spine, as if each book were a new lover whose body must be learned.

I suppose this connection is why some bookstores, such as Brooklyn's WORD, have a dating board, with anonymously-written index cards stuck into cork, each note expressing their paper-y needs: must love Nabokov, or detective novels, or villanelles. I know of one couple, still together more than a year later, who met in exactly this way, by picking each other's card off the board. Isn't that what we're all looking for, after all, a feeling of community that may extend beyond the book club and into our bedrooms? I imagine that people who care most deeply about cooking would want to find a like-minded soul, and that those who prized rodeos above all else would begin their search there, in the dusty ring. Bookstores have the additional bonus of being all of those things at once, with each section acting as a wardrobe one can walk through into a different world.

A few days ago, on a slow evening, a young couple lingered on the sofa at the back of the store. I wasn't working, having long ago discovered that I am more of a rooster than an owl, but my good friend who usually works nights reported that the couple shuffled up to him, both beaming and bashful, and reported that they'd just gotten engaged, right there on the couch. They wanted to know if there were security cameras, because they'd like to play back the moment, over and over again. Maybe there is also that impulse inherent in a bookstore romance, that the love story itself will be codified and reproduced, printed and bound. Bookstores offer the hope that love, like any favorite novel, can be enjoyed over and over again, until one knows every sentence by heart. ( slate.com )

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Benefits of Radiation Therapy Outweigh Risks of a Second Cancer

Benefits of Radiation Therapy Outweigh Risks of a Second Cancer -- The odds a second cancer will develop after radiation treatment for a first cancer are relatively low, U.S. National Cancer Institute researchers report.

In a long-term study of more than 600,000 cancer survivors, an estimated 8 percent of second cancers were attributable to radiation treatment for the original cancer, according to the study.

The results suggest that other factors, such as lifestyle risks and genetics, cause the majority of second cancers, the researchers say.

Benefits of Radiation Therapy Outweigh Risks of a Second Cancer

"The findings can be used by physicians to really put the risks into perspective when they are talking treatment options with their patients," said lead researcher Amy Berrington de Gonzalez, an investigator in the NCI's radiation epidemiology branch.

Patients should feel reassured, she added. "In general, the risks [of radiation therapy] are smaller than the benefits," she said.

The study, published online March 30 in The Lancet Oncology, is the first to quantify the cancer risks posed by radiation treatment for different malignancies.

Berrington de Gonzalez and colleagues collected data on 647,672 adult cancer survivors included in the U.S. Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results cancer registries. All had survived five years or longer after cancer treatment, and follow-up ran from 1978 to 2007.

The researchers looked at outcomes for 15 different types of cancer for which radiation treatment is routine, including cancers of the rectum, larynx, lung, breast, cervix, testicles, prostate, eye and orbit, brain and thyroid.

Over the 30 years of follow-up, 9 percent of these participants developed a second cancer. Of these, about 3,300 (8 percent) might have been the result of radiation treatment, the study authors said.

Second cancers related to earlier radiation therapy varied by type, the researchers noted.

More than half of the second cancers developed in breast and prostate cancer survivors. Four percent of second cancers were in the eye, and 24 percent were cancer of the testicles, the researchers found.

Patients who had their initial cancer when young were at the greatest risk of developing a second cancer. Also at high risk were those whose organs received high doses of radiation. The likelihood of developing a secondary cancer increased over time.

When these data are put in perspective, the absolute risk for a second cancer is 3 in 1,000 over 10 years after radiation therapy and 5 in 1,000 over 15 years, Berrington de Gonzalez said.

"We know that radiation therapy can increase the risk of getting another cancer, but at the same time the benefits outweigh the risks," said Elizabeth Ward, national vice president for intramural research at the American Cancer Society.

Radiation therapy is an important and relatively safe treatment for cancer, she added.

Thanks to treatment advances, Ward said, radiologists today are better able to pinpoint treatment and limit exposure to healthy tissue than they were in the past.

Now, studies are needed to determine the cancer risks from newer radiation treatments, the authors noted.

Dr. Anthony D'Amico, chief of radiation oncology at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, agreed that the NCI findings are encouraging.

"Despite people's concerns, radiation is relatively safe with regard to the issue of second cancers, because the number of cancers that result from it are very small," D'Amico said. ( HealthDay )

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Losing him, finding me

Losing him, finding me - I was 34 when I met him. My life was in tatters, 12 years of marriage had just blown in my face. He did not declare undying love, just admitted his lust. Yet he was supportive.

Marriage is the end of any decent relationship; a pre-divorce ceremony, he said and I got the message. Marriage or no marriage, I was ready to play the housewife. Having experienced how temporary so many things, including life itself could be, I decided to follow my heart and packed my bags.

I did not crave changes and settled in the role of a wife without the legal sanction. With time, the balance in our relationship changed; of course no relationship is ever perfect and has to be constantly worked upon, I told myself. Whenever the very traits that irked me became way too much, I reminded myself that I had the option of walking away.

But no matter what, I never confronted him. After eight years of being together, he proposed marriage while we holidayed in India. It should have been romantic but it was not. All I could think of were unaddressed personality issues and relationship matters that I had until now shoved under the carpet.

What had not bothered a 'partner' should not be addressed as a wife. But these issues had bothered me and now I could not bring them up. Ever! Over a carat solitaire engagement ring and wedding band were unceremoniously put on my finger while still in the shop. No exchange of vows or popping of champagne.

Virtues of marriage solemnised in India versus England were discussed, tension mounted and I did not know how to handle them. Then arrived the death knell of our relationship and devastation struck. He opted out. I was dumped and could not even ask why. He was always prone to spells of silence rather than working at it. Heartbroken at 42, without a bank balance, and no longer employable in an office job, I grieved.

I was willing to try anything, yes, even the tantrik who advertised black magic on railway track walls, if that helped in any possible way. I just wanted him back in my life. I met a horoscope reader who read the charts; even a crystal gazer who told me about my past life encounters with him; apparently in one I had even committed suicide for him. I was tempted to do it again.

I was going mad. I began meditation and it helped. Somebody mentioned a healer-a past life therapist who could help. Of course, I was going to try that too. The therapist was young, soulful and did a combination of therapies to reach the subconscious through meditative hypnotic state. She asked me to write a letter to him. Then to imagine and write a letter from him to me.

Then she started those deep meditation sessions where I was to seek and offer forgiveness. Each stage took me a step forward but I would silently slide two steps back. The pain of rejection, the inability to comprehend it, the desire to recapture what had been lost all continued. Identifying and addressing all the issues that had bothered me while I was with him under deep meditation, I spoke about the frustrations of not telling him so much while we were together. One session began ordinarily.

She counted me deep and we began on now familiar ground. Was he generous? Yes, he always got me what I wanted. What was his first gift? What made you happy about it? Memories flooded and I recounted some thoughtful gestures, some frivolous items acquired on the spur of the moment.

How he had managed to wean me away from desiring too much because he would just buy it for me! And what was his best gift ever? He left me. Did I really say that? Yes, I did and after that no amount of prodding could stop the tears flowing out from under closed eyelids.

He left me and I thought that was his best gift? I was either crazy or demented. I thought his dumping me was a gift to me? A final gift? Surpassing all the material things or even all the mental support of eight years? And I still wanted him, I pined for him years after he left me? What was I? And why was I behaving this way? The session ended in heavy silence.

For weeks I would remember the session and cry inconsolably. I was in deep mourning. Finally, one day I understood. I had merged myself too deep in and around him, maybe it suffocated him. He gifted me to myself. He forced me to become a whole self again. Of course, I still think of him, miss him and think about the fun moments spent together.

But now I appreciate that today I am who I am because he left me. I have decided to nurture the pain and make something positive of it. Sometimes we have to break a heart for the soul to heal and that is his gift to me. Thank you, Kevin. ( Prevention )

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European life expectancy rising despite obesity

European life expectancy rising despite obesity - Life expectancy in Europe is continuing to increase despite an obesity epidemic, with people in Britain reaching an older age than those living in the United States, according to study of trends over the last 40 years.

In a report in International Journal of Epidemiology, population health expert David Leon of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said the findings counteract concerns that the rising life expectancy trend in wealthy nations may be coming to an end in the face of health problems caused by widespread levels of obesity.

They also suggest that simple factors like how rich a nation is and how much it spends on health care do not necessarily correlate with its people's lifespans.

Despite spending more per head on health care than any other country in the world, life expectancy in the United States is at the same level as the lowest of any Western European country -- Portugal for men and Denmark for women -- and the rate for women is increasing at a much slower pace than Western Europe.

In 2007, life expectancy in the United States was 78 years, compared to 80 in Britain, Leon noted.

"This simple observation once again underlines that GDP and health-care expenditure per capita are not good predictors of population health within high income countries," he wrote.

DECLINE IN DEATHS FROM HEART DISEASE

The report said that one of the most important contributors to the continued general upward trend in life expectancy had been the decline in deaths from heart disease.

Cardiovascular diseases, which can lead to heart attacks, strokes and other fatal events, are the leading cause of death worldwide, killing around 17.1 million people a year, according to the World health Organisation (WHO).

Leon's report said deaths from heart disease in Britain had seen some of the largest and most rapid falls of any Western European country, "partly due to improvements in treatment as well as reductions in smoking and other risk factors".

Within Europe, Leon pointed to a sharp contrast in life expectancy between east and west as the former communist bloc struggles to catch up with its longer-living neighbours.

Since the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, life expectancy has been rising in countries of central Europe such as Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, but as this has been at similar rates to Western Europe, the two halves of the continent have been following parallel trajectories, he said, making the east-west gap "very difficult to eliminate".

Trends in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union have been less positive, with life expectancy going up and down dramatically over the past 25 years. This is largely due to levels of hazardous drinking, particularly among men, Leon said.

Compared with Britain, where in 2008 life expectancy was 77.9 years for men and 82 years for women, Russian men could expect to live to 61.8 and women to 74.2 years, according to data from the WHO and the Human Mortality Database. (Reuters)

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A loving partner is not always helpful

A loving partner is not always helpful - If you think that a loving partner helps keep you on track when it comes to achieving goals, you could be wrong.

A new study has suggested that thinking about the support a significant other offers in pursuing goals can undermine the motivation to work toward those goals-and can increase procrastination before getting down to work.

The study's authors, psychological scientists Grainne M. Fitzsimons of Duke University and Eli J. Finkel of Northwestern University, call this phenomenon ''self-regulatory outsourcing'' - the unconscious reliance on someone else to move your goals forward, coupled by a relaxation of your own effort. It happens with friends and family, too.

"If you look just at one goal" in isolation-as the study does-"there can be a negative effect. But relying on another person also lets you spread your energy across many goals, which can be effective if your partner is helpful," said Fitzsimons.

The authors conducted three online experiments with participants recruited from a data-collection service. In the first, of 52 women, some were asked to focus on a way their partners helped them reach health and fitness goals; the control group instead entertained thoughts of their partners helping them with career goals.

When asked how diligently they intended to work toward getting fitter and healthier in the coming week, the first group planned to put in less effort than the second.

Facing an academic goal, people also unconsciously outsourced their exertion to helpful partners. In the second experiment, 74 male and female students were given a means of procrastination-an engaging puzzle-before completing an academic achievement task that would help them improve their performance at university.

Those who had mused about how their partner helps them with academic achievement procrastinated longer, leaving themselves less time to work productively on the academic task, than did control group participants.

But recognizing dependency also inspired devotion-and commitment.

"In our study, women reported that their partners were very useful for their ongoing goals, giving examples like ''I'd never get to the gym if my husband didn't watch the children,'' or ''I couldn't stick to my diet without his support,'' said Fitzsimons.

Among 90 female participants, those who outsourced more to their significant other were also more likely to say they were committed to making sure their relationship would persist over time, suggesting that outsourcing can lead to positive relationship outcomes. ( indiatimes.com )

READ MORE - A loving partner is not always helpful

Are women really more likely to feel cold than men?

Are women really more likely to feel cold than men? - Nearly naked and immersed in ice cubes up to the neck, two Chinese men recently duked it out in a cold-endurance contest for two hours. My low-temperature-loving grandfather, a member of the polar bear club, used to plunge regularly into freezing Finnish waters as a form of leisure. No matter the weather, my son, too, seems happy to storm the playground, sweating under his Siberian hat, while my own toes have been frozen for months. Why are some people so much heartier in the cold?

The Web variant on this is, of course, "Why are women always cold?," a perennially popular Google search. Men gripe about their female colleagues who want the office toasty. There are even dual-control heated blankets that allow couples to dial up two different temperatures for the night. Yet the data on men and women are full of curlicues, as the New York Times noted in 2009, even when it comes to simple body temperature. Some studies suggest that women have slightly higher core temperatures than men but also slightly colder hands. These papers don't deal with how men and women react to freezing cold, though. Other research immerses intrepid subjects in chilly baths, and one small example suggests that gender isn't the key to how people respond. Instead, body fat and the body's surface-area-to-volume ratio are. Still, none of this speaks to perception, which is a big part of heartiness. How cold you feel, and whether it bothers you, researchers say, also depends on factors like how tired you are, whether you're hungry, or whether you've come from a cold place—making it idiosyncratic and variable, even in a single day. Then again, according to some of the same researchers, both men and women may increase their endurance by taking cold showers or running around half-naked in the snow, in case that sounds appealing.

Why does it seem like women are always cold?

Normal body temperature was defined in the 19th century, when German physician Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich compiled roughly a million armpit temperature readings from 25,000 patients. He reported an average measure of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit for healthy adults. Wunderlich also noted that women tended to have slightly higher body temperatures than men. In the early 1990s, researchers in Maryland took the oral temperatures of 148 patients and in the Journal of the American Medical Association agreed with Wunderlich's gender difference, finding that women's body temperature was, on average, 0.3 degrees higher than men's (98.4 degrees for women versus 98.1 degrees for men).

Then came a twist: A few years later, researchers in Utah argued that women have warmer hearts but colder hands. In work published in the Lancet, physician Han Kim and his colleagues surveyed 219 men and women, from babies to octogenarians, and measured the temperatures in their ears and on their fingernails, which they took to be measures of core and hand temperature, respectively. They reported that for women, core temperature was on average 0.4 degrees higher than for men (97.8 degrees instead of 97.4 degrees). But hand temperature was 2.8 degrees lower (87.2 degrees instead of 90.0 degrees). These findings come with caveats: Core temperature also varies with age, levels of fitness, and, for women, menstrual status, which could have influenced the authors' averages. Still, their findings make some physiological sense. Women do tend to have more body fat, which holds in heat and yet, counter-intuitively, may make the extremities colder, says Mike Tipton, a physiology professor at the University of Portsmouth. (He says that fatter people also tend to have colder hands.)

But what about how people react when exposed to a drop in temperature? For the purposes of search and rescue, Canadian researcher Peter Tikuisis and his colleagues wanted to model how people would fare when trapped under an avalanche or in a freezing stream. So they immersed 11 women up to their necks in chilly water, monitored their rectal temperatures, and compared the results to previous work with 14 men. They found that the rate at which rectal temperature dropped was related to peoples' body fat as well as their surface-area-to-volume ratio. People who are smaller, as women on average are, tend to have higher surface-area-to-volume ratios, which means they're likely to lose heat and to experience drops in core temperature more quickly. Still, if a man and woman were matched for both measures, they should have the same response to cold, says Tikuisis. Of course, his study was small, as others of its kind have been. (Are you lining up to volunteer?)

So what does this mean for how cold we feel or how merrily we go forth on a freezing January day? Our perception of cold may depend mostly on changes in skin temperature, which starts dropping first when we step outside. People feel cold well before their core temperatures dip, says Tikuisis. So if women tend to start with colder hands, as the Lancet paper suggests—or if they shunt blood more readily from the extremities to the core, as some researchers believe—they might feel uncomfortable faster.

At the same time, feelings of cold and howls of protest probably also depend on all those other variables related to hunger and tiredness. In other words, even if gender is somewhere in the mix, so are lots of other particulars. What explains, say, the swimming phenom Lynne Cox, who covered more than a mile in Antarctic waters wearing only a bathing suit? Some of us relish the feel of snow on naked skin, or at least condition ourselves to be utterly stoic. Others of us, male and female, will hug a space heater and count the days till spring. ( salte.com )

READ MORE - Are women really more likely to feel cold than men?

Is Dora the Explorer an illegal immigrant?

Is Dora the Explorer an illegal immigrant?. In her police mug shot, the doe-eyed cartoon heroine with the bowl haircut has a black eye, battered lip and bloody nose.

Dora the Explorer's alleged crime? "Illegal Border Crossing Resisting Arrest."

The doctored picture, one of several circulating widely in the aftermath of Arizona's controversial new immigration law, may seem harmless, ridiculous or even tasteless.

But experts say the pictures and the rhetoric surrounding them online, in newspapers and at public rallies, reveal some Americans' attitudes about race, immigrants and where some of immigration reform debate may be headed.

"Dora is kind of like a blank screen onto which people can project their thoughts and feelings about Latinos," said Erynn Masi de Casanova, a sociology professor at the University of Cincinnati. "They feel like they can say negative things because she's only a cartoon character."

The depictions, whether through irony or protest, are being used by those who oppose and support Arizona's law. On one hand she's a likable symbol who many can relate to, and at the same time, perceived as an outsider who doesn't belong anywhere.

In this composite image provided May 20, 2010 courtesy of Debbie Groben and FreakingNews.com, is an image of Nickelodeon cartoon Dora the Explorer created late last year by Debbie Groben of Sarasota, Fla., for a contest for the fake news site FreakingNews.com. The image, and others like it that question or make fun of the Latina cartoon character's immigration status and country of origin, have been in wide circulation since Arizona passed a controversial immigration law. Groben, who is against the immigration law, said she just created it out of good fun and didn't know it would enter the immigration debate. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Debbie Broben and FreakingNews.com)

It's not the first time a children's character has been dragged into a serious debate.

In the late 1990s, Tinky Winky the Teletubby, a purple children's TV character with a triangle antenna — was called out by Christian leaders for being gay. Sesame Street roommates Bert and Ernie are often involved in statements on same-sex marriage.

Both shows' producers say the characters aren't gay.

In Dora's case, especially because her image is so widely available, she's an easy target as discussion ramps up on how lawmakers should address the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States.

For about a decade, the pint-sized Latina character has taught millions of children the English alphabet, colors and Spanish phrases on a Nickelodeon TV show and through a global empire. Her smiling cherub face is plastered on everything from backpacks to T-shirts to fruit snacks.

But since the passage of the Arizona law — which requires authorities to question people about their immigration status if there's reason to suspect they're in the country illegally — Dora's life and immigration status have been scrutinized and mocked.

Several websites, including The Huffington Post, have narrated Dora's mock capture by immigration authorities. One picture circulating on Facebook shows an ad for a TV show called "Dora the Illegal Immigrant." On the Facebook page "Dora the Explorer is soo an Illegal Immigrant," there are several images showing her sailing through the air over the U.S.-Mexican border.

Many of the Dora images assume the Latina character is an illegal immigrant from Mexico.

But that's where it gets complicated.

Representatives from Nickelodeon declined to comment on Dora's background, and her place of birth or citizenship have never been clear." She has brown skin, dark hair and some experts who have studied the show say she speaks Spanish with an American accent.

"She's always been ambiguously constructed," said Angharad Valdivia, who teaches media studies at the University of Illinois and has explored the issue. "In the U.S. the way we understand race is about putting people in categories and we're uncomfortable with people we can't put into categories."

Dora lives in an unidentified location with pyramids that suggest Mexico, but also tropical elements such as palm trees and her friends, Isa the iguana and Boots the monkey. Does that mean she's from South America or Florida?

Then there's oak trees and her fox nemesis Swiper, which are more common to the American Midwest.

The show often plays Salsa-like music, which has some roots in Cuba and is popular across Latin America.

Even the voice actresses behind Dora don't provide insight.

The original Dora voice belonged to Kathleen Herles, whose parents are from Peru. Dora is currently voiced by actress Caitlin Sanchez, a New Jersey-born teen who calls herself Cuban American; her grandparents are Cuban.

The images have been used on all sides of the immigration reform debate.

Many immigrant families, particularly Latinos, see Dora as a symbol of freedom, someone to relate to. She's a young girl with brown skin who lives in a borderless world and can travel anywhere she wants without consequence.

"It's symbolic of the way many Latinos live ambiguously in the United States," said Nicole Guidotti-Hernandez who teaches gender studies at the University of Arizona. "It's a shorthand for claiming our lives in the United States, especially for children."

At the same time, Guidotti-Hernandez says the ambiguity and negative imagery makes Dora susceptible to being used by those who support the Arizona law.

As for the mug shot, it's been around since late last year, when Debbie Groben of Sarasota, Fla. created it and entered it in a contest for the fake news site FreakingNews.com.

Since debate over the Arizona law heated up the nation's immigration debate, it's been e-mailed and texted widely and used on signs at rallies.

"My intentions were to do something funny, something and irreverent," said Groben, who said she opposes Arizona's law. "I actually like the little kid."

The issue appears to have resonated little with Dora's biggest fans, the millions of parents and their children who seem mostly unaware of the discussion encircling their beloved cartoon.

Altamise Leach, who has three children, said Dora's ethnicity and citizenship are irrelevant.

The stay-at-home mom credits the cartoon with helping teach her children team work. She even threw her 3-year-old daughter a Dora birthday party, complete with a Dora-like adventure, Dora cake and a woman who dressed up as Dora.

"We have so many diverse cultures, let's try to embrace everybody," Leach said. "She puts a smile on my daughter's face, that's all I want."

Erick Wyatt said he never thought about Dora's origins and his three children never asked.

"I just thought she was a cartoon character that spoke Spanish," the Flint, Mich., man said. ( Associated Press )

READ MORE - Is Dora the Explorer an illegal immigrant?

More than 2m child pornography images were circulated by just 100 paedophiles convicted in past 20 months

More than 2m child pornography images were circulated by just 100 paedophiles convicted in past 20 months

More than two million indecent internet images of children were circulated by 100 child sex offenders convicted in the past 20 months, an NSPCC investigation found.

The children's charity said the 'alarming' haul was enough to cover the football pitch at Wembley Stadium twice over.

One in four of the offenders held a 'position of trust' allowing them direct contact with children, the study revealed.

These included teachers, school workers, clergymen, medical professionals, police officers and a social worker.

Nearly 50,000 photographs and videos confiscated were in the most serious categories of abuse, with some showing children and babies being raped by adults.

Diana Sutton, NSPCC head of public affairs and campaigns, said: 'The scale of graphic child sex abuse pictures and videos over the internet is very alarming.

More than two million indecent internet images of children were circulated by 100 child sex offenders convicted in the past 20 months

'The number of images seized in these cases is enough to cover the pitch at Wembley Stadium twice over - and this is just a sample.

'Many more people were convicted for possessing, making and distributing indecent images of children online during the same period.

'Children and babies are being seriously sexually assaulted to feed the demand for these photos and videos.

'And each time they are viewed, more degradation is heaped on the young victims.'

The collection of images seized by police was revealed in a selection of news reports on court cases from across the UK studied by the charity.

Although a snapshot, the charity said it was the first time the number of online child abuse images being distributed had been counted in this way.

Each case included in the study resulted in criminal convictions.

The study showed 10 per cent of those convicted had been hoarding child abuse images for five years or more before they were caught.

A third of offenders involved in the court hearings had shared files or distributed pictures of child sex abuse online.

One in six had a conviction for sexually assaulting or grooming a child for sex.

Ms Sutton said the investigation showed the battle against internet paedophiles was 'far from won'.

'Recent years have seen some welcome measures in the UK to drive child abuse images from the internet,' she said.

'But the battle is far from won. Offenders are now trying to keep under the radar by using peer-to-peer file-sharing software instead.

'The NSPCC is calling on the next government to work with industry and law enforcement agencies on an action plan to combat peer-to-peer file sharing.

'Making the internet safer for children should be a priority for all Parliamentary candidates during the General Election campaign.

'In particular, we are calling on party leaders to show their commitment now to putting this disgusting industry out of business.'

In December, Vanessa George, then 39, who worked at Little Ted's Nursery in Plymouth, Devon, was jailed indefinitely after a court heard how she 'plumbed new depths of depravity' by abusing babies and toddlers in her care. ( dailymail.co.uk )

READ MORE - More than 2m child pornography images were circulated by just 100 paedophiles convicted in past 20 months

Five Reasons To Grow Old With Someone

Five Reasons To Grow Old With Someone. Aging can be scary, but growing old together is a blessing. Five things to look forward to. We live in a youth-obsessed society, where knowing that Miley Cyrus has achieved international stardom and success—and she was born in 1992—can make us feel like our most precious years are slipping away. But growing old is not something to fear.

On Monday The New York Times' "The New Old Age" blog published a piece called "6 Reasons To Grow Old," based on advice from Joshua O. Haberman, a 90-year-old rabbi. Sure, your skin may sag, your hands may shake, but growing old comes with great benefits—especially if you have someone to share your time with. Based on their post and on Haberman's observations, we've come up with five reasons it's a blessing to grow old—together.

• You're no longer attempting to find your perfect love, or your one — because you've already found him or her. "You have achieved in old age what you have wanted to, if you are fortunate,” said Haberman.

• You accept your spouse's flaws. You learn that you can't change your husband or wife, and you don't have to. The rabbi talks about "liberation from the compulsion to set everyone else straight." "We get less frantic, less pushy in advanced age," he said.

• You become more conscious of the little things that make your partner great. Haberman says, "One of the most important marks of maturity," is gratitude. "I'm more conscious of the little favors people do." Which Love Language Do You Speak?

• You have more time to spend with your spouse. You've retired so you can take the vacations you always wanted to, spend hours talking—or being silent—with one another, and bask in the love of your children (if you chose to have them) and grandchildren.

• You learn to appreciate your spouse more than ever. "Now, that my supply of time has shrunk, I appreciate far more each day, each hour, every bit of new knowledge and every moment with people I care for," said Haberman. ( yourtango.com )
  

Readers, what do you look forward to, as you grow older?

READ MORE - Five Reasons To Grow Old With Someone

Shocking treatment helps erectile dysfunction

Shocking treatment helps erectile dysfunction. Low-intensity shockwaves treats impotence, scientists say. If you experience impotence, instead of a little blue pill maybe you want to apply shockwaves to your privates instead.

Experiments now suggest directing shockwaves at penises can help treat erectile dysfunction

"We can really reverse erectile problems with this," researcher Yoram Vardi, head of the neuro-urology department at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel,

"While patients with erectile dysfunction can function with Viagra or Cialis, this is not a cure — when they stop the medication, they cannot function," he added. "This is only a preliminary study, but here with shockwaves, we can do something biological for the problem — after treatments, these patients can function without the need for medication."

In animal studies, low-intensity shockwaves have been proven to trigger growth of new blood vessels from existing ones. Vardi and his colleagues therefore speculated that shockwave therapy could help men whose erectile dysfunction stems from reduced blood flow to their penises.

"Cardiovascular problems are responsible for approximately 80 percent of patients with erectile dysfunction, so that's a huge amount of patients," Vardi explained.

Volunteers shocked

The researchers treated 20 volunteers with an average age of 56 years old who had mild or moderate erectile dysfunction for roughly three years.

At each session, a device that resembles a computer mouse applied shockwaves at five different sites on their penises.

"These are very, very low energy shock waves," Vardi said. Each shockwave applied roughly 100 bar of pressure — some 20 times the air pressure in a bottle of champagne, but less than the pressure exerted by a woman in stiletto heels who weighs 132 lbs. (60 kg).

"This sort of energy is completely different from what you would get in a massage, although everyone can do what they want," Vardi said.

Each site on the penis received some 300 shockwaves over the course of three minutes. The men underwent two weekly sessions for three weeks, and then repeated this course of therapy after three weeks of rest.

Significant improvement was seen in 15 of 20 men. "We didn't find any side effects, and it didn't hurt," Vardi noted.

Even if further studies bear out these results, this is not a cure for everyone, Vardi cautioned. The researchers chose men whose problems were apparently due to blood flow, as opposed to nerve, muscle or other issues.

Expanding tests

The researchers are now expanding their research with placebo groups and more patients.

"This is only the beginning — we need to understand much better what is happening," Vardi said. "We also want to see how long this response will stand — is it forever, one year, two years, six months? We know that at three months, it stays the same."

Vardi and his colleagues detailed their findings November 17 at the European Society for Sexual Medicine meeting in Lyon, France. ( LiveScience.com )

READ MORE - Shocking treatment helps erectile dysfunction