All Posts Tagged as 'Development'

For a while, life was good. He got married, had a couple of dogs and lived in a modest house. But the sudden death of his brother on his honeymoon left his parents "devastated" for more reasons than one.

"My mom said that when we had kids I should name one after my brother," the man said. "I wasn't really thinking straight so I told the unvarnished truth. I had to choose between kids and paying off my student loans."

The world is grappling with the new coronavirus, which has spread from China to at least 15 other countries.

Outbreaks of new infectious diseases are typically seen as a "one off".

But the new virus - thought to have stemmed from wildlife - highlights our risk from animal-borne disease. This is likely to be more of a problem in future as climate change and globalisation alter the way animals and humans interact.

How can animals make people ill?
In the past 50 years, a host of infectious diseases have spread rapidly after making the evolutionary jump from animals to humans.

The HIV/Aids crisis of the 1980s originated from great apes, the 2004-07 avian flu pandemic came from birds, and pigs gave us the swine flu pandemic in 2009. More recently, it was discovered severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) came from bats, via civets, while bats also gave us Ebola.

Humans have always caught diseases from animals. In fact, most new infectious diseases come from wildlife.

For years, scientific studies have warned pregnant women about the possible effects of toxoplasmosis (a disease found in kitty litter) on their unborn child.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention says that toxoplasmosis can lead to serious illnesses such as blindness, hearing loss, mental disabilities, and psychosis.

Most children do not show symptoms of toxoplasmosis. If they show any symptoms, they usually include swollen lymph glands, fatigue, and muscle aches.

In teens, it can cause chorioretinitis, which is a rare symptom that consists of blurred vision and dark spots floating in front of your child's eyes.

While I personally don't like public displays of affection, they're a very peculiar phenomenon. Why is it that some couples can't help but touch each other obsessively, while others don't? And what's the motivation behind these physical urges?

Our parents have everything to do with the way we view and judge public affection.

"There can be an element of exhibitionism to it, which revs up your physiological system: Your heart races, your body gets hotter. And if your partner is also enjoying it, it can be mutually exciting."

And usually, a man reaching out to touch his partner in public will make her feel regarded as his prized possession.

"To some women, this can feel completely thrilling,"

But, if one partner likes the attention and the other doesn't, PDA can turn into a power struggle, which can be another type of turn-on. The physical touching actually becomes a form of ownership or domination of your partner.

The woman, in her mid-30s, looked pretty healthy, which, undoubtedly, was her goal. Sitting in my clinic – I’m a dietician at a busy London hospital – we began discussing her daily food and drink regime.

Work was busy and stressful, so there wasn’t much time for breakfast, apart from some fruit or a green juice. Lunch was a salad brimming with chickpeas and roasted vegetables and topped with a sprinkling of antioxidant-rich seeds.

Yet more vegetables and maybe some ‘plant protein’ – beans and nuts – for dinner. She tries to limit her dairy intake, choosing lattes made with almond or soya milk.

And yet, here she was, almost doubled over with gut pain, complaining of bloating, cramps and other more embarrassing, and distressing, digestive complaints.

‘I never touch junk food,’ she added, hopefully.

At this point, I know I’m going to have to break some bad news. She may think her diet is exemplary but, in fact, it’s the cause of her problems.

I call it ‘woke’ or overzealous healthy eating – consuming vast quantities of so-called ‘clean’ ingredients while avoiding entire food groups such as dairy, carbohydrates or meat for health or ‘ethical’ reasons.

And I believe this kind of trendy eating is behind a surge in cases of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) that I, and my colleagues, have been seeing.

If you were considering swearing off meat for health reasons, maybe don't throw away that bacon cheeseburger just yet. At least not if all that you're trying to prevent is a stroke. A report by researchers at Oxford published in the British Medical Journal found that out of nearly 50,000 people studied, vegetarians and vegans had a 20 percent higher rate of stroke than meat eaters.

Girls aren't alone in hitting puberty earlier -- boys are, too, according to a study published Monday in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics. And boys' body mass index as children might play a role.

Researchers looked through school health records and assessed trends in height and growth for 4,090 boys born in Sweden from 1947 to 1996. Boys born later in that 50-year time period hit puberty sooner. For every decade born later, boys reached peak height velocity, or PHV -- the study's marker for puberty -- 1.5 months earlier.

The age at PHV became progressively younger for boys born later, dropping from about 14.2 years in 1947 to 13.7 years in 1996.