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Strollerderby
She's perfectly healthy, she just plays misery (well) on TV!
One of the overweight stars of the controversial Georgia anti-obesity ads, Chloe McSwain, told CBS This Morning recently that she has no regrets about doing the commercial and appearing on billboards as the face of a childhood epidemic in Georgia and the nation.
And why should she have regrets? It was an acting job for which she got paid and in which, when you see the real girl in the interview, she proves to the world she’s truly good actress. Continue reading »
A new report says: One in 15 teenagers smokes pot almost daily.
Teens may be finding it more difficult to get booze these days, but it ain’t no thang … because they’re all getting high instead. With ever increasing frequency, too, apparently.
The University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future Survey of 47,000 teenagers in the U.S. revealed that alcohol use is at an historic low and marijuana smoking is up in 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-graders for the fourth year in a row.
Jezebel, in their reporting of the study, wonders if the rise in smoking has something to do with the decline in teenage pregnancy. We know teens like sex just as much as they used to, so maybe the physical side effects of getting baked too often really are at play …
Forget The Dead Kennedys’ eighties ode to alcohol-soaked partying Too Drunk To F**k. Teens need a new anthem — something along the lines of: So High My Sperm Count’s Low?
OMG: Being left-handed could be viewed as a risk factor for diagnosing psychiatric and developmental conditions.
Lefties are used to getting the short end of the stick—from having to work around right-handed school desks, computer mice and pretty much anything else that requires a dominant hand to being regarded as an aberration that needs to be “fixed” to even being looked upon with fear (because there happens to be a very old and extremely lengthy list of folklore and left-handed superstitions all pointing to the left side equalling bad luck).
Research on south paws hasn’t exactly turned up the best of news, either. The Wall Street Journal, in an examination of several different studies, found that left-handed people really do have bad luck—if you consider having a higher risk for brain and developmental disorders as ”bad luck,” that is.
My MC1R gene excuses me from dental exams, right?
People with naturally red hair, according to a new study from the Journal of the American Dental Association, appear to have a genetic predisposition to experience more anxiety about going to the dentist. Which, interestingly, means that dentist-fearing redheads may actually be telling the truth when they claim to loathe dentistry at a cellular level.
Although it seems like our limited scientific research funds would be better spent finding out who is predisposed to developing, oh, say, CANCER, I guess dentists are entitled to get some answers on why their ginger patients are so skittish. And for the redheads: it never hurts to have an excuse based on your DNA at the ready to explain why you haven’t come in for a teeth cleaning in over a year. Continue reading »
Yikes, for some parents that buy natural, you’ll want to check those cabinets.
J.M. Smucker is recalling jars of its Chunky Natural Peanut Butter due to possible salmonella contamination. Most of the jars in question hadn’t yet left the warehouse, but over 3,000 were sent to stores in over 24 states and placed on the shelves within the past week. Continue reading »
A little work now will make for one less resolution on New Year's Day.
Are you depressed about the quickly approaching holidays and the inevitable weight gain from the endless supply of cookies and cocktails that come along with them? Consider for a moment how full of WIN it would be if you lost the four pounds you’re doomed to gain in December RIGHT NOW — enabling you to eat your way right through to New Year’s.
Huzzah! That is a holiday plan I can get down with.
Shape magazine gives a run-down of the five hottest diets culled from U.S. News and World Report’s new report on the healthiest diets on the market, and even if you’re not too worried about the holiday excesses, it gives the low-down on the best overall diets for leading a healthy life, as well as best weight-loss diets. Topping the list is the DASH diet, followed by the TLC diet, the Mediterranean diet and Weight Watchers.
Therapy can be key to helping children control their obsessive-compulsive behaviors.
Study of childhood OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) is a recent development, as the disorder is often thought of only as an adult problem, but new research now suggests that 1% to 2% of school-aged children suffer from the disorder. If that figure is correct, according to an article in USA Today, that means there are “at least a few in every U.S. elementary and high school.”
OCD is defined by the Mayo Clinic as “an anxiety disorder characterized by unreasonable thoughts and fears (obsessions) that lead you to do repetitive behaviors (compulsions).” A common fear for OCD sufferers is the fear of contamination, which leads the person to wash their hands so often that they become raw, but the fears can be about anything that can be viewed as harmful, dangerous, dirty.
It is known that there is a genetic component to the disorder, but environmental factors that bring about a lot of stress, such as a divorce, moving, or puberty, can also cause a child’s fears to get overblown and pathologized. According the the article, experts say that most OCD kids don’t have to grow into adults with OCD, though, because treatments are effective up to 85% of the time. Continue reading »
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