Medical News of the Obvious

At first, the results of this study seemed totally unobvious. Researchers found that people didn't lie any more often when online dating than they did in person, reported HealthDay. Really? This finding immediately led me to wonder how many daters are wearing platform shoes and compression garments on their in-person dates.

But then it turns out the methodology was to ask people whether they lied. Mightn't the liars be likely to lie to the surveyors, too?

Regardless of whether you believe them, most of the findings were pretty entertainingly obvious: older people lied more about their age, more "extroverted" people (ahem) lied more about their past romantic experiences. And interestingly, men lied more about "how nice and polite they are," according to a study author. Can you picture that? "I told her I open doors for women, and really I never do. Heh heh."

So what's the big conclusion we can draw from all this research? Hold on to your hats. "Online daters, speed-daters, and the like seem to be just like the rest of us in most ways," said the study's author. Does that mean that the people you see on the computer are also people in real life? This is going to require further investigation.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 8:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

You might already be aware of this week's finding if you've watched baseball in the past decade or so and noticed that Mark McGwire's arms are about the circumference of the average ballplayer's waist in the 70s. But just to be sure, researchers recently compared the BMIs of professional baseball players from 1876 to 2007 to find that, like serving sizes and master bathrooms, they've gotten bigger.

Clear, right? But in taking the next step, drawing conclusions from this study, this article from HealthDay gets about as confused as a science article can be. The study authors are concerned because they correlated the ballplayers' "increased BMIs with an increased risk of death." (We're assuming that's a risk of premature death, since it seems pretty certain that the 1876 team would be dead regardless of their % body fat.)

But a critic of the study argued first that ballplayers' increasing size is not a health risk, and then that the players might be dying early because they're using steroids. Um, we're not scientists, but mightn't there be a relationship (even a causal one, perhaps?) between steroid use and increased BMI?

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 8:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

You might not have guessed it from how we're beating up on them at the Olympics, but Americans are fatter and lazier than Canadians. At least according to a new study, published by Arthritis Care & Research but conducted at the Toronto Western Research Institute (hmm, do you get the feeling they might be less than totally impartial in this US/Canuck comparison?).

Anyway, the researchers concluded that it's Americans' slothful habits that cause us to develop more arthritis than our northern peers. As you've probably already guessed, the solution to this problem is obvious, too. "Public health initiatives that promote healthy weight and physical activity," recommended a study author, according to HealthDay.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 8:00 AM   2 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

Continuing last week's "All I Need to Know about Medicine, I Learned from TV" theme, we have a new study about television portrayals of seizures, reported by HealthDay. Turns out that, actually, television is not the best way to learn first aid. According to these researchers, sometimes fake doctors fail to provide appropriate medical care! So much for that plan to take the boards based on watching four years of "House," "Grey's Anatomy," "Private Practice" and "ER."

In another follow-up from last week, more news that you probably learned in sex ed class. Men don't like condoms that don't fit, HealthDay tells us. In addition to being uncomfortable and more likely to be removed, ill-fitting protection also increases the risk of malfunction. The good news for TV watchers is that study authors suggested readying the problem with "public health efforts designed to promote the improved fit of condoms." So can we expect a plot line about condom fitting in an upcoming episode of "Grey's"?

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 8:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

In honor of Valentine's Day, we've got some obvious news about dressing up and getting it on.

Confirming a fact that's well-known to any woman who has ever worn high heels, researchers found that walking heel-first requires less energy than tip-toeing. "In addition," reports HealthDay, "a heel-first foot posture 'may be advantageous during fighting by increasing stability and applying more torque to the ground to twist, push and shove. And it increases agility in rapid turning maneuvers during aggressive encounters.'" In other words, you're better off throwing your stiletto than trying to do karate while wearing it.

Walking in pretty shoes can also be harder when you're pregnant, or at least that's what I learned from "The OC." A study, reported by HealthDay, surveyed female college students about their thoughts on teen pregnancy after they watched either an episode of the popular TV show or a "news-type segment developed for high school students by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy" and found that "The OC" was a more convincing argument for birth control--a result that would be painfully obvious for anyone who's ever had to sit through the snorefest that is a high school sex ed class.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 8:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

Again this week, the mainstream reporters are doing our job for us. Newswise brings us reports of "an unmet need to study what might seem obvious: Gay kids will be pushed around." Researchers, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, attempted to fill that need by surveying thousands of kids to learn that the very few who identified themselves as homosexual (less than 2%) or bisexual (0.5%) were also more likely to be bullied than the blend-in-with-the-crowd heteros.

In other news of those mysterious little miniature humans, it turns out that kids don't take themselves to the dentist. "About 86 percent of children whose parents had a dental visit during the preceding year had a dental exam, compared to about 63 percent of the children whose parents hadn't," HealthDay reports. What, that other 23% couldn't get it together to call a cab or hitchike to the dentist's office?

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 8:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

You know a study's obvious when the news article covering it begins "Just in case the world needed more evidence on the matter..." We totally second the HealthDay reporter's opinion, and welcome her to our subspecialty of journalism. The link between exercise and good health--most recently and most frequently uncovered by the Archives of Internal Medicine--has become such a MNO staple that we're considering banning it from our coverage. If even HealthDay knows it's a given, perhaps we need to devote our energies to highlighting some less-obvious obvious news.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 8:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

As someone who is already reading a blog, you may be more likely than most to know that contemporary Americans consume a lot of media. But did you know that kids do, too?

That's the news brought to us by a new study of children's media consumption habits, reported by HealthDay. Turns out kids watch TV, listen to music, surf the net, and mess around with their cell phones a lot. The rise in kids' media consumption may even be linked to wider use of cell and smart phones.

Other not-so-surprising facts revealed by the survey:
--Fewer children are reading magazines and newspapers, but more of this reading is done online.
--Boys spend more time playing video and computer games than girls.
--Oh, and kids who spend 16 hours or more a day consuming media are more likely to get bad grades. (Just hypothesizing here, but would that perhaps relate to the fact that they don't have time to either sleep or go to school?)

More MNO comes to us from Twitter. DrRobH found this: "Pot smoking during pregnancy may stunt fetal growth." His comment: "This falls into the category of Duh?"

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 8:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

This week's obvious news consists of findings that you might have hoped weren't true, but really you already knew they were.

First, sending your spouse off to war will make you unhappy, according to the New England Journal. "Among wives of soldiers deployed for up to 11 months, researchers found almost 3,500 more diagnoses of depression, anxiety, sleep disorders and other mental health issues than among wives who husbands stayed home," reported HealthDay. Guess these women actually liked their husbands!

Then, it turns out that diabetics should not pig out, especially on salt, according to the Archives of Opthamology via HealthDay. A study of black patients with diabetes found that those who ate more calories and more sodium were more likely to develop diabetic retinopathy. "These results suggest that low caloric and sodium intakes in African-American individuals with type 1 diabetes mellitus...might be part of dietary recommendations for this population," the authors concluded. Shoot, now we will have throw out those "hot dog a day keeps the doctor away" guidelines.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 9:00 AM   1 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Students exposed to songs with a positive message were more likely to help others after listening. A British study randomized students into groups who listened to socially conscious songs or those with negative or nonsense meanings. Then, a researcher pretended to knock pencils off the table by accident. Those who'd listened to positive songs helped more quickly and picked up almost five times as many pencils. Other subjects were asked to help with another research project, and three times as many volunteered.

Help! by the Beatles and Michael Jackson's Heal the World were cited in the study, which is in press at the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Let us know your favorite "help" songs that get you through the day.

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posted by Ryan DuBosar at 8:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

Finally, a study so shockingly innovative that it will have convince the anti-vaccine activists of the error of their ways. It turns out that the chicken pox vaccine actually...prevents chicken pox! A new study from Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine found that more cases of the disease occurred among unvaccinated children than those who had been vaccinated. The study authors expressed hope that this new data would entice reluctant parents to opt for vaccination. Think of it as the "tipping point" theory of obvious research--if you report the same results enough times, maybe eventually Jenny McCarthy will listen.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 4:00 PM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Political extremists are more willing to share their views, if they feel like more people share them. Keep that in mind when Uncle Bob blathers his politics at your holiday dinner.

Women aren't put off of IT careers because they're hard, but rather, because IT folks are a bunch of Trekkie slobs. Researchers surveyed hundreds of non-IT students at Washington University but in different rooms: one decorated with a sci-fi poster, games kit and soda cans and the other with pleasing wall graphics, books and coffee cups. Women were much more likely to opt for careers in the more pleasant environs, the men were as well but less so.

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posted by Ryan DuBosar at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

We'd like to thank the Journal of the American College of Cardiology for sponsoring this edition of MNO by providing all of our content in a single issue.

First up, making chubby kids run turns out to serve a purpose besides the pleasure of unhappy gym teachers. The sadists (um, I mean, researchers) enrolled the fattest kids in the class (97th percentile for their 6 to 11 year old age range) in mandatory 60-minute exercise programs. Not surprisingly, they found that the exercise was good for the children's cardiovascular fitness. More surprisingly, they claim that the program was "deliberately made enjoyable for the children with activities including swimming and ball games." Right. Can't you just picture the coach yelling, "Get your butt on the field! This kickball game has been deliberately made enjoyable for you"?

Meanwhile, other researchers have been torturing older obese people by feeding them less to find out that weight loss is also good for your cardiovascular health. Oh, and smoking affects your recovery from a heart attack. That last one was observational. Apparently the researchers didn't have to make people smoke in order to prove that it's bad for you.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 9:42 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

The selections this week are not so much obvious as they are fruitless. Call it "Medical News that is Likely to be Ignored."

A new study "provides evidence that the average cigarette is crawling with germs, including bacteria that cause respiratory disease," HealthDay reports. Because, of course, smokers typically have shown great concern about protecting themselves from respiratory disease. This research is in its early stage and the experts expressed a "need to figure out if they [the bacteria] are impacting human health." Would that mean that cigarettes are impacting human health, too?

There's bad news for ecstasy users, too. If you're not already bleary-eyed from raving all night, sleep apnea might be impairing your rest. A comparison of 71 ecstasy users with controls found an association between the drug and sleep apnea, reported WebMD. "The scientists...say doctors should warn young people that the drug 'damages their brains' and may cause sleep apnea." Hmm, which half of that warning do you find more attention-grabbing?

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

The holiday hasn't left us much time to find obvious news. But we did find one medical headline that--given the past few weeks of debate--seems like a truly impressive understatement: Breast Cancer Risk Is Not So Easy to Figure Out, according to HealthDay.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 8:00 AM   1 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

Other reporters may have been excited about the guidelines or trials of new drugs that came out of the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions, but what really blew our minds was the news that fish is good for you, but not if you deep-fry it.

According to researchers, observation of men in California and Hawaii revealed that the cardioprotective effects typically associated with eating our finned friends were eliminated if you ate the fried, dried or salted varieties. This rings a bell; have we heard somewhere before that fat or salt is bad for your heart? But at least the study had practical application. Since they didn't assess grilled fish, the researchers recommended that you bake your fish, or for a weirder alternative, boil it.

Some additional good news for those who weren't sure whether the Filet-o-Fish or the soy patty was the healthy way to go: the study found that eating tofu also had a cardioprotective effect in all ethnic groups.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 8:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Sadly, we found no news of the obvious for this week. Maybe that's a good thing for medicine, but it means we don't get to highlight one of our favorite features. Send us your ideas and check back every Monday.

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posted by the Better Health network at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Men who get their sleep apnea treated golf better. Twelve golfers with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea who started nasal positive airway pressure (NPAP) treatment saw a drop in their mean handicap from 12.4 to 11.0 (P=0.01), compared to 12 controls. The rested duffers said they felt more alert, and NPAP compliance was 85%, said researcher, who added he wants to conduct a larger, multicenter study to explore what drives high treatment compliance. (It must be those really powerful tee shots.)

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posted by Ryan DuBosar at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Why are athletes young? Why are couch potatoes out of shape? If questions like these have been plaguing you, not to worry, researchers have the answer.

A new study from the Archives of Internal Medicine finds that "men and women become gradually less fit with age" and that "maintaining a healthy body mass index (BMI), not smoking and being physically active are associated with higher fitness levels throughout adult life."

The study authors also make a pretty dramatic leap from these findings to proposed interventions. "These data indicate the need for physicians to recommend to their patients the necessity to maintain their weight, engage in regular aerobic exercise and abstain from smoking," they concluded. Call me overly cautious, but I think we should see some data from controlled trials first. Bet there'd be no problem finding volunteers for the eating, sitting around and smoking arm.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 9:27 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

In our special migraine edition ...

Migraine sufferers may be more prone to hangovers. A rat study at Thomas Jefferson University found that rats with migraines experienced more pain four to six hours after drinking alcohol than the control rats. But researchers ruled out dehydration or impurities in the alcohol. (What's the rodent equivalent of "Beer then liquor, never sicker?")

Another cause of migraines is bad air quality. The Santiago Province of Chile is densely populated and surrounded mountains, so researchers found increased hospital admissions for migraines, as well as tension and cluster headaches, on days of heavy pollution. Hmmm, people who live in big cities get headaches ...

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posted by Ryan DuBosar at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

People who are cognitively active, socially engaged and physically active may fend off cognitive impairments, according to the Archives of Neurology. The article concludes: "In the most optimistic view, dementia could be delayed or even prevented by these interventions. At worst, people will improve their overall health, especially their cardiovascular health, and enjoy a more cognitively and socially engaging life."

People can be shamed into washing their hands in public restrooms. Researchers from the London School of Hygiene And Tropical Medicine team used LED screens to flsash messages such as "Water doesn't kill germs, soap does" and "Don't be a dirty soap dodger," at the entrance of the toilets. They measured results among 250,000 people via sensors at the toilets, then the soap dispensers. The message "Is the person next to you washing with soap?" boosted rates of hand-washing with soap by 11% in women and 12% in men, suggesting people were most sensitive to the idea that others were watching their behaviour. (Or maybe it's that they were being tracked while in the bathroom.)

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posted by Ryan DuBosar at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

Kids are more likely than their peers to become addicted to the Internet if they're depressed, hostile or have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or a social phobia. On the positive side, they also use it as therapy to overcome their face-to-face limitations or find kids like themselves.

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posted by Ryan DuBosar at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

Two of this week's highlights are best described by their headlines: "Study Finds Fish Won't Prevent Heart Failure" and "Eating in America Still Unhealthy: CDC."

It's a little surprising that our third study of the week didn't get such a catchy headline since it's easy to imagine one: Sex Makes People Happy. The intrepid scientists found that "women who are happy with their sex lives have higher well-being scores and more vitality than women who are sexually dissatisfied," according to HealthDay. But that's not all. It also turns out that getting some in itself is not sufficient to make women happy. Rather, some of them are having unsatisfying sex. "Frequency of sexual activity in women cannot be employed as a reliable indicator of sexual well-being," a researcher concluded.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

It's time for another medical-education themed journal issue (thanks, JAMA), which means it's time for more Obvious Facts about Med Students:

They say stupid stuff on Facebook.
They make mistakes when they're tired and upset.
Cutting people open makes them nervous.
If they're well-trained, they'll do a better job. And from TIME, if they're working their first day, they're deadlier.

In other MNO, researchers hypothesized in October's American Journal of Preventive Medicine that adults who play video games would have poorer perceptions of their health, greater reliance on Internet-facilitated social support, more extensive media use, and higher BMI. Needless to say, they found what they were looking for because the survey was done over the Internet among people living in the Seattle-Tacoma area, nearby to the headquarters of a rather famous software company.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

This may come as news to those of you who were unsure of the purpose of that black rectangular thing in your living room, but not to the rest of us. Researchers put toddlers and parents in a room either with no TV or one where they could pick a show to watch.

"The study authors found that while the TV was on, parents spent about 20 percent less time talking to their children and were less active, attentive and responsive to their kids, resulting in a decrease in the quality of the interactions," reports HealthDay. Only 20 percent? Clearly this sample didn't include any fathers watching playoff games.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

It's like the scientists think if they keep reporting the same evidence, eventually someone will listen. A new study in Archives found that exercise is still good for you. And it's never too late to start. "The benefits associated with physical activity were observed not only in those who maintained an existing level of physical activity, but also in those who began exercising between ages 70 and 85," said the press release. Actually, sounds like a good excuse to wait another couple of decades before starting that workout routine.

Or maybe you can get your exercise in the bedroom. As long as you don't have allergies, that is. A new study, reported by HealthDay, finds that snot is not sexy. According to a study of 350 untreated sufferers of allergic rhinitis, 83% said that their allergies affected their sex lives. Perhaps the most obvious part of the study was the solution offered by researchers: shut the bedroom window.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 4:00 PM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

It seems safe to assume that this week's researchers of the already-known have been to a bar before, given that they're grad students at one of the top-ranked party schools in the country. Perhaps, in fact, their hypothesis was cooked up over a happy hour pitcher or two. Because even they are not denying the obviousness of their undertaking.

"It may seem intuitive that cheaper alcohol can lead to higher intoxication levels and related consequence--such as fighting, drunk driving, sexual victimization, injury, even death--especially among the vulnerable college student population," a study author told HealthDay.

Yes, after intensive study (read: hanging out in bars) the researchers concluded that higher drink prices were associated with a decreased risk of patrons being inebriated. Might this also correlate with the lower incidence of vomiting on the floor seen in four-star restaurants as compared to college bars? Further research is clearly needed.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Among adult video game players, men have a higher average body mass index and women have more depression and lower health status, reported a study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. No surprises there, although the study confirms findings among players in their 30s, not just among children and teens.

Another thing that can distract you from getting exercise? Children! Declining health also reduces the quantity of exercise women get, according to this groundbreaking report. There is a weird, non-obvious silver lining: young women who suffer harassment at work tend to boost their activity levels. So, please, keep those crabby comments coming.

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posted by the Better Health network at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

Remember when your Scout leader told you to hug a tree if you got lost in the woods? Turns out they were right, according to a new study.

Researchers had subjects walk in the woods, then the Sahara, and finally through a field blindfolded. What happened? Not so surprisingly, without the sun or some other object to guide themselves by, the people got lost and wandered around in circles. Especially the poor blindfolded ones. "Not only did they walk in circles, some of the circles were as small as about 66 feet, similar in size to a basketball court," sniffs the HealthDay article about the study.

We're looking forward to the follow-up, in which Smokey the Bear finally provides the evidence that only you can prevent forest fires.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Someone needs to buy these researchers a drink. Because it's pretty clear they've never been to a bar before.

Their study (which was oh-so-appropriately published in Human Nature) found that men are more likely than women to agree to casual sex. Greater percentages of men said they would go out, go to an apartment, and go to bed with members of the opposite sex whether they were "slightly unattractive," "moderately attractive" or "exceptionally attractive." (Don't worry, the scientists weren't categorizing actual women that way; it was all hypothetical.) Women, on the other hand, reserved their one-night stands for the exceptionally attractive guys.

In an addendum that will only be shocking to anyone who has never walked down the street in Europe, Italian men were most likely to accept sex with a stranger, followed by American guys and then Germans.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 8:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Depressed people were almost three times as likely to have impaired cognition after gloomy weather in one study. Researchers screened by phone 16,800 Americans enrolled in a stroke study for signs of depression and then administered a cognition test. Data were correlated with NASA's daily records of how bright sunlight was at any given location for the two weeks before the test. We're not rocket scientists, but two weeks of cloudy weather is enough to fog anyone's senses, let alone people who are already depressed.

This next video starts off with what exercisers knew intuitively: Working out makes one hungrier. But does exercise really make it harder to lose weight? Let's sit on the couch for a while and mull that over ...

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posted by the Better Health network at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

We did learn something new from this week's study--research on the elderly can be just as obvious as that focused on children.

Elderly people who neglect themselves or are abused are also more likely to die, according to the latest issue of JAMA. The researchers even state the obviousness of their own point at the start: "Reports of elder self-neglect or abuse are often initiated based on significant concerns for an older person’s welfare, health, and safety, perhaps to levels that suggest that there may be strong concerns for the older person’s wellbeing."

In other words, reports of dangerous things happening to people seem to be associated with dangerous things actually happening to people.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 4:00 PM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious delayed

Medical news of obvious will appear on Tuesday afternoon this week, because we're waiting for some specially obvious news from JAMA to be unembargoed.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 9:43 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Is it obvious that in this slow research season, we're going to pick on another study about children? If so, sorry--you can feel free to blog about the obviousness of our obvious post and get all meta about it.

Physician's First Watch alerted us to this study in the Archives of Disease in Childhood which found that running around does eventually wear children out. "Overall, the more activity children got, the faster they fell asleep." The real news here is the depressingly small size of the effect: for each hour spent in sedentary activity during the day, it took 3 minutes longer for Junior to fall asleep at night. In other words, you can chase your little monsters all day long just to bump bedtime up by half an hour. And we're no scientists, but we'd bet that after that much activity, Mom and Dad won't be able to stay awake and enjoy the extra quiet time anyway.

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posted by the Better Health network at 8:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Poor sleep after childbirth increases the risk of postpartum depression, Norwegian scientists reported in Sleep. They suggested having a spouse or other family member let new mothers catch up on their shut-eye. The gravid and their spouses don't need What to Expect When You're Expecting to tell us this.

Once children grow up, they become teens. And where there's teens, there texting. Teen Texting Tendonitis afflicted this girl who'd sent 8,000 messages a month and wound up in her doctor's office for an obvious diagnosis.

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posted by Ryan DuBosar at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

As is so often the case, the most obvious news of the week involves children. Once again we learn that the behavior of these mysterious little creatures has some connection to their parents. Specifically, if parents like team sports, kids are more likely to play them, according to a study published in Health Psychology and reported by HealthDay. So next time you're whining about driving the carpool to practice, remember it's your own fault for not modeling the couch potato lifestyle.

Also, the same study has bad news for anyone who thought gender bias had been eliminated from the home. Boys are more likely than girls to do strenuous chores like heavy yard work and moving furniture. The lesson, according to a study author: "It's a good idea for parents to adopt a positive attitude toward all types of vigorous physical activities for boys and girls and know that girls can and want to do them." Ha. We would like to see the evidence that any child, boy or girl, wants to do chores.

Bookmark Medical News of the Obvious, which appears every Monday at ACP Internist.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

As the trend of disappointingly reasonable research continues in the journals of late, we have one lone outlier:

• Kids who played a computer game that promoted healthy foods were more likely to pick healthy snacks than those who played a game promoting unhealthy foods, a study in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine found. In other words, kids are indeed influenced by the outside world.

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 4:00 PM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

We've noticed a slowdown in studies that qualify for our Weekly e-newsletter in the last few weeks, and it seems the sluggish study season now applies to obvious news as well.

Yes, for the first time in the history of Medical News of the Obvious, we didn't find anything last week that wasn't actually sort of reasonable. But, hey, we'd love it if we were wrong about this, so feel free to toss some studies our way if you feel we've missed something eye-rollingly obvious.

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 10:05 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

It's best not to get holes in one's surgical gloves in the middle of a procedure, as this leads to a higher risk of infection for the patient, the Archives of Surgery reports in a study about the effect of ripped gloves. "Pathogens can still be transmitted through contact with skin or blood," quoth the press release. Which is, perhaps, why the surgeons put on the gloves in the first place?

Teens often stop drinking milk after they leave home. A study (Eating Among Teens, or EAT) in the July/August issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior notes that the transition from high school to young adulthood often triggers a dramatic drop in calcium intake--a problem, since bones are still developing until roughly age 30. The authors don't address whether the drop is linked to leaving the family meal table (typically with limited, healthy choices) for the cafeteria smorgasboard or solo apartment (abundant or limited choices, but rarely healthy). They suggest fixing the problem by using peer pressure, so it becomes cooler to swig a carton of milk than a bottle of beer ("c'mon, have another one, it won't hurt you--really!")

People who live close to fast-food restaurants and convenience stores tend to eat fattening food. Researchers at the University of Alberta studied associations between the "retail food environmental index" and levels of obesity, boldly concluding that people are more likely to eat healthy food if they actually have easy access to it (i.e., by living close to supermarkets that sell more than burgers, fries and super-size sodas). Writing in BioMed Central's BMC Public Health, researchers make the astute observation: "Your local food environment can affect your weight."

Contributors: Jessica Berthold, Janet Colwell

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

It should be obvious but ... That's what researchers at King's College London predicted when they embarked on a study to find out if the average person's knowledge of anatomy has improved over the past 40 years. But upon being shown pictures of the male or female body with certain areas shaded, fewer than half of the 722 study participants correctly identified the heart and almost 70% were wrong about the location of the lungs -- even if they were currently receiving treatment involving the organ in question. The findings were published in BMC Family Practice. Researchers astutely point out that their findings bode ill for doctor-patient communication. No doubt everyone is more satisfied with the encounter when they're on the same page about which body parts are being discussed.

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posted by Janet Colwell at 9:00 AM   3 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Look what the cat dragged in ... or, don't take a dead bat for show-and-tell. A lesson learned the hard way by parents of two students at a Ravalli County elementary school in Montana who, upon being presented with a bat carcass by the family cat, proceeded to store it in a jar overnight and take it to school the next day to be examined by budding young scientists. The parents not only encouraged students and teachers to remove and handle the bat but also took it along to after-school soccer practice, according to an account in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report . Enter the school nurse, who orders tests and--shockingly!--reports back that the bat tested positive for rabies. After further evaluation, one student was referred for postexposure prophylaxis but most opted for it anyway, just to be on the safe side. Fortunately, it all ended well. And in case you're wondering, the cat emerged unscathed.

A picture is worth a thousand words, in this case, not in a good way. The old maxim is proven once again in a recent study published in BMJ that tests the effectiveness of video support tools vs. verbal descriptions for helping patients with dementia with advanced care planning. After watching a video of an elderly woman in the advanced stages of dementia, the age 65-plus participants were more likely to choose "comfort care" over life-prolonging or limited care in a hospital. Draw your own conclusions by watching the video, a disturbing depiction of a woman lying helpless in a wheelchair unable to speak, feed herself or otherwise function independently. The study's conclusions may be obvious, but painfully so.

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posted by Janet Colwell at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

People choose high-calorie over healthier drinks, especially when they're on sale. Sad but true, it often costs more to buy healthy or organic products than their high-fructose, saturated-fat-bearing cousins. A New Zealand study, published in Nutrition and Dietetics, corroborates this notion, concluding that of 1,500 supermarket discounts on non-alcoholic drinks, only 15% were considered "healthy." Although, researchers noted, the difference may have something to do with there being signficantly more non-healthy drinks on shelves than the alternatives, no doubt a savvy move by companies that are interested in making a profit as opposed to feeling good about their customers' eating habits. It turns out that water, plain reduced-fat milk and plain reduced-fat soy beverages (the "healthy" drinks) aren't as appealing as sodas and flavored sports drinks--sadly, I suspect that price has very little to do with it.

Driving everywhere is making us less healthy. By how much? A Reuters feature reported that driving cuts the average person's 10,000 steps a day to as few as 1,000. Because it cuts into potential time for exercise, each 30 minutes of driving translates into a 3% greater chance of being obese.

Labels: exercise, medical news of the obvious, Nutrition, obesity

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posted by Janet Colwell at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Dreading the end of the holiday weekend? You'd probably never have guessed but the problem may be that your work is not meaningful to you, a new study reports. The survey, published in the latest Archives of Internal Medicine, found that academic physicians who get to spend at least one day per week doing something meaningful (isn't that a depressing standard?) are less likely to burn out. In other shocking news, submitting preauthorizations to Medicare didn't top the docs' list of meaningful activity. They preferred patient care by an overwhelming margin, followed by research, education and admin. An accompanying editorial concluded that physician employers should try to ensure that there's good "career fit" between docs and their jobs. Sounds like a major employment opportunity for all those physicians who find insurance paperwork deeply meaningful.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 4:00 PM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Kids and parents get on each others' nerves, a new study out of the University of Michigan finds.
Specifically, adult children and parents annoy one another, according to a news release about the study. One of the biggest sources of tension? Unsolicited advice.

Teens do the opposite of what adults want them to. An adage proven once again in a new study that looked at whether more visible standard labels on alcoholic beverages would influence teens' drinking choices (participants were college students in New South Wales, Australia, where the legal drinking age is 18). The Australian alcohol industry presumably was hoping for a positive influence but the teens reported that the new labels were a big help in their quest to purchase "the strongest drinks for the lowest cost."

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

• People actually do better at sports when they are being encouraged (as opposed to, say, berated or ignored), a new study in the Journal of Sport Psychology finds. Not sure what this does for the stereotype of the tough-as-nails, it's-for-your-own-good-kid coach that has enlivened many a TV show and film, but it's bound to make some athletes happy.
  
• Children who are exposed to "adult content" on TV have sex earlier than their peers who aren't exposed to such content, a new study found. Indeed, for every extra hour that 6- to 8-year-olds watched adult content, their likelihood of having sex increased by 33%. Yikes.
  
• Drinking alcohol can cause your mind to wander, while making you less aware that your mind is wandering, a press release from the Association of Psychological Science informed us earlier this week. The study--which tested drinkers' ability to focus on reading War and Peace (a popular pasttime while getting hammered)-- "provides the first evidence that alcohol disrupts an individual's ability to realize his or her mind has wandered," the release says. Um, isn't this why we don't give the car keys to drunk folks, even when they insist they are fine to drive?
  
• Speaking of driving, turns out that texting while driving is dangerous. Also dangerous? Reading War and Peace, eating a huge sloppy burrito, and sleeping while driving.
  
  

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Overweight people are more likely to eat more and to opt for driving over walking, report researchers in the current issue of the International Journal of Epidemiology. The researchers tie their astute observations to environmental problems -- eating and driving more contributes to greenhouse gas emissions from food production and car exhaust. Furthermore, a lot of that food is wasted and thrown into landfills where it decomposes and emits methane or is burned and produces CO2. So, being overweight hurts the entire planet. How's that for a guilt trip?

Asthma sufferers should be cautious of swine flu, according to a "Quote us, too" press release from the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. Non-asthmatics have not been reported to be OK with getting the disease.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

What was it that Tolstoy said about happy families? That all research about them will have the same, obvious results?

Anyway, this week we learned that mothers actually serve a purpose. A new study found that the children of women in the military misbehave while their mothers are deployed. Special obvious commendation goes to this somewhat off-topic quote that made it into the HealthDay coverage. "Women find meaning in this work, just as a man finds meaning in this work," she said. "Like dads, moms feel they are contributing to a greater good in the world."

And, in case you parents were thinking of risking the likely consquences and getting away from the kids, you might want to know that hanging out at the beach is less stressful than ekeing out an existence in Appalachia. That's right, according to CDC reports, Hawaiians report less mental distress than the rest of the country, while residents of Kentucky and West Virginia have the most. No word on how those stats compare to the unhappiness of residents of 19th century Russia, though.

Next time the family piles into the station wagon for a vacation (Appalachian get-away, perhaps?), remember that aggressive driving is responsible for 56% of fatal crashes nationwide, said the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. AAA defines commonly witnessed behaviors as aggressive: speeding (a factor in a third of crashes) is only 15 miles per hour over the speed limit. Also cited were running red lights and speeding through yellows, blocking others trying to pass, tailgating, forcing others to speed, driving on the shoulder and failure to yield.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 8:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Elderly, hemodialysis patients are more likely to be hospitalized if they fall. Furthermore, reported researchers from the University of Virginia Health System presenting at the 29th Annual Dialysis Conference last month, hospitalization and/or mortality was even more likely if patients fell more than once during the three-year study period. Helpfully, researchers suggested that elderly patients get help with reducing their risks of falling.

The degree to which people smile in childhood photos predicts their later likelihood of divorce, said DePauw University researchers who asked adults for school pictures and rated their smiles. Those with the weakest smiles were more than three times as likely to divorce. It's not a genetic link between strong enamel and marital bliss, or that people with toothpast-minty breath kiss their spouses more often. The suspicion is that happier people (those who smile for pictures) might be more likely to work through marital problems, or might be marrying similarly happy people.

Tweets, those brief, annoying communications of 140 characters or less, might make users less moral and indifferent to human suffering. Not really, but researchers pressed on with the theory that the faster pace of news feeds doesn't allow people to fully empathize with the people to whom the news is happening. While we can rapidly process physical pain in others, emotions associated with morality take much longer to develop. We've heard it before here at Medical News of the Obvious (even if we paid attention for just a brief moment before moving on.)

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posted by Ryan DuBosar at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

--People use the tint of your skin to judge how healthy you are, a new study from St. Andrews University found. Those with a pink or reddish complexion were judged as healthier than those with greenish or pale, washed-out skin. All of you who've been using green eye shadow to liven up your cheeks might want to stick to standard rouge from now on.

--Turns out 90% of couples experience a decrease in marital satisfaction after their first child, especially right after birth, an eight-year study of 218 couples found. A baby accelerates the process, which is also seen in childless couples, according to research in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Dirty diapers and constant sleep interruption aren't so romantic, it seems.

--Once a couple has a child, they should work hard to instill a sense of self-control. Young kids with low self-control are more likely to become overweight by their preteen years, because they lack the ability to delay gratification for a larger reward, a new study in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine finds.

--And once that child gets a driver's license, couples should be on high alert for any suspicious smells leaking out from his or her bedroom door. Turns out marijuana use and reckless driving are related, according to Canadian researchers: "Our study found that men with self-reported DUIC (driving under the influence of cannabis) tend to be associated with an increased risk of being involved in a car accident," said study author Isabelle Richer, according to an article in U.S. News and World Report.

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

People diagnosed with cancer are at increased risk for depression, concludes a study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Researchers collected an impressive amount of data and performed some complicated regression analysis and risk-adjustments to come up with the important, though not particuarly surprising, recommendation that physicians treating cancer patients should look for signs of depression and initiate early treatment.

Children prefer bright colors. So concluded a study in the Journal of Clinical Nursing that assessed hospitalized children's perceptions of nurses wearing non-traditional, brightly colored uniforms vs. the traditional drab attire. I bet smiling works, too. But that's another study.

Sugary soft drinks were associated with more weight gain than other beverages, according to researchers. To come to this conclusion, researchers looked at 810 adults and weighed them over an 18-month period, doing unannounced 24-hour dietary recall interviews by phone during the study. Sugar-sweetened beverages were the only ones significantly associated with weight change. What rescues this study from being totally obvious is that it tracked how much weight could be cut by not swigging sodas. Cutting liquid calories was associated with losing 0.25 kg at 6 months and 0.24 kg at 18 months. Cutting just one sugary drink was associated with losing 0.5 kg at 6 months and 0.7 kg at 18 months. Lay off the soda already, especially those of you who start the day with a can or two.

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posted by Janet Colwell at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

If you want to survive a suicide attack, try getting as far from the bomb as you can in advance.

That's the upshot of a new study by Florida Institute of Technology researchers. The unfortunate first line of this press release about the study may just win the Obvious of the Year award:

"Florida Institute of Technology researchers have determined that where a person is standing in a room or other location during a suicide terrorist attack can have a great bearing on survival and injuries."

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 9:00 AM   1 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

--Depressed folks have trouble remembering the good and happy things in life, and tend to focus more on the negative aspects of a situation, a new study finds. Study co-author Laura Conklin offers this helpful tip for psychologists, in case they slept through several years of their training: "Depressed people may have a tendency to remember the negative experiences in a situation, but not remember the good things that happened. Therapists need to be aware of that."

--Not having many close friends makes you feel yucky. And being lonely makes you feel even worse, according to a new study.

--Moms who eat poorly tend to have sicker children than moms who eat well. Because, you know, kids tend to get most of their food from their parents. And diet is important to health.

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

--Powerful people think they can control more than they really do. (Hear that, Mr. Madoff?) Stanford researchers had students write about situations in which they had control over others, write about situations where they felt out of control, or write nothing. The students were then given the choice to roll dice for themselves or have someone else do it. Those randomized to remember situations of being in control usually chose to roll themselves, while those in the other two groups were more likely to have someone else do it.

--Worried about the harmful effects of smog as you walk or bike through city streets? Here's a high-tech solution: Wear a face mask. Reporting in the journal Particle and Fibre Toxicology, researchers helpfully explain that covering your mouth and nose can reduce "exposure to airborne pollution particles." (Cyclists might also want to avoid tailgating buses.)

--Having arthritis makes people disinclined to exercise, according to the MMWR Weekly. The study looked at the intersection of arthritis, heart disease and exercise, and found--surprise!--that people with both conditions were least likely to exercise, followed by people with one condition, followed by people with neither condition. (In all seriousness, the researchers make an important point that the ill folks should be encouraged to exercise, as it will help decrease pain.)

...And on the psychology front, researchers came to the stunning conclusion that people like to bond with one another socially by quoting popular movies, according to CNN. (Hmm, CNN... owned by Ted Turner... owner of Turner Classic Movies....). Furthermore, they like to quote from comedies more than children's films. And here I thought my Jar Jar Binks impersonation was the keystone of my cocktail party repartee.

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 9:00 AM   1 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

When it rains, it pours...and there were hurricane-like conditions in Obvious News Country this week. Pull up a chair and watch the storm with us:

• People in unhappy marriages are more likely to be depressed, say psychologists at the University of Utah. Wives, in particular, have a higher risk of metabolic syndrome (and heart disease) if their marriages are strained. "Improving aspects of intimate relationships might help your emotional and physical well-being," researchers helpfully advised in a release.
• Attention, parents! Swimming lessons for young kids do NOT increase their risk of drowning. In fact, the lessons "appear to have a protective effect," the NIH pronounced. (Your tax dollars at work, folks.)
• When asked to turn down their Ipods, teens are more likely to crank the volume. Also, teens listen at a higher volume than adults!
• Another thing about teens: If they wear t-shirts and baseball hats with beer and booze labels on them, they are more likely to be binge drinkers. You are warned.
• On that topic, television commercials about drinking make you want to drink, Healthday reports. Madison Avenue breathed a collective sigh of relief at the news...and poured itself a tall one.
  

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 9:00 AM   2 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Our focus this week is on smoking. A new study in BMJ finds that smoking is bad for you, even if you're rich! As reported by HealthDay, the authors conclude that "in essence, neither affluence nor being female offers a defense against the toxicity of tobacco." So much for the magical properties of our solid gold cigarette holder.

In other bad-but-perhaps-already-known news for women, a group of public health investigators have determined that tobacco companies are trying to make cigarettes appealing. To quote HealthDay again, cigarette ads "depict cigarette smoking as feminine and fashionable rather than the harmful and deadly addiction it really is."

And while we're on the subject, we've got to mention this study, even though its conclusions are far from obvious. A signficant proportion of surveyed smokers said that while the effects of smoking on their own health are not sufficient motivation to quit, they would stop smoking if they knew their pets were being harmed by the habit. Really, people? Really?

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 8:00 AM   0 Comments

Stroke news of the obvious

And in our special conference issue of Stroke News of the Obvious...a study out of UNC that finds it takes longer to care for stroke patients in emergency departments that are overcrowded than those that are not. Specifically, it takes longer to triage the patients to ED rooms, physician assessment and hospital beds. "ED clinicians may need to attend to methods of increasing the efficiency of personnel and care processing during periods of overcrowding," the study authors smartly concluded.

Separately, stroke survivors are more likely to fall if they have impaired mobility, have a history of falling, and are still experiencing pain and injury from a previous fall...versus people who can get around just fine, haven't ever fallen, and are feeling healthy to boot. Also, older stroke survivors are more likely to fall than younger ones.

And finally, stroke patients who have heart failure are more likely to die in the hospital than stroke patients without heart failure. (I'm going to go out on a limb and say that adding a serious condition to anyone's health profile is, most likely, going to put her at a disadvantage vs. someone without that extra condition.) Stroke + heart failure patients also stayed in the hospital longer and required more intensive care than those with stroke alone.

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 3:45 PM   3 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

People are more likely to eat expired food if they already own it, a group of researchers offering rotten smoothies discovered. "Our results help explain why a person might consume expired food that they found in the fridge, but not consume expired food found in a friend's fridge," a study author told the Washington Post. Either that, or because it's generally frowned upon to go over to someone's house and start rooting through their moldy leftovers for a snack.

Further confirming that they are not familiar with actual human behavior, the researchers also attempted to analyze the "five-second rule" of eating food off the ground. Kindergartners everywhere are eagerly awaiting follow-up research to confirm precisely when dropped food becomes too dirty to eat.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 8:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

--Makeover shows like "The Swan" and "Extreme Makeover" don't help women feel better about themselves or the way they look; the shows make them anxious about their bodies, a study in Configurations finds. Interestingly, college students in Buffalo who watch the shows had more body anxiety than those in L.A., Science Daily reports. The L.A. students were more likely to feel that having an imperfect body was a "moral failing," while the Buffalo students worried that it would keep them from being successful.

--Undergrads who play a lot of video games are isolated and don't have great relationships with their peers or families, a study in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence finds. They are also more likely to smoke pot than those who don't play.

--Songs can evoke memories, researchers trumpeted in the Psychology of Music journal. It doesn't matter whether you hear a snatch of a song, see a picture of the song artist(s) or read the lyrics-- all function equally well at triggering memory.
So let's try this out. Here's the song: "1999" by Prince. Any memories springing up out there?

--High-schoolers who watch too much TV are likely to develop bad eating habits, researchers reported in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity. The study of 2,000 high- and middle-school students also pointed out that TV ads might influence students to make bad food choices. (So that's why they ditched their morning oatmeal for a bowl of triple choco-marshmallow puffs!)

--The expectation of post-operative pain directly correlated with the actual incidence of pain following foot and ankle surgery. Researchers thought that, "Believing there will be pain after surgery leads to just that, pain." They continued that cancer patients who have a more optimistic outlook experienced less severe pain.

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 9:00 AM   1 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Food that's advertised in magazines tends to be unhealthy, a new study from the UK finds. It seems the glossies are filled with enticements to buy chocolates and pre-packaged meals loaded with preservatives, instead of tempting missives from the Carrot Farmers of England or the National Broccoli Foundation. But hey, the title of one of the 30 mags they studied is "Nuts," so maybe there is some subversive healthy messaging going on, after all.

Putting babies and small children in car seats, rather than letting them float around the car, greatly reduces the chances they'll die, a new study found. Study author Thomas Rice of UC-Berkeley, speaking in the Washington Post, clarifies for us that car seats are necessary because infants are fragile: "The higher effectiveness of safety seats among infants is likely due to their overall fragility," Rice is quoted as saying. Hear that, moms?

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

People are more suggestible under laughing gas. This won't hurt a bit... ha, ha, nudge, wink...Researchers at the University College London found that being sedated with nitrous oxide (aka laughing gas) makes people more likely to listen when their drill-wielding dentist tells them to relax.

Problem teens become problem adults. At risk behaviors include disobedience, lying, lack of punctuality, restlessness, truancy, daydreaming in class and poor response to discipline--in other words, adolescence itself. The data came from the UK's Medical Research Council.

Parents should limit the amount of TV children watch before the age of two, according to a review published in the January issue of Acta Paediatrica by a child expert from the Seattle Children's Research Institute and the University of Washington. DVDs aimed at infants are also concerning researchers report. Toss the Baby Einstein!

Glaucoma impairs reading. We're not sure how it connects to the well-known relationship between glaucoma and vision problems, but a new study found that glaucoma patients could not read aloud as quickly as their unaffected peers. By the way, researchers noted, reading speed may also relate to cognitive ability and education.

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posted by Janet Colwell at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Eating "on the go" encourages consumption of unhealthy food, a new study finds. IE, fast food isn't good for you. Other groundbreakers in the study include that young people like eating together, but often feel too busy to sit down and eat.

In other food news, if you want to maintain or lose weight as you get older, you have to eat less, people! Because your metabolism slows down, you see. The lead author offered several helpful tips for eating less, including "put less food on your plate." Here's my helpful tip: Put less food in your mouth.

And here's a study result that is not obvious, but fishy: The babies of women who eat apples during pregnancy are less likely to have asthma. Sounds plausible, until you realize the lead researcher's names is Dr. Appleyard....

(We joke. But let's just say we're not surprised Dr. A chose the apple as the "fruit of her labors".)

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

This week in Medical News of the Obvious, sex, drugs and...puppies? To wit:

Teens talk about having sex, using drugs and drinking alcohol on their MySpace profiles! The researchers who "discovered" this also created a profile of a "Dr. Meg," and sent messages to the teens who talked about sex/substances to tell them their profiles contained "risky information." Guess what? Many of the teens removed the info from their profile. Because nothing is more creepy...I mean, helpful and effective...than the idea of a stranger mining your profile for news about your sex life.

Meanwhile, people who are at high risk of driving drunk are most deterred by the belief that they are likely to get arrested or pulled over, not by drunk driving laws themselves. So laws aren't useful unless you enforce them. Got it.

You know how animals can cheer up the elderly and the ill? Well, puppies make college students happy, too! "Even younger, healthier young adults can benefit from living with our four-legged friends," the lead author said in a press release. Young and old: we're not so different, after all!

And speaking of the elderly, an AP report finds that the best-rated nursing homes in Massachusetts are usually located in the wealthiest areas. Next on the AP Investigations Team schedule: Is school district quality related to median income? Stay tuned...

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 4:00 PM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Just in time for New Year's Eve, we bring you our "Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll" edition of Medical News of the Obvious. (Actually, it's more like "sex, food and rock 'n' roll", but food is akin to a drug for some people, no?). Without further ado...

--Kids' meals at fast-food restaurants aren't very nutritious, according to researchers in Houston and Michigan. Also? They are high in fat and calories!

--Teenagers who pledge to remain abstinent until they marry aren't any less likely to have premarital intercourse than teens who don't pledge, a new study finds. Bet they are more likely to feel guilty about it, though...

--"Head banging" increases your risk of head and neck injuries, the BMJ reports. But the researchers have some tips for Metallica lovers to reduce their chances of injury: "Head bang to slower tempo songs by replacing heavy metal with adult oriented rock; only head bang to every second beat; or use personal protective equipment." In other words, listen to John Mayer instead of Ozzy, and be the one guy at the Motorhead concert who's wearing a helmet. Rock on!

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 1:09 PM   2 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Lots of promotional press releases cross our desks at ACP Internist. When they're too weird to pass up, we'll post them here. It's like Annals of Internal Medicine's Personae, but without the cash prize.

This one came from a system promising whiter teeth. Obviously, it didn't convince the staff to try it.

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posted by Ryan DuBosar at 8:55 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

There was a bumper crop of obvious research this week, so we'll keep it snappy. Some of the highlights:

Employees who are sexually harrassed have lower job satisfaction.

Couch potatoes are fat.

The internet has scams.

Talking on your cell phone in the car is bad.

Banning soda at school doesn't solve the child obesity crisis.

People in clinical trials like to know the results when the study's over.

Middle-aged men like to chase after younger women.

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 4:00 PM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

With icy winds sweeping the Northeast, it's obvious that many of us would rather be relaxing on a warm, sunny beach. That must be why Aussie researchers decided to release a study confirming conventional wisdom about life at the shore. "Adults and adolescents are particularly at risk for intense, episodic sun exposure while on vacation or in 'high-risk' environments such as beaches," the authors wrote.

Despite that unsurprising conclusion, the study does eventually prove its own value, by establishing that people do not learn from even the most painfully obvious evidence. The researchers surveyed beachgoers and found that 70% of them went to the beach with an intention to tan, despite 40% reporting they had obtained a sunburn in the previous 48 hours. Think, people, think!

But, to get to that warm, sunny beach, you'll have to wait in a line at the airport, which a study now shows that people hate. Researchers in queing psychology are finding ways to keep us amused while waiting in line, or at least reduce the sudden violence of "queue rage." In short, amusement parks and comedy shows add interactive features to their lines to build up expectations, airports offer updates on wait times, banks switch to first-come-first-serve fairness, and Black Friday shoppers think the line is part of the group experience.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

Focus on driving. When officials in Florida implemented a law in January 2004 requiring all drivers 80 years and older to pass a vision test before renewing their driver's licenses, did they ever in a million years think that it would lead to fewer crashes? Well, yes, of course they did. But, now there's evidence, notes a press release announcing the results of an Archives of Ophthalmology study. It turns out that failing the DMV's vision screening test removed some shaky drivers from the road and encouraged others to get better glasses.

And at the other end of the age spectrum, a new study finds that modern teens are full of themselves. The research, which compared today's adolescents with those of the 1970's, also found that students claim to get more A's despite doing less homework. And if Grandpa could just find his car keys, he would come over and tell you about how hard it was back in the good old days.

For those facing a mid-life crisis, turn to Botox. A psychodermatologist addressing the American Academy of Dermatology's Skin meeting measured the positive effects of botox on self-esteem. The study surveyed 76 middle-aged patients treated with one botox injection about how they felt: 29% were less anxious; 36%, more relaxed; 49%, more optimistic. The study even addressed seasonal affective disorder. "Feeling stressed, depressed or anxious is exhausting," said the presenter, "and patients who report improvements in these negative feelings following a cosmetic procedure can use that redirected energy to pursue new interests that can enhance their lives," such as having to drive their overbearing parents and snotty teenagers everywhere.

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posted by Janet Colwell at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Reader Tanna Lim, M.D. from Atlanta found an item for us. Last week we reported that teens who see less violence on TV are less violent. Now we find that if they are more interested in watching sexual content, they're more likely to be involved with a pregnancy.

Media coverage affects how people perceive the threat of infectious disease. As opposed to people just going out and conducting their own field research about all the infectious disease in the world.

Turns out, if you ask patients whether they're ok with their prescriptions being switched to other drugs without their or their doctor's knowledge, they say no. An obvious study, but not one without a purpose: sponsor Pfizer was trying to make a case against substitution of generic statins.

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

One of our bloggers found this in a fortune cookie: "You could prosper in the field of medical research." This led us to wonder, how much do they pay test subjects nowadays?

Now, on with some medical research that's less prosperous and more obvious ...

Children and young teens with only minimal exposure to violent entertainment in the media are far less likely to engage in aggressive behavior, a new survey suggests.

College students drink beer and it makes them fat, researchers at Tufts and Indiana universities discovered after extensive research. (Couldn't they just have looked around campus on a Saturday night?)

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

We're running a little low this week, but here's what we've got:

Adults who eat rapidly or until they're full are more likely to be overweight, a study in BMJ reports. Just tell your heavier patients to slow down and chew. Problem solved.

Doctors are more likely to prescribe drugs to their patients-- in this case clopidogrel (Plavix) to stent patients-- when they have fewer hoops (like prior authorization) to jump through, the NEJM reports.

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posted by Janet Colwell at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

This edition focuses on Europe, a continent from which more inanity than usual was emanating this week.

First, it took a team of nine European specialists on the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks to conclude "Listening to personal music players at a high volume over a sustained period can lead to permanent hearing damage." Could you repeat that?

This second study may be less obvious than mysterious (as in, why on Earth did someone fund this research?). Researchers in the U.K. "analyzed 413 adult deaths from unintentional injuries that occurred in the county of Sussex, England, between 1485 and 1688," the Washington Post reported. They found that people frequently died from drowning, being hit by objects and falling, and that some of them were drunk at the time.

Who would have guessed? And who would have cared? (Aside from the families of these poor victims, of course. Our condolences of the loss of your great-great-great-great...great-grandfather.)

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posted by Ryan DuBosar at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

The days are getting shorter and colder, the leaves are turning, and researchers want to get their studies published before the holidays. You know what that means: It's harvest time for some really obvious news.

Like this: A new study reports city kids like to go to corner stores to buy unhealthy snacks and drinks on their way to and from school! And here we thought those gaggles of backpacked youth down the block were just popping in for some fruit and a new set of pencils.

Also, the tanking of the U.S.-- nay, the global!-- economy is, like, stressing people out, the Washington Post reports.

Don't let that stress lead you to take up smoking, though....the latest research is that smoking is bad for you! Archives of Internal Medicine reports that men who never smoke live longer and better lives than heavy smokers. "Health-related quality of life appears to deteriorate as the number of cigarettes smoked per day increases," explains a helpful news release.

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 4:00 PM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

In a startling insight into the human psyche, researchers report that "patients with generalized social phobia respond differently than others to negative comments about themselves."

Meanwhile, the Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology reports that listening to music while exercising increases endurance. And here we thought all those people with headsets at the gym were catching up on their financial news podcasts!

And...finally. Workers who take long bouts of sick leave (7+ days) are at a higher risk of death than their colleagues who don't take sick leave, BMJ reports.
(To be fair, they also found this: workers who were absent for circulatory diseases, surgical operations, and psychiatric diagnoses were more likely to die than those out for infections, respiratory illness, or injury absences.)

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posted by Janet Colwell at 9:43 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Four items that need no explanation or comment:

• People who have steady, dependable jobs are more mentally healthy that those whose jobs may be in jeopardy, according to a new WHO report.
• Women who binge drink are at greater risk of unsafe sex, according to the journal Alcoholism.
• Women who are bulimic in pregnancy are more anxious and depressed than pregnant women without eating disorders. At least in Norway.
• People with a family history of cancerous brain tumors are at higher risk of developing those tumors than people with no family history, Neurology reports.

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 4:00 PM   2 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

Our theme this week is obesity. There are lots of interesting questions on this subject, but these studies aren't answering them.

Physical activity is associated with reduced risk for obesity in people who are genetically predisposed, the Sept. 8 Archives of Internal Medicine says. But, wait, there is a suprising part of the study--it was conducted among the Amish. Who would have guessed that there even are inactive, obese Amish? Apparently cars and fast food are not entirely to blame for the obesity epidemic, as 30% of female study participants were obese.

Another Archives study (a little old, but profiled in this week's Journal Watch) provides more evidence on the new weight-reducing properties of exercise. "Women who maintained a 10% weight loss during a 2-year study had better eating habits and more leisure-time physical activity than did those who regained weight." Got it? Diet + exercise = weight loss

And why should we care? Because obesity has some relationship to cardiovascular disease, according to a study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, reported in the Washington Post under the headline "Heavier People Have Heart Attacks Earlier." This study author wins the quote-of-the-week award for telling the Post, "If you had your choice, you would choose not to have a heart attack in the first place."

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 8:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious Part II

Maybe because we spend a lot of time talking to students and residents, the press releases for this week's issue of JAMA, which has a medical education theme, particularly struck us with their obviousness.

First up, "white medical students who attend schools with greater racial and ethnic diversity among the student body are more likely to rate themselves as highly prepared to care for minority populations." That seemed a little obvious, but the really depressing part was how an accompanying editorial concluded that even putting evidence behind a concept so intuitive will have no impact. "However, even with an increasing evidence base, many medical schools are unlikely to prioritize increased URM [underrepresented minority] diversity. For such schools, improvements may come only through changes in leadership or external pressure by community and political forces."

Then we learn that "interns who experience an increase in their on-call workload are more likely to get less sleep while on call, have longer shift durations and participate less in educational activities." We, too, are looking for one of those jobs where more work means more sleep and shorter hours.

And, finally, for anyone still mystified by the primary care shortage, med students explain why they are not going into internal medicine. "Compared with other specialties they had chosen or considered, students perceived IM as requiring more paperwork (68.0% of respondents), requiring a greater breadth of knowledge (62.1%) and having a lower income potential (64.6%)."

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 4:00 PM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

What is it about research on kids that all the findings always seem so darn obvious?

This week, one study found that college students who don't believe that prescription drug abuse is very risky are 10 times more likely to abuse prescription drugs than those who believe it is highly harmful. (Special kudos to this obvious study for an author actually telling the Washington Post, "But what we're talking about here is not rocket science.")

Also, children of stressed, low-income mothers have weight issues (Post quote on this one: "The last thing you're going to worry about is whether your child is obese if you're busy trying to take care of physical needs first, like simply putting a roof over your head.").

And playing active video games burns more calories than doing nothing or playing a passive game, but fewer than actually being active away from the TV. (Also from the Post.)

Stay tuned tomorrow afternoon for a special Part II of Medical News of the Obvious, featuring JAMA's medical education issue.

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 8:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

For whatever reason, studies about teens and young adults always seem to be chock full of obviousness. To wit:

Teenagers who live in households where smoking is allowed are more likely to think that smoking is socially acceptable, a new study finds.

What kind of students cheat? Dishonest ones, a study from Ohio State University reveals. Yep, the cheaters scored lower on measures of honesty (as well as empathy and courage) than the non-cheaters.

(Ok, so that last one's not medical, but it was too good to resist.)

And finally, here is one which-- like most of these studies we playfully mock-- is only "obvious" in a very superficial way:

The reason that DEET works against mosquitoes is because they can't stand the smell, Healthday reports.

Never thought I'd have something in common with a mosquito (besides an occasional tendency to whine)...

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 3:00 PM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

Here is your weekly dose of Confirming What You Already Suspected...

People who take care of a spouse with dementia are more likely to be depressed than those who don't, according to a recent study in International Psychogeriatrics.

Your brain processes a person's face more efficiently if that person is looking straight at you than if his or her gaze is averted, a study out of Finland finds.

There are more house fire deaths in states where a higher percentage of people smoke at home, according to a CDC study in Injury Prevention.

And finally, that whole "beer goggles" thing, where people look better when you've had a bit to drink? It is officially for real, this study of English college students found.
I bet they had no trouble recruiting volunteers for that study...

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical news of the obvious

Having excess fat surrounding your heart is more likely to cause heart attacks than excess fat around your waist, a study in Obesity finds. Also, accidentally hitting your thumb while hammering is more likely to bruise your thumb than your shoulder. (That comes from a "study" I conducted in my living room the other week.)

Also, in obesity news: People who live in more walkable neighborhoods are less likely to be overweight or obese than people who live in neighborhoods where they have to drive everywhere, according to a study in the September American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Also, people who live down the street from a great pizza joint are more likely to spontaneously bring home a pie for dinner than those who don't. (Again, based on personal research.)

And, a series of headlines from the Washington Post that require (or deserve?) no explanation:

Brain Slow to Judge Fast-Moving Objects Head-On
Many Women Struggle With Challenge of a Newborn
Study: Restaurant kids' meals loaded with calories
Children in Blended Families Still Close to Biological Mothers
Many Kids Under 15 Watch Violent Movies

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 9:00 AM   1 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

In case you hadn't noticed, the Archives of General Pyschiatry tells us this week that today's psychiatrists are focusing on drugs instead of therapy. From the press release:

Various forms of psychotherapy, either alone or in combination with medications, are recommended for the treatment of major depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder and other psychiatric illnesses. "Yet, despite the traditional prominence of psychotherapy in psychiatric practice and training, there are indications of a recent decline in the provision of psychotherapy by U.S. psychiatrists—a trend attributed to reimbursement policies favoring brief medication management visits rather than psychotherapy and the introduction of newer psychotropic medications with fewer adverse effects," the authors write.

Also, girls who develop earlier than their peers and have uninvolved parents are likely to get into trouble, the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine reports. "By discussing difficult peer situations (e.g., provocation, peer pressure) and ways of dealing with them, parents may help their daughters develop a repertoire of adaptive responses that will minimize the need for inappropriate (i.e., aggressive) behavior," the authors write. "In addition, knowing how their daughters spend free time may help parents identify and prevent negative peer and other influences." Who knew?

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 4:00 PM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

Only one lone Obvious candidate this week, but it's a good one:

Someone did a study to come to the stunning realization that people who attend AA are more likely to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes than the general population.
In other words, people who are in treatment for an addictive behavior are actually more likely to have other addictive behaviors.

Ok, to be fair, the study's authors already knew that people in AA tend to like their joe 'n' smokes, but wanted to quantify the difference between AA and non-AA folks. Also, they wanted to delve into the reasons people like these substances. Here's one theory, put forth by the study's corresponding author:

"Is this behavior simply a way to bond or connect in AA meetings, analogous to the peace pipe among North American Indians?"

Ah, yes, the Peace Pipe Hypothesis. Perhaps we'll be treated to a follow-up study....

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posted by Jessica Berthold at 9:00 AM   0 Comments

Medical News of the Obvious

A diagnosis of heart disease darkens a person's outlook on life, a new government study finds. Adults with cardiovascular trouble scored up to 9% lower on four scales measuring their quality of life, according to a report in the July 15 issue of Circulation, from researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Source, Washington Post.)


Women are more likely than men to seek tattoo removal because they are more likely to be subject to societal fallout from the tattoos, the Archives of Dermatology reports. (So women's appearances are scrutinized/criticized more than men's? No way!) People get tattoos to feel unique and independent and remind themselves of life experiences, the study says. The reasons for removing were "just deciding to remove it" (58%), suffering embarrassment (57%), lowering of body image (38%), getting a new job or career (38%), having problems with clothes (37%), experiencing stigma (25%) or marking an occasion like a marriage (21%).

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posted by Stacey Butterfield at 4:00 PM   0 Comments