Public Health

Men who experience sexual harassment are far more likely than women to induce vomiting and take laxatives and diuretics - purging - in an attempt to control their weight, according to a new psychology paper.


 Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is now considered a highly curable disease, thanks to the emergence of powerful, targeted CML therapies known as tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) that allow patients to manage their disease with few symptoms by taking a well-tolerated pill.

Since the introduction of TKI therapy more than a decade ago, the annual mortality of patients with this disease has declined from 10 to 20 percent in the early 2000s to just 2 percent today and the estimated 10-year survival of CML patients has increased from 20 percent to more than 80 percent.


Organic food labeling is almost dizzying. Despite the claims of this $29 billion industry that it is 'organic' and therefore nutritionally and environmentally and medically superior to nasty regular food of the last few centuries, it is really only 95% organic - and the list of dozens of synthetic ingredients that are exempted is truly difficult to fathom.

Why can you not stop eating until you scarf down a whole bag of Doritos?  Is it a special gene? Epigenetics, like your mom ate one when she was pregnant with you, or is Frito-Lay just fiendishly clever?

Ban-happy critics blame fat and carbohydrate content but a new study found that was not the case. If it were, we could just add ingredients to unpopular foods like Brussels sprouts and affect the rewards center in the brain positively so people eat more of those. 


A component of egg whites, already a popular whole egg substitute among cholesterol-conscious consumers concerned, may have another beneficial effect - reducing blood pressure, according to a study presented earlier this week at the American Chemical Society (ACS) meeting. 

The researchers used a peptide called RVPSL. Scientists previously discovered that the substance, like the family of medications that includes Captopril, Vasotec and Monopril, was an angiotensin-converting-enzyme (ACE) inhibitor. It has the ability to inhibit or block the action of ACE, a substance produced in the body that raises blood pressure.


Animal and dairy scientists  presenting at the Lactation Biology Symposium in Phoenix, Arizona have discovered that drinking milk at an early age can help mammals throughout their lives. The presentations focused on epigenetics, or how gene expression changes based on factors like environment or diet. Epigenetic changes modify when or how certain traits are expressed. 

But understanding exactly how milk affects the body is a complicated story of hormones, antibodies and proteins, as well as other cells and compounds researchers have not yet identified.


Food so cheap that poor people can be fat is a miracle only dreamed about by philosophers ad economists throughout history. It was previously believed that the labor force needed to produce enough food would outstrip the food they could produce, something like how trying to exceed the speed of light adds too much mass.


The number of Americans diagnosed with asthma is up to 26 million and a new paper says a majority, nearly two-thirds or more of all asthmatics, also have an allergy.  Asthma is frequently associated with children but 3 percent or more of adults 60 years and older also have it. The number may be higher, because older people did not grow up in a diagnosis culture, so asthma could be under-diagnosed in older adults. 


A new study led by Ria Chhabra, a student at Clark High School in Plano, Texas, set out to see if organic food is healthier than conventional food - and it was. In fruit flies. With some conditions.

Chhabra sought to conduct the experiments after hearing her parents discuss whether it's worth it to buy organic foods. Southern Methodist University biologist Johannes H. Bauer, principal investigator for the study, mentored Chhabra by helping guide and design her research experiments. The research focus of Bauer's fruit fly lab is nutrition and its relationship to longevity, health and diabetes.