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POPSGirls entering puberty by the age of six - but are drugs the answer?
"Early puberty has even been linked to watching too much television. A few years ago, Italian scientists found that children who watched three hours a day produced less of the sleep hormone melatonin - low levels of the hormone play an important role in the timing of puberty. But perhaps more worrying is the theory that it's exposure to environmental chemicals which is causing the drop in the age of puberty. These chemicals mimic the effect of hormones, disrupting the normal timing of sexual maturing. Whatever the cause, growing numbers of children are being deprived of childhood and are turning, physically, into mini-adults at an increasingly young age. But without the emotional maturity to deal with these changes, they are vulnerable to exploitation. In Britain, it is now estimated that up to at least one in six children under ten is affected. Indeed, there is a belief that schoolgirls as young as six are entering puberty".
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POPSHow Advertising Manipulates Our “Caveman” Brains (& How to Resist) Fortunately, there are ways to go about PROOFING YOUR BRAIN. 1. Change your mindset to “postmore” by challenging culture’s ingrained assumption that “more” of everything is automatically better. 2. Grow your gratitude. Our poor, starved, frozen ancestors would cry tears of joy if they suddenly landed in our culture of abundance. Fostering our appreciation of this bounty can also block the consumerist “cool” pressure to deride so many of our fine, workable possessions as “so last year”. 3. Be enough. We’re constantly told that we aren’t rich enough, glam enough, cool enough, networked enough, etc. This has a powerful insidious effect on our primitive, socially competitive brain circuits. It’s like a toxic substance that turns rational brains into needy toddlers wanting “more, more, more!
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POPSBush gagged Surgeon General. Health, sex, smoking, cells, religion, Under Bush, the independence of the surgeon general has been placed below industry lobbying and the demands of the religious right. The Bush White House banned Dr Carmona from speaking or issuing reports on stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, prisons, mental health and international health issues, he has revealed. For years, the White House also tried to "water down" a key report on the dangers of second-hand smoke, he said. When it was published last year , the report stated that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke can cause immediate harm.
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POPSThe Top 10 Worst Hereditary Conditions (thanks Mark) "Sometimes parents deserve a guilt trip. While you and the guy next door share 99.9 percent of the same DNA, that small fraction leftover amounts to three million inherited differences ranging from blood type to eye color, which make you unique. Unfortunately, that family inheritance doesn't always come in a pretty package. You can thank your parents for zits, hair loss, and deadly diseases."
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POPSCan You Catch Up on Lost Sleep? The good news is that, like all debt, with some work, sleep debt can be repaid—though it won't happen in one extended snooze marathon. Tacking on an extra hour or two of sleep a night is the way to catch up. For the chronically sleep deprived, take it easy for a few months to get back into a natural sleep pattern, says Lawrence J. Epstein, medical director of the Harvard-affiliated Sleep HealthCenters. Go to bed when you are tired, and allow your body to wake you in the morning (no alarm clock allowed). You may find yourself catatonic in the beginning of the recovery cycle: Expect to bank upward of ten hours shut-eye per night. As the days pass, however, the amount of time sleeping will gradually decrease.
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POPSDildos of Death? Fortunately, sex-toy retailers are taking things into their own hands. That sentence made me laugh out loud. :lol:
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POPSRed wine's resveratrol may help battle obesity In the cell-based study, they found that resveratrol inhibited the pre-fat cells from increasing and prevented them from converting into mature fat cells. Also, resveratrol hindered fat storage. Most interesting, according to Fischer-Posovszky, was that resveratrol reduced production of certain cytokines (interleukins 6 and 8), substances that may be linked to the development of obesity-related disorders, such as diabetes and clogged coronary arteries. Also, resveratrol stimulated formation of a protein known to decrease the risk of heart attack. Obesity decreases this substance, called adiponectin.
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POPSYour Doughnut Addiction Explained More: When sugar water was substituted for the saccharin solution, the results were the same, researchers said. "Intense sweetness is more rewarding to the rats than cocaine," said coauthor Magalie Lenoir of the University of Bordeaux in France. Lenoir said mammalian taste receptors evolved in an environment that lacked sugar and so were not adapted to the high concentrations of sweets found in the modern diet. Excess sugar could increase levels of the brain chemical dopamine, she said, leading to a craving for sweets.
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POPSBiggest house cats ever? I love big cat's, but these are going a little overboard. Well, the fat ones anyway. I'll take one of the healthier ones any day...
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POPSUnsupervised children are more sociable and more active Professor Mackett goes on to say: “Fears over road safety and ‘stranger danger’ need to be balanced against soaring levels of childhood obesity and poor health. Letting a child out to play is one of the best things a parent can do for their child’s physical health and personal development.
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POPSMost older adults have brain disease: study Older persons can often handle one pathology in their brain, but the burden of more than one pathology may tip them over the threshold of clinical dementia Therefore, prevention of not only Alzheimer's disease but these other pathologies, particularly stroke and those things that may increase the risk of stroke, like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cigarette smoking, obesity, "are likely to significantly decrease the prevalence of dementia
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POPSWhy is obesity rampant among the poor? Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, ... is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots? For the answer, you need look no farther than the farm bill. ....in the case of the carrot and the Twinkie, the farm bill as currently written offers a lot more support to the cake than to the root. Like most processed foods, the Twinkie is basically a clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat — ...crops that the farm bill supports, to the tune of some $25 billion a year.