Do Funny People Live Longer?

By Denise Foley for Completely You

The Guinness Book of World Records gave Phyllis Diller the nod for most laughs per minute (12) -- twice as many as funnyman Bob Hope, her hero. It might have been Diller’s machinegun delivery of one-liners like these that gave her the edge:

• “I once wore a peek-a-boo blouse. People would peek, and then they’d boo.”
•  “They say that housework can't kill you, but why take a chance?”
• “Photos of me don't do me justice. They just look like me.”
• “I never made ‘Who’s Who,’ but I’m featured in ‘What’s That?’”
• “My cooking is so bad that my kids thought Thanksgiving was in memory of Pearl Harbor.”

And the withering string of self-deprecating jibes was always followed by her signature cackle -- which made her sound like a demonic crow. She delivered the rapid-fire lines wearing a spangled minidress with hair that looked like it had been styled with a hand mixer. Listen to that laugh here.

Diller, who died on August 20 at the age of 95 (“with a smile on her face,” according to her son), set another record too: Along with her mentor, Bob Hope, and other professional funny people, she lived longer than most people do.

At a recent meeting of the American Psychological Association, former sitcom writer turned university professor Steven Pritzker reported that professional comedians live longer that other entertainers as well as people in other professions.

Pritzker, who is the director of Saybrook University’s masters of psychology with an emphasis on creativity program, looked at 73 famous comics who’d gone to the big open mic night in the sky -- their median age at death was 74. Of the top 26 comics in the group, median age at death was 77, higher than any other profession. (There were even a couple of centenarians in there such as Bob Hope and George Burns.) Architects came in second at just under 76.

Why Laughter = Longevity
Pritzker, who was once a professional funny man himself (he wrote for the Emmy-winning “Mary Tyler Moore Show”), says he doesn’t know for sure why a sense of humor translates into longevity. But he has a hypothesis: “It could allow an individual to handle stress and aging by being a tension breaker.”

His theory is in line with many studies that have linked laughter and having a sense of humor with better physical health. It’s not a stretch -- research suggests that humor and laughter do reduce the physical effects of stress, including a depressed immune system. (One recent Romanian study even found that people who had a sense of humor also took better care of their teeth -- flossing and using mouthwash every day -- than people who were more dour.)

How to Hone Your Sense of Humor
So, how do you develop a sense of humor if you weren’t born with one? The same way to get to Carnegie Hall: Practice, practice, practice. Read and listen to funny stuff; occasionally skip from the business page to the comics for some relief. Sign up for an email joke a day. Share them.

“I believe it is possible in some cases [to develop a sense of humor], because having been a comedy writer and writing teacher, I saw some people actually become funnier as they picked up the rhythms of the humor,” says Pritzker. “We find that humor does provide an advantage for aging and quality of life; the next research question will be to see if we can actually train people to develop a sharper sense of humor.”

Humor class? I can see it now -- the only classroom where getting an A isn’t as important as becoming class clown.

For more great health & lifestyle content, visit me here at Completely You
Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

Anger Management 101: Keep Your Cool This Election Season

By Denise Foley for Completely You

As we move deeper into election season, you may find yourself having a hard time keeping your cool … or just not stomping around in a rage and saying @#$&^!! a lot in conversation. You know, like Charlie Sheen (ironically, now starring in a TV show called “Anger Management”).

But now, new research has a way to help you manage your anger. Using a technique called “self-distancing,” you can act like you’re a fly on the wall of all your interactions. Rather than becoming enmeshed in every little drama, you can sit in the audience and watch. In the heat of the moment, you can just be chill.

At least, that’s the way it worked in the studies done by Dominik Mischkowski, M.Sc., a doctoral candidate at Ohio State University, and his colleagues. They deliberately raised the ire of college students whose “lab partner” -- actually one of the researchers -- berated them for not following directions. The students who applied the technique of distancing themselves from the situation and analyzing it intellectually were less aggressive and angry than those who took it to heart.

And yes, admits Mischkowski, the researchers took precautions in case “a 6-foot-tall football player with a nasty temper” decided to take a poke at them. “We always had two research assistants in the lab just in case,” he says, laughing.

How to Keep Your Distance
What people normally do in a heated situation is turn up the temperature. They focus on their angry or hurt feelings. But, says Mischkowski, “when you ruminate, you make things worse.”

By taking a step back -- essentially having what I’ve always called “an aerial view” of your life -- you can see what’s really going on without having your emotions clouding your perspective. “If what you’re thinking is, ‘This person is really annoying,’ you could become more angry,” says Mischkowski. “If you ask yourself, ‘Why do I feel this way,’ you may think, ‘Well, this person really annoys me, but it’s not really important,’ so you can reduce your negative emotions.” (Read more about the study here.)

Believe it or not, the technique is easy to learn. The college students in the study picked it up in minutes. The key thing is to be self-aware enough to practice it when the circumstances arise, says Mischhowski.

It’s just a few months until the presidential election. That should give you plenty of opportunity to practice.

For more great health & lifestyle content, visit me here at Completely You
Photo: Corbis Images
Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

What You Can Learn From Rosie O’Donnell

By Denise Foley for Completely You


By Denise Foley for Completely You

Rosie O’Donnell dodged a big one. On August 20, the often controversial comic announced on her popular blog that she’d had a heart attack and she was lucky to be alive.

She’s right.

It wasn’t just that her left anterior descending coronary artery was 99 percent blocked. (That’s the major artery of the heart nicknamed “the widowmaker” because when it goes, it takes you with it.) It was that she thought she was having a heart attack but didn’t call 911.

She had some of the classic symptoms women experience -- an ache in her chest, a clammy feeling, nausea, vomiting -- not the stereotypical Hollywood heart attack in which a man (always a man) clutches his chest then keels over. Rosie had time to Google her symptoms, suspect she might be having a heart attack … and go into denial.

In blank verse, this is how she described what happened:

“maybe this is a heart attack
i googled womens heart attack symptoms
i had many of them
but really? – i thought – naaaa”

She did take an aspirin. Good move. Aspirin is a blood thinner that can break up a clot that can travel to the heart, blocking blood flow. When blood doesn’t get to the heart muscle, neither does the oxygen it carries. Deprived of oxygen, the muscle can die.

But the American Heart Association and other heart organizations say that the first thing you should do if you think you’re having a heart attack is call emergency services. (Read more here). Rosie is far from alone in failing to heed that essential advice.

The average person waits four hours before picking up the phone, and only 50 percent of women say they’d call 911 if they thought they were having a heart attack.

This is such an important issue that the Office of Women’s Health launched a campaign aimed just at women called “Make the Call, Don’t Miss a Beat” to encourage them to know the symptoms and make the call that could save their lives.

The symptoms:
· Chest pain or discomfort
· Unusual upper body discomfort
· Shortness of breath
· Breaking out in a cold sweat
· Unusual or unexplained fatigue
· Light-headedness or sudden dizziness
· Nausea (feeling sick to the stomach)

As a heart attack survivor, Rosie O’Donnell, is at high risk of having a second. In fact, during the first six years after a heart attack, 35 percent of women have another, compared to only 18 percent of men. Next time -- and I hope there isn’t one -- she’ll know what to do first.

What should you do? If you don’t have a 911 service in your area, keep the number of your local ambulance service handy. Program it into your cell. Keep it right by your home phone.

Yes, most women are used to doing plenty on their own. But to survive a heart attack, you need to ask for help.

Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

A Vaccine Against Fat?

By Denise Foley for Completely You

Imagine there was a vaccine that would allow you to eat what you want and still lose weight.

Well, if you’re a chubby rodent, there is.

In fact, there are two vaccines in the works that could change the entire frontier of obesity, though both are still in the animal testing stage.

One, developed by scientists at Scripps Institute in California, works by zapping the appetite-boosting effects of the hormone ghrelin. It doesn’t exactly help you lose weight, but it significantly curbs weight gain. Rats who got the vaccine and ate whatever they wanted only gained 0.8 grams a day vs. rats on a placebo who gained 1.6 grams a day when allowed to pig out. Add a low-cal diet to the equation and voila -- easier weight loss.

The ‘Flab Jab’
The other vaccine, developed by Braasch BioTech in South Dakota, does help you lose body fat, even if you’re a regular at the all-you-can-eat buffet. This “flab jab,” as the British tabloids dubbed it, works in an entirely different way, by suppressing a hormone that slows down metabolism. Technically speaking, it inhibits the release of growth factor (aka human growth hormone or HGH) from the pituitary gland, allowing it to build to higher levels in the body -- the way it was when we were kids and could eat anything and not gain weight.

The anti-obesity vaccine actually takes aim at fat cells, explains Keith N. Haffer, PhD, president and chief science officer of Braasch. “These cells stop making new fat (lipogenesis) and excrete fat (lipolysis),” he says. “In other words, they’re not making any more fat and burning the fat they have.” (Read the full study here.)

Too Good to Be True?
While the mice in Haffer’s study were all fat-eating obese mice, those that got the vaccine were leaner and lighter than their compatriots, even though they were eating the same number of calories. But that doesn’t mean that, if this vaccine comes to the human market, you can have your cake and lose weight too.

It will work even better if you’re on a healthy diet and exercising, says Haffer.

Haffer created the vaccine originally for the meat and milk industries. Because it naturally increases levels of HGH, it would replace the synthetic version now given to cows and pigs to increase lean meat and milk production and promote faster growth in young animals. That’s a common and now increasingly controversial practice that’s been banned in some places, including the entire European Union, because of fears that it can disrupt normal hormonal functions in humans.

That hasn’t stopped bodybuilders and Internet entrepreneurs from promoting it as a way to build muscle and stop aging. Early research found that people who were injected with synthetic HGH lost weight, fat, and built more lean muscle. And there’s some evidence that HGH can turn back the hands of time in some ways. In fact, a study published on August 6 in Archives of Neurology found that older people with mild cognitive problems had improved memory, concentration and decision-making skills when they took a drug that boosted natural HGH in the body.

Unfortunately, synthetic HGH -- the kind that bodybuilders crave and can be found all over the Internet -- can have some serious side effects in humans, including joint and muscle pain and insulin resistance, a risk factor for diabetes.

When Will It Be Available?
So far, says Haffer, after testing in 20,000 animals, he hasn’t found any appreciable side effects. And, he says, it’s not going to be sold over the Internet.

The vaccine is short-acting -- after a couple of weeks, you’re back to your old sluggish metabolism -- so it needs to be administered again. By your doctor.

“You would definitely have to be monitored,” says Haffer, who is now seeking a U.S. Food and Drug Administration license to release the vaccine for use in animals.

Both this shot and the one being developed by the Scripps Institute are still years away from being approved for human use. But, says Haffer, “we hope this vaccine is seen as a potential tool on the horizon for treating obesity. What consumers want is an anti-obesity drug. And this is an option that the big pharmaceutical companies are not looking at.”

Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

The Health Hazards of Paper Receipts

By Denise Foley for Completely You

The next time a cashier asks you if you want your receipt in your hand or in the bag, opt for the bag. Better yet, if you don’t need the receipt for your records, opt out of it altogether. And pay by credit or debit card so you don’t have to handle money either.

Why the drastic measures? A new study, done in part by the New York State Department of Health, found that thermal receipts, paper currency and other paper products from the U.S. and three other countries contained high levels of bisphenol S (BPS) -- a substitute for the compound bisphenol A (BPA), which has been banned by the US Food and Drug Administration for use in baby bottles and sippy cups because it’s been linked to infertility, cancers and genetic mutations, mainly in animal studies. (Read more about BPA here.)

BPS: A Poor Substitute
Many manufacturers are switching over to BPS in such products as receipt paper to comply with restrictions and regulations around the world. But there’s still a big problem.  Researchers have discovered that like its cousin BPA, BPS is what’s called an endocrine disrupter. That means it mimics our own natural hormones, particularly estrogen, and like BPA, it’s absorbed directly through the skin.

Although BPS might be less potent than BPA, it also may be less biodegradable. While further study is needed, BPS is being introduced into the environment -- and into your hands and the recesses of your wallet -- every day.

In the current study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, all of the receipt paper, 87 percent of the paper currency and 52 percent of the recycled paper contained BPS. The study also suggests that people may be absorbing BPS in large doses through the skin. (Read more about the study here.)

So What Should You Do?
You can avoid the potential threat by asking for e-receipts and handling paper receipts and money as little as possible. Or “wash your hands soon after touching” the tainted paper, says researcher Kurunthachalam Kannan of the Wadsworth Center at the New York State Department of Health and the State University of New York at Albany.

There are other good reasons to avoid receipts. According to Market Watch in The Wall Street Journal, ATM receipts are one of the top sources of planetary litter. They estimate that if everyone in the U.S. would refuse one receipt, it would save a roll of paper more than 2 billion feet long. That would circle the equator 15 times. And that’s one paper trail we don’t want to follow.

For more great health & lifestyle content, visit me here at Completely You
Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

A New Way to Eat Less

By Denise Foley for Completely You


By Denise Foley for Completely You

Betcha can’t eat just one. Remember that Lay’s potato chip ad slogan from the ’60s?

Even if you don’t, research over the last five decades proves that it was absolutely accurate. Once you rip open the bag or pop the top of that can of potato chips, you probably can’t stop at one, let alone two, three, four, 10 … oops, did I just eat all that?

But a new study from Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab -- whose researchers came up with the idea that serving food on smaller plates and bowls helps you eat less -- has found that people who find one chip dyed red, which marked either one or two servings, eat about half of what others with no “edible stop signs” consume. (Read more about it here.)

Why We Need Stop Signs
"People generally eat what is put in front of them," explains Brian Wansink, who holds a doctorate in marketing, is the director of the lab and wrote the best-selling Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. Unless, that is, they see something -- a visual cue -- that tells them to stop. Like a red potato chip.

Wansink says that he and his colleagues settled on painting chips after discarding other ideas, like putting a little paper sleeve between the chips that would tell people how many calories they’d just eaten. “We were afraid people would think, ‘Is this edible?’ and try eating the paper,” he said -- joking, I think.

Some snack food manufacturers already have warmed to the idea of calorie-controlled packaging, producing 100-calorie snack packs of everything from cookies to chips. Trader Joe’s even sells almonds in individual packages containing exactly 22 nuts, the recommended serving.

Wansink thinks it’s a good idea. After all, he experimented with it back in the ’90s, then told food producers, “Hey, when you shrink the size of a portion down to 125 calories, people ate a whole lot less and were willing to pay a whole lot more.” In fact, he found that people were willing to shell out about 20 percent more for pre-portioned packaging. “It was a win-win,” says Wansink.

He got some pushback from manufacturers who thought they made more money when people ate more. But Wansink, who’s made a career of studying what makes people eat, told them what really happens: “You have people who eat your chips or cookies, then say, ‘That tasted really good, but I ate too much. I’m not going to do that again for a long time.’ ”

Taking Portion Control out of Our (Greedy) Hands
Today, he says, food producers are more likely to see the logic. In fact, several major ones are considering inserting such obvious “stop signs” into product packages.

As for consumers, about 70 percent of us respond to visual cues to stop eating. The other 30 percent “eat about the same amount, maybe even more,” says Wansink.

But he’s still a big proponent of calorie-controlled packaging. “The average snack is about 180 calories,” he points out. “If you eat one of those packs, you’re eating 80 fewer calories than you normally would. Even if you eat two, you’re only eating a little more, and it’s a whole lot less than if you picked up a candy bar, which has 260 to 280 calories.”

For more great health and lifestyle content, visit me here at Completely You
Photo: @iStockphoto.com/paci77
Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

Could Our Drinking Water Be Causing Autism?

By Denise Foley for Completely You

I used to joke that we could achieve world peace if we just added Prozac to the drinking water.

Turns out I was wrong. There’s already Prozac in the drinking water and there’s no world peace. The fact is, in many places, the water is a complex cocktail of drugs, including the antidepressant Prozac and other psychoactive medicines. Roughly one in 10 Americans takes a drug for depression; about 80 percent of chemicals in those drugs are flushed from the body in urine and back into the water system.

Now a controversial new study suggests that happy pills bring anything but world peace. Researchers at Idaho State University found that these drug residues may turn on genes linked to autism . (See the study here.)

The concentrations of pharmaceuticals in drinking water are thought to be much lower than prescription doses. But the study’s researchers hypothesize that even small doses of drugs that affect the nervous system could have unanticipated effects in a fetus. “In a developing brain, the dosage may be doing something very different than it does in an adult human brain,” says Michael Thomas, Ph.D ., associate professor of bioinformatics at Idaho State and lead author of the study.

Thomas and his colleagues mixed a cocktail of three commonly prescribed psychoactive drugs (the anti-epileptic carbamazepine, and the two common antidepressants fluoxetine, aka Prozac, and venlafaxine, aka Effexor) at a concentration that was five to 10 times higher than seen downstream from sewage plants, but lower than the prescribed dose. They exposed fathead minnows to the drugs for 18 days, then analyzed the genes that were turned on -- the scientific term is “expressed” -- in the fishes’ brains.

They expected that the drugs would activate genes linked to many neurological disorders. But it was only the 324 genes associated with autism, mainly those involved with early brain development, which were changed.

What should you do?
The Idaho study is in line with other research that has found that women who take antidepressants while pregnant are more likely to have children with autism. But, cautions Thomas, fish aren’t humans. They’re not even mammals. So there’s no reason to avoid tap water if you’re pregnant, explains Thomas.

 However, if you are concerned, it could pay to invest in a reverse osmosis water filter, which can remove these drug residues, as well as other contaminants, from your drinking water. You can read more about these filters here and check out the National Drinking Water Database to see how contaminated the water is in your town.

For more great health and lifestyle content, visit me here at Completely You

Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

How to Turn Your Dreams Into Reality

By Denise Foley for Completely You

Americans are so optimistic and rah-rah that it should come as no surprise that cheerleading was invented here.

We’re also the country of origin for The Power of Positive Thinking, the ‘50s book by minister Dr. Norman Vincent Peale; the positive psychology movement, founded by psychologist Martin Seligman; and Oprah Winfrey, an outspoken proponent of the philosophy that if you dream it, it will happen.
We tend not to tolerate pessimism. In our culture, being realistic is, well, a downer.

So it should come as no surprise that when we fantasize about what we want out of life -- a new job, a vacation in faraway places, even just to look like Sarah Jessica Parker in Manolo high heels -- we tend to forget that nothing’s perfect. In fact, say researchers at New York University, nurturing our idealized fantasies makes us forget that there could be some negatives embedded in our heart’s desires.

In other words, our pros-and-cons lists tend to be light on the cons. (You can read the full study here.)

“There’s been a lot written about the benefits of positive thinking,” says researcher Heather Kappes, who conducted the study in which she and her colleagues induced positive fantasies in a group of college student volunteers about wearing high heels, investing in the stock market and exotic vacations. But she says no one ever considers the negative aspects of such optimism.

The Negatives of Being Positive
The dark side of fantasizing is that it may take some of the steam out of action. “If you imagine everything positively and put yourself mentally where you want to be, you can trick your brain into thinking that you’re already there, so you don’t think about the work you have to put in and don’t muster up the energy to get there,” says Kappes.

You also may overlook some vital information that can help you make the right decision: That new job could have you in the office 24/7; high heels hurt and while Australian beaches are beautiful, they’re also home to the largest number of poisonous creatures in the world. Bummer.

But that doesn’t mean you should abandon fantasizing altogether.  “Daydreams give us a lot of joy and hope in life,” says Kappes. “Positive thinking can be useful when you’re talking yourself into setting a goal, such as deciding what to do in the future or to lose weight. If you didn’t think you could achieve those things, you’d have no reason to strive for anything.”

How Fantasies Can Lead to Fulfillment
Positive fantasies also keep your dreams alive until you can fulfill them. For instance, you may want to go to Fiji, but your salary will only cover a staycation. Or you’d like to work at Woods Holes Oceanographic Institute, but your only marine biology experience is with a tank full of guppies in your dorm room. A little more time at the job, a few salary hikes and a tad more education can get you within striking distance of your fantasy life.

At that point, if you’re still serious about making your dreams come true, take the blinders off, says Kappes. “If the con side of your pro-and-con list is so much shorter, it could be because you want it so much. Pause to ask yourself if there are downsides you haven’t considered.”

For more great health and lifestyle content, check out the rest of Completely You
Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

Could Exercise Be Bad for You?

By Denise Foley for Completely You

It’s the news that couch potatoes have been waiting for: A new study has found that in about 10 percent of people who exercise, at least one standard measure of heart health (levels of insulin, HDL cholesterol and triglycerides, as well as blood pressure) got worse. And in 7 percent who exercise, at least two of those measures got worse.

That’s right -- exercise is actually bad for them.

But don’t hang up your sneakers just yet. Dr. William Kraus, a cardiologist who is  the paper’s co-author and a member of the committee behind the government’s national exercise recommendation that Americans get 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week, points out that an equal number of people in the six exercises studies the researchers reviewed got better – much better.

In fact, “10 percent of people were super-responders, and did way better than predicted,” says Kraus, who is also a professor of medicine at Duke University. So the take-home message of the study isn’t that exercise is dangerous to your health. “If people use this as an excuse [not to exercise], they’re just looking for excuses,” says Kraus. And that’s a very bad idea for most of us. Read the full study here.

Should you exercise or not?
The truth is, it’s impossible to know in advance where you fall on the spectrum when it comes to benefiting from exercise, any more than you can predict whether a statin drug will lower your cholesterol.

Comparing exercise to a drug is a good analogy, says Kraus. “A certain percentage of people respond unfavorably to drugs. In some people, statins raise levels of HDL (good cholesterol). In a small percentage of people, they lower them. This is why we have a panoply of treatment options.”

But what this means, says Kraus, is that doctors aren’t going to be able to assure patients that if they exercise more they’re going to reduce their risks of heart disease -- at least, not until they see how an individual patient reacts. The link between physical activity and heart health comes mainly from studies of large groups of people. “What this paper had uncovered is the individual variation,” says Kraus.

In other words, you’re going to have to become a study of one. What if exercise doesn’t work for you? “If your HDL drops, maybe exercise isn’t the answer for you,” says Kraus. “For some people, changing their body composition [by losing weight] helps and for others, there are drugs, like niacin, which is very good for raising HDL.”

And who knows -- maybe you’ll be one of the super-responders whose HDL shoots into the stratosphere after a few weeks of daily walks. In any case, the numbers don’t lie: Only 10 percent of people can’t seem to exercise their way to better health. That means the other 90 percent have no excuse.

For more great health & lifestyle content, visit Completely You
Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

Fight Food Addiction

Ever wonder why, when it comes to your favorite foods, one bite always leads to another? Why single-serving packages don’t stop you from eating the equivalent of one entire sleeve of chocolate chip cookies or a whole bag of potato chips?

Come on, you know why. Because it tastes so good.

But science has come up with yet another reason. When you eat because it’s pleasurable and not because you’re hungry, your body activates chemicals that are linked to your brain’s reward system. Yes, that’s right -- just like drugs. Even worse, when your reward system is activated, it overrides the chemical signals that tell your body that you’re full. (Like we need that.)

Italian researchers found this out when they tested eight adults who had already eaten and were full. They fed each of them their own personal favorite foods and then fed them a less palatable food of equal calories. Then, they measured levels of 2-AG, a chemical released by the brain’s reward system, and the appetite-boosting hormone ghrelin. Both were elevated when the study participants were chowing down on their favorite foods, but not when they were eating the other meal. (Read a synopsis of the study here.)

That led scientists to raise the possibility that food can be an addiction in the same way drugs are. In fact, there are ongoing studies looking at whether naltrexone, the medication that diminishes the appetite for certain recreational drugs, may have the same effect on the appetite for food. (Learn more about how your brain chemistry can make you binge here.)

Until those studies are completed, we may be left with 100-year-old advice from humorist Mark Twain, who wrote, “The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.”

It’s not pleasant, but there you have it.

For more great health and lifestyle content, check out the rest of Completely You
Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

Stop the Ringing in Your Ears

By Denise Foley for Completely You

I blame the Grateful Dead. Jerry Garcia may be gone, but the buzzing in my ears that first materialized during a Dead concert in the 1980s lives on. Well, some of the time.

I have tinnitus, which is a ringing, hissing, roaring, clicking, whistling and chirping in the ears that can range from subtle to mind-blowing. It’s estimated that 250 million people worldwide hear a sound no one else hears. That’s because it comes from somewhere in their heads -- not the environment around them.

It’s not a disease, says the American Tinnitus Association, but a signal that something is wrong inside you. No one really knows exactly where. But research does suggest why tinnitus can be so emotionally upsetting: It involves the limbic system -- your brain’s emotional center, which interprets any constant loud noise as something dangerous.

Although the damage to my ears may have started at the Dead concert, my tinnitus was mild until I had a bout of Lyme disease a few years ago. Then, the sound in my left ear became disconcertingly louder, possibly as the result of the huge dose of antibiotics I was taking. (A very long list of drugs can cause tinnitus.) It also became a source of anxiety. This kind of constant buzzing can keep you up, make you avoid quiet rooms (ambient noise masks it), and make you about as able to concentrate as a mom with a colicky infant. It can drive you crazy. Some people commit suicide because of it.

A New Way to Silence the Noise
If you have tinnitus, your mind may not only be telling you that you’re in danger, but also mobilizing its resources -- raising your heart rate and your blood pressure, flooding your body with energizing stress hormones, tensing your muscles to fight or flee. That’s the traditional stress response to, say, coming home early to find a burglar ransacking your bedroom or being in the pedestrian crosswalk when a truck careens around the corner at breakneck speed. When those things happen, that reaction is a good thing: It gives you the oomph to get out -- or get out of the way. Phantom noise in your head? Not so much.

And that’s why a new study from the Netherlands gave me new hope. Scientists at Maastricht University introduced almost 500 tinnitus patients to cognitive therapy. Cognitive therapy is based on one fundamental principle: External things, such as people and situations, don’t cause our feelings and behaviors; it’s how we think about those external things that can make us happy or miserable.
With cognitive therapy, you learn to replace old thoughts (“Buzzing noise -- scary!”) with new thoughts (“It’s just a noise”), which takes fear and anxiety out of the equation. If the noise stops bothering you, sometimes -- as I’ve learned -- you just don’t notice it anymore because you no longer pay attention to it. Then your stress response shuts down, and all is well.

The Dutch researchers combined this valuable psychological tool with the other tricks in the tinnitus playbook, including something called tinnitus retraining therapy (TRT), which I used when tinnitus was the soundtrack of my life. TRT uses counseling and an external masking sound that induces habituation, desensitizing you to the noise in your head.

The Dutch researchers went innovative with TRT too, using the actual noise of the tinnitus as the external masking sound to desensitize sufferers. Says researcher Rilana Cima of Maastricht University: “The more people expose themselves instead of avoiding the tinnitus sound, the faster they get used to it.”

They also introduced the tinnitus sufferers to relaxation techniques and some mindfulness skills -- that is, learning to be in the moment, every moment, in a relaxed state, so that you’re no longer anxious about a noisy future.

I suspect, because of my own experience, that this new tinnitus treatment will be highly effective. I finally found a solution when I took a six-week class in mindfulness meditation as part my research for a magazine article I was writing. Meditation, which can be rough for many tinnitus sufferers because the silence makes the sound seem louder, helped me turn off the fear, and I learned to ignore the ringing. When people ask me how I cope with tinnitus, I always tell them what I learned: “When you stop listening, you stop hearing.”

For more great health and lifestyle content, visit Completely You
Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

Misplaced Something? Talk to Yourself to Find It!

By Denise Foley for Completely You

I’m a Baby Boomer. That means that I can pretty much remember the theme song to every ’60s TV show and have no trouble identifying photos of skate keys, wringer washers and that little thing you put in 45s to play them on your turntable that are popping up on Facebook daily. But I lose my keys at least twice a day, forget where I stashed the peanut butter, and can’t find my glasses (even when I’m wearing them on top of my head).

I need help. You probably do too. Very little is more aggravating than not being able to find something you want. Now, new research suggests there might be something that will make it a little easier: Act crazy and talk to yourself out loud.

In a recent study, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Pennsylvania found that people who repeated the name of the object they were trying to find located it faster than those who just searched quietly. (Read more about the study here.)

They chose to test that particular technique because “people really do sometimes talk to themselves when searching for something,” says researcher Daniel Swingley, associate professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. “Is this just to help them remember what they’re doing? Or might it actually help?”

It helps. Why? Explains Swingley: “It brings more mental resources to bear, focusing them on the object they’re searching for.” In other words, when searching for my glasses, I’ll be more focused on finding my glasses if I say the word “glasses” over and over until I find them. And probably be less distracted by other things while looking for them.

For more great health and lifestyle content, visit me here at Completely You

Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

Have You Had Your Shingles Shot?

By Denise Foley for Completely You

A few months ago, retired Pennsylvania journalist and radio talk show host Pat Wandling woke up with a strange pain in her back. “My skin hurt,” recalls Wandling. She didn’t think much of it until the next day when, while watching television, she leaned back in her chair and her back started to burn. Eventually, the pain spread to her waist, where a rash appeared.

She called her doctor. “I thought it was shingles,” says Wandling. And it was. It was a mild case of this often excruciatingly painful disease, caused when the dormant chickenpox virus -- varicella zoster -- reactivates and begins reproducing. The pain is the result of damage to the nerve endings where the virus lives -- usually quietly -- after a case of chickenpox.

Older people like Wandling, who jokingly describes herself as “fearfully close to 80,” are more susceptible to the disease because immunity to shingles declines with age. In fact, about 1 million people get shingles every year; the average lifetime risk is about 30 percent. And it occurs among the young too, sometimes more painfully.

So Why Don’t People Get the Shot?
Wandling says she knew that a shingles vaccine was available, but it didn’t occur to her to get it. “I didn’t think it was necessary, like the flu or pneumonia shot is. I’ve had those. I never thought I would get shingles. I thought it was something old people get,” says Wandling, laughing.

She’s not alone. The shingles vaccine has been around since 2006, but according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), less than 15 percent of those who should get the shot -- people 50 and older -- actually do. Read more about the vaccine from the CDC here.

Why? The vaccine is fairly effective, reducing shingles by roughly 51 percent in people 60 and older, though that drops off to only about 38 percent after 70. It also has few side effects. Most important, it cuts the risk of postherpetic neuralgia (PHN) -- a painful and literal afterburn that can go on for months or even years after the blistering shingles rash has disappeared -- by as much as 67 percent. PHN is reason enough to get vaccinated: It can be so severe that it interferes with your appetite and sleep and is most common in those over 60.

One reason the vaccine, called Zostavax®, hasn’t been in demand is that it hasn’t been available. Delays and back orders have left it in short supply. In addition, it’s expensive -- $160 to $195 a dose. Not covered by Medicare Part B, it is included in Part D, but there is usually a co-pay, which can be an expensive burden for those on a fixed income. Partly because of the shortages, doctors haven’t been pushing it either, says the CDC.

But having shingles once, or knowing someone who’s suffered from it, might be motivation enough to dig deep and pay whatever it takes to avoid it. After her brief bout with it, Wandling says she’ll be getting the vaccine to prevent a worse experience. “I was very lucky this time, but it’s a brutal disease.”

For more great health & lifestyle content, visit me here at Completely You

Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

The Surprising Health Benefits of Texting

By Denise Foley for Completely You

Did you know that adults send and receive an average of 41.5 text messages a day? That’s a lot of sentence fragments and Internet slang. LOL.

But if those messages have smiley faces, or Web shorthand like HAYT (i.e., “How are you today?”) or <3U (i.e., “I love you”), it could be good for your mental health.

That’s the counterintuitive finding of a group of University of California Berkeley researchers who learned that people who felt depressed, isolated or alone felt more connected and cared for when they received text messages asking them about their moods and the positive things they experienced and reminding them to take their medications. “When I was in a difficult situation and I received a message, I felt much better. I felt cared for and supported. My mood even improved,” wrote one participant in the study, which looked at a group of depressed patients in a cognitive behavior therapy group at San Francisco Hospital.

So why do I say this is counterintuitive? Other than the fact that I’m a texting curmudgeon -- I do it, but I hate it -- other studies have focused more on what’s bad about the practice. Teens who do it to excess are more likely to have sleep problems, feel depressed, do poorly in school, do drugs, become binge drinkers, fight and have sex. States are cracking down on texting while driving because it’s a potentially life-threatening distraction. And we’ve all seen the YouTube video of the busily texting woman plunging into the Mall fountain. Ouch.

This study, published in the journal Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, proves that modern technology can not only be used for good, it should be. Loneliness -- scientists call it social isolation -- can be dangerous to your health.

University of Chicago social scientist John Cacioppo studies the biological effects of loneliness. He’s found that it can lead to atherosclerosis -- that’s hardening of the arteries -- which itself spawns high blood pressure and problems with memory and learning. Lonely people’s immune systems are also less effective at fighting off viruses and other invaders.

Feeling lonely can even be deadly. In Cacioppo’s latest study, published in January, older people (50 and older) who felt lonely were more likely to die over a six-year period than those who didn’t feel lonely.

It takes a second to type “R U OK?” with your thumbs. Who would have thought it might save somebody’s life?

Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

Could Bacteria Be Making You Fat?

By Denise Foley for Completely You

It may be the best excuse for being fat since the invention of “I have a glandular problem.” Seems like we might now be able blame bacteria for our excess pounds.

Current research is exploring the guts of obese people and lab animals for evidence that bugs make us overweight. Specifically, gut bacteria: intestinal microbes that store the energy from the food we eat as a spare tire or muffin top.

If you’re thinking “Ew, bacteria in my intestines?” and have images of the dinner table scene from Alien quivering in your head, relax. We all have bacteria colonies living below our equator -- 100,000 billion of them, in fact. The truth is that bacterial cells in the human body outnumber our own cells 10 to 1. That begs the question: Which is the parasite and which the host?

The More of This Bacteria You Have, the More Calories You Absorb
Fortunately, most of our gut bacteria are beneficial to our digestive and immune system. Still, a number of studies have found that obese people are more likely to have a lopsided ratio of bacteriodes to other gut microbes.

Bacteriodes are known for their efficiency in breaking down carbohydrates and slipping the calories to us, potentially promoting weight gain. Other microbes also help our cells absorb sugar, which may also pile on the pounds. By one estimate, gut bacteria may produce 100-200 more calories a day. Conservatively, that could mean a weight gain of 10 pounds a year.

And Bacteria Can Boost Your Appetite Too!
Evidence that gut bacteria are involved in obesity is so strong that the leader of one research team in Germany told the journal Nature that he could diagnose obesity with roughly 85 percent accuracy just from knowing the amount of certain intestinal bacterial species a person harbors.

Emory University scientists proved the bacteria-obesity link: They found that certain kinds of bacteria might encourage overeating in mice that have a genetic disorder affecting the immune system and that also have metabolic syndrome -- a dangerous constellation of symptoms including high cholesterol, high blood pressure and insulin resistance (prediabetes). When normal mice got a transplant of gut bacteria from the genetically damaged mice, they also overate, got fat and developed metabolic syndrome. (Read more about the study here.) The Emory researchers are now looking at humans with metabolic syndrome to determine if they have the same gut environments as the obese mice.

Can You Give Your Fat-boosting Bacteria the Boot?
Scientists are still trying to figure that out. And, unfortunately, they probably won’t for a while. As Coyle told me, it’s unclear whether losing weight depends on changing your bacterial balance -- or if your bacterial balance changes if you change your diet. And there’s no evidence, he says, that giving people probiotics (healthy bacteria) helps either.

But diet does seem to make a difference. When Washington University School of Medicine researchers transplanted gut bacteria from fat mice on high-fat diets to lean mice, the lean mice became fat too. So the best advice is to avoid a high-fat diet. We should all be doing that anyway.

Perhaps one day doctors will be able to replace an overweight person’s gut bacteria with that of a thin one and solve the obesity problem. But for now, says Coyle, “all this is in its infancy, with more to come.”

Want more healthy diet tips and research? Check out my recent article, “Fish Oil: The One Benefit You Haven’t Considered”


Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

Broken Heart Syndrome: A Real and Dangerous Condition

By Denise Foley for Completely You

Within days after my grandfather died suddenly of a heart attack at 55, my grieving grandmother suffered a heart attack herself. At the time, doctors told her children she had about six months to live. She was 90 when she died of a series of small strokes. She had never had another heart attack.
That was the start of a general familial disdain for doctors and their opinions, but recent studies suggest that we may have been wrong about the doom-saying physicians who treated my grandmother back in the 1950s. What they diagnosed as a heart attack may, in fact, have been something now known as broken heart syndrome.

The name sounds cute, but it’s actually descriptive. It reflects something doctors have observed over time: People who’ve lost loved ones can develop a mysterious condition that mimics a heart attack. Acute emotion or trauma can trigger the release of a surge of the stress hormone adrenaline that simply stuns the heart. The left ventricle, which is the heart’s main pumping chamber, is unable to contract and pump blood. It is, quite literally, a blow to the heart.

It is a heart attack -- just not one caused by blocked arteries or a blood clot. It’s serious: It can kill you if you don’t get help in time. But it doesn’t leave lasting heart damage, and it may never happen again.
While relatively rare -- it happens in an estimated 1-2 percent of people diagnosed with a heart attack -- broken heart syndrome (aka stress cardiomyopathy) is about nine times more common among women than men. About 6 percent of women who are diagnosed with a heart attack actually have broken heart syndrome. And a recent Penn State University Hershey Medical Center study suggests a reason why: They found that emotional stress hurts women’s hearts more than men’s.


They tested their hypothesis using math questions, the usual stress provoker in stress-related studies. When women were stressed by mental arithmetic -- and badgering by the researchers -- a Doppler ultrasound test that measured blood flow through their hearts found they were more likely to have less blood flow to their hearts than men.

I talked to Dr. Chester Ray, lead study author and professor of medicine and cellular and molecular biology at Penn State, who explained that less blood flow meant less oxygen in the heart. And less oxygen means, well, we don’t do well without it. But we especially don’t do well without it when we’re under stress.

“When your heart beats faster or your blood pressure is up, as it is when you’re mentally stressed, your heart has to work harder and requires even more oxygen,” he explained. “The only way to get more oxygen is to increase blood flow to the heart.”

When the women in his study were grappling with subtracting the number seven from a series of random numbers -- just thinking about it makes my palms start sweating -- their coronary arteries were, to borrow an old Zen saying, pushing the river instead of going with the flow. They were restricting rather than opening up, stifling blood flow instead of increasing it.

“That response makes the heart more susceptible to problems, especially if the stress is chronic,” says Ray.

The take-home message here? There’s no way to avoid stress; it’s as much as part of daily life as breathing. But it may help you to take a few deep breaths a few times a day. Studies have found that deep breathing -- from measured yogic breathing to a deep sigh -- can help you recover quicker from mental stress. Or work 10 minutes twice a day into your schedule for meditation; no mantra required -- just a mental break. Try it the next time you’re balancing your checkbook.

Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

Why Deadly Measles Is on the Rise

By Denise Foley for Completely You

Measles was officially eradicated in the U.S. in 2000.

But someone forgot to tell the rubeola virus, the highly contagious organism that causes this once common -- and sometimes deadly -- childhood disease. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently announced that measles cases were on the rise in the U.S., with more infections in the last year than the previous 15.

Many doctors and parents of young children today have never seen a case of the measles, let alone an outbreak.

But I have seen a measles outbreak, and I do know how serious it is. I got my immunization the hard way: I had the measles. At the age of 8, I spent 10 days in a dark room, delirious with fever, my parents taking turns placing cold washcloths on my head. I recovered, but other children weren’t so lucky. They died -- often from pneumonia -- or suffered brain damage as the result of encephalitis, a brain inflammation. About 1 in 10 cases results in ear infections that can cause permanent hearing loss.
Even worse, a rare, frightening complication can occur up to 27 years after a measles infection, particularly in those who contract the disease as babies or young children. Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) is a fatal, progressive disease that is characterized by mental deterioration and neuromuscular disorders that can result in blindness, an inability to walk and a persistent vegetative state. (Read more about it here.)

What You Don’t Know About Measles -- But Should
Most cases of measles in the U.S. are imported. Measles epidemics are still rampant in Europe and other parts of the world where immunizations aren’t mandatory as they are, with some exceptions, in the US. For example, a measles epidemic has been raging in France since 2008. More than 22,000 cases have been reported since it began, more than 700 people developed complications and six have died. About 90 percent of the U.S. measles cases originated overseas.

Aiding and abetting this dangerous rise: a susceptible population. “A lot of it is because of that stupid 1998 paper in The Lancet connecting vaccinations with autism,” says Clyde Martin, an expert in health statistics at Texas Tech University. “It has been completely discredited -- the data was falsified -- but people still believe it.”

That false study is a major reason why some parents won’t have their children immunized. This alarms Martin because of what his numbers are telling him. Martin took a close look at a 1987 measles epidemic in Lubbock, Texas, which was mainly centered at Texas Tech. He examined the medical records of every single student who was affected, and he pored over their vaccination records too.
Many students were vaccinated once the epidemic broke out. But it took a whopping 98 percent of them being immunized to finally stop the epidemic, which drives home the importance of making sure every child gets the vaccine. It only takes a 30-second exposure at 10 feet to contract the virus.

With some parents and doctors being lax about immunization, says Martin, “it’s the making of a disaster.”

Eliminating “Personal Belief” Vaccine Exemptions
An easy solution: Eliminate the so-called “personal belief” exemptions to the measles vaccine. The most measles cases have occurred in states with these exemptions that allow parents to opt out of mandatory immunizations because of secular, rather than religious, beliefs. Many of them are based on that one discredited study published in 1998 linking vaccines to autism.

As Martin’s study indicates, you need a high percentage of people vaccinated to get what’s called “herd immunity” to prevent the spread of the disease. An unvaccinated child who contracts the measles has a five-day symptomless period in which he can infect others, including babies that are too young to be vaccinated who are at high risk of SSPE. (See what can happen to an exposed child here.)

Martin thinks some of those exemptions need to be eliminated, particularly those that are granted because parents believe something to be a scientific fact that isn’t. (Read more about the debate here.)

“We’ve got to be stricter on the giving of exemptions,” says Martin. “For religious reasons? I have no real problem with that because there aren’t that many. Some people can’t take the vaccine because they’re allergic to eggs, which are used to manufacture it. But ‘Because I don’t want my kid to have autism’ is not acceptable.”

Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

Why You Shouldn’t Work at Night

By Denise Foley for Completely You

An estimated 27 million people in the U.S. are going to work when the rest of us are going to bed. That’s about one-quarter of the U.S. workforce. But working the graveyard shift appears to edge you closer to the graveyard.

A just-published Harvard study found that irregular sleep patterns disrupt your body clock, which sets the stage for diabetes. Add this to studies that found that women working the night shift are at higher risk for breast cancer, and you have a clearer picture of the dark side of working at night.

The Link Between Lack of Sleep and Diabetes
At Harvard, neuroscientist Orfeu Buxton and his colleagues had 21 healthy volunteers spend almost six weeks living in a lab where their diet, activity, sleep and light conditions were strictly controlled. For three of the weeks, they were only allowed about 5.5 hours of sleep every 24 hours at varying times of the day or night to mimic jet lag, a rotating work shift or a simple 24/7 lifestyle.

What happened sure looked like diabetes. “After three weeks of circadian disruptions and sleep restriction, the subjects’ blood sugar went much higher and stayed higher for three to four hours after they ate a standardized meal,” says Buxton. In three volunteers, blood sugar reached levels so high they could have been diagnosed with prediabetes.

In addition, the participants’ metabolic rate -- how efficiently they burned calories for energy -- slowed by 8 percent. Their meals were controlled so they didn’t gain weight, but a metabolic slowdown like that would, over a year, produce a 10-12 pound weight gain, says Buxton.

Insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas, helps the body scoop up glucose (sugar) from the blood and use it as fuel. But when you work the night shift, it can disrupt this process, causing blood sugar increases that could eventually lead to diabetes. The good news is that the volunteers’ bodies returned to normal after they got enough sleep at the right time for nine nights.


But that’s not good news for people who work rotating shifts who never get enough sleep at the right times. There’s no way to know when the damage from a perpetually disrupted body clock becomes permanent, says Buxton.

What to Do If You Work the Night Shift
Here are a few ways to keep your blood sugar -- not to mention your energy and your digestive tract -- healthy:

1. Be extra-careful to eat healthfully. “People who are sleep-restricted prefer more food and inappropriate food, like high-carb potatoey-ricey things, sugar and fat, which are more likely to go directly to fat,” says Buxton. So be sure to do the following to ensure you’re not one of them:

• Maintain a normal eating pattern (three meals a day and two snacks, with breakfast when you wake up, no matter what time it is).
• Stick to foods that are less likely to raise your blood sugar. Protein (e.g., nuts, poultry, and low-fat dairy) gives you a steady stream of energy, while chocolate doughnuts from the vending machine give you a quick burst followed by a rapid letdown.
• Avoid excessive caffeine. Since caffeine can stay in your system for up to seven hours, have it once at the beginning of your shift but not close to quitting (and sleep) time. Stick to water the rest of the time.
• Have a carb snack, like whole-grain bread and jam, before your head hits the pillow. Carbs will help you sleep.

2. Fit in some exercise. Night shift workers are also likely to be too tired to exercise once they leave work. Plus, they have a tough time sleeping when it’s light out and the rest of the world is awake. If you can’t exercise after work, says Buxton, try doing it during breaks while you’re on the job, when you have the energy.

3. Make it easier to sleep. When you go home at night -- err, in the morning -- make sure you have room-darkening shades and a white noise machine so it seems like night in your bedroom. Your body clock is regulated by light exposure. You need total darkness to produce the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin.

Do you have trouble sleeping? Find out how to sleep better tonight!
Photo: @iStockphoto.com/ContentWorks
Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

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Why Sad Movies Make You Happy

By Denise Foley for Completely You

In 1978, I went to see the movie The Deer Hunter with a group of friends. Around the midpoint of the film, which explored the devastating effects of the Vietnam War on a group of friends from a small industrial town in western Pennsylvania, I started to cry. By the end of the film, I was sobbing. And to my friends’ embarrassment, I continued to sob even as we got into our car in the crowded parking garage. I was a mess.

Fast-forward to a year later. I am in my little apartment, doing my Saturday morning cleaning, with the TV humming in the next room. I suddenly become aware of music playing, and although I don’t recognize the tune, I find my eyes filling with tears. I go to the living room to see what it is. It’s a promo. For The Deer Hunter.


Fast-forward to today. In a study published in the journal Communication Research, Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, a communications professor at Ohio State University, and colleagues found that people love sad movies because of their unlikely benefit: They can make you happy.

Knobloch-Westerwick’s study involved 361 college students who watched an abridged version of the 2007 film Atonement, a film about two separated lovers who become the casualties of war. (It was drawn from the book by Ian McEwan, one of my favorite authors, though I found its overarching theme -- that one can make a mistake that reverberates over a lifetime -- far sadder than the story of doomed love.)

Before, during and after watching the film, the viewers were asked about their lives and feelings. The researcher wanted to determine how happy they were before plunging them into the big-screen chaos and tragedy, then to track their fluctuating emotions as the story unfolded and ended.

At the film’s conclusion, Knoblock-Westerwick and her colleagues asked the students how much they enjoyed the movie and to write about how it led them to reflect on themselves, their lives, their relationships, and life in general.

And here’s where the unexpected happened. The viewers who felt saddest while watching the movie were more likely to write about people with whom they had close relationships. That in turn increased their happiness afterward. Sad movies may make you cry, as Sue Thompson sang in her 1961 bobby-soxer hit, but they also seem to remind you that your life isn’t so bad.

“People seem to use tragedies as a way to reflect on the important relationships in their own life -- to count their blessings,” said Knoblock-Westerwick in an interview. “That can help explain why tragedies are so popular with audiences, despite the sadness they induce.”

There might even be a chemical reason for the paradox. Across the OSU campus from Knobloch-Westerwick is David Huron, professor of arts and humanities at the School of Music and the Center for Cognitive Science. In his studies exploring the emotional effects of sad music, he found that that when people are feeling sad, their bodies produce a hormone called prolactin. Yes, the same hormone linked to breastfeeding in women. He knows because he took people’s blood while they were listening to sad and happy music and analyzed it. (Read a synopsis of the study here.)

Listening to sad music actually thrusts you into a “sham” state of sadness so that your body produces prolactin, nature’s version of a warm hug. Huron believes that prolactin has a consoling effect that is meant to be protective.

So there you have it. In our “down the rabbit hole” world, sad is happy. I still can’t watch The Deer Hunter or Old Yeller, though. I’ve never seen Bambi and don’t plan to relive the Titanic sinking in 3D. But I do listen to sad music when I’m sad and I have to admit, it does make me feel better. In fact, I’m even a bit concerned that Adele has announced she’s no longer writing sad songs. What will I do now when I have the blues?

What’s your favorite sad movie or song? Tell me about it!


For more great health and lifestyle content, visit me here at Completely You

Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

How Global Warming Is Giving Us Breathing Problems

By Denise Foley for Completely You

You may have enjoyed this year’s balmy winter, but it’s a cause for alarm among scientists. All across the U.S., temperatures broke all records. March 2012 was the warmest March ever recorded -- and records go back to 1895. The first quarter of the year was also the warmest, and the period between April 2011 and March 2012 was the warmest 12-month stretch on record. Across the country, there were 7,775 new daytime highs.

Temperatures in the U.S. have already risen more than 2 F in the last century, and like the price of gas, they’re still going up. In fact, they’re expected to climb another 1-2 F by 2020.

Still think climate change is a myth?

What does this warming spell bode for your health? Get ready for some bad air days, the experts warn. By 2020, said the Union of Concerned Scientists in a report released last year, rising temperatures will cause higher ground-level concentrations of ozone that could lead to 2.8 million more occurrences of acute respiratory symptoms, such as asthma attacks, shortness of breath, coughing, wheezing and chest tightness. And that’s not just in people with respiratory problems.

The Dangers of Ozone
Ozone is a colorless gas found in the air we breathe. Where it occurs determines whether it’s good or bad. It’s good when it’s in the Earth’s upper atmosphere (anywhere from 10-30 miles from the surface), shielding us from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays. But when it’s near the ground, it’s a result of air pollutants from vehicle exhaust and power/chemical plants interacting in the presence (and heat) of sunlight.

This earthbound type of ozone -- the main component of smog -- can irritate your respiratory system, make it difficult to breathe deeply (particularly when you exercise), inflame and damage the cells that line your lungs, aggravate asthma and other lung diseases (e.g., emphysema and chronic bronchitis), and make you more susceptible to respiratory infections. You can even experience severe chest pain.
How common is it? Unfortunately, these days, it’s as much a part of summer as the ice-cream man.

How to Protect Yourself
Children, the elderly, and people with chronic lung conditions are most susceptible to health problems from ozone exposure, though even healthy people can experience upper respiratory problems and even permanent lung damage as a result of breathing in ozone.

“Some people are sensitive to ozone gas, and you’ll probably know it if you are,” says Dr. Nick Hanania, pulmonary physician and director of the Adult Asthma Clinic and Pulmonary Diagnostic Laboratory at Ben Taub General Hospital. “Once you inhale it, you get upper airway irritation, with sneezing, itchy nose, and coughing. Ozone can also prime the airways for allergies, irritating the airways so they’re more susceptible to allergens.”

Here are a few tips from Dr. Hanania and other experts to protect yourself and your family:

• Pay close attention to ozone alerts if you have chronic respiratory problems, small children or older relatives, or if you are older yourself. Now, along with temperatures and precipitation, your local meteorologist includes ozone levels as well as pollen and other pollutants in the forecast as part of the Air Quality Index (AQI). If the ozone is high, limit the time you and your family spend outdoors. Stay inside with the air-conditioning. If you don’t have AC, go somewhere that does. Window fans can keep you cool, but they can also draw ozone inside.
• If you need to be outside -- for yard work, for example, or to exercise -- do it early in the morning or in the evening when ozone levels are usually lower. If you usually jog or play tennis, pick a less intense activity during high-ozone periods. Walk rather than run, for instance. “When you’re exercising, you’re inhaling more air per minute than if you’re just sitting,” says Hanania.
• Forget masks. Ozone is a gas, and it will pass through even the finest filter.
• Get your own personal ozone alert. EnviroFlash is a free service that alerts you when ozone is approaching dangerous levels. Sign up here.

Do you live in a high-ozone area? Talk about it below or tweet me @Completely_You

Photo: @iStockphoto.com/LPETTET
Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

Would You Take the New Diet Drug?

By Denise Foley for Completely You


A few weeks ago, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel gave the nod to what may be the first new weight loss drug in 13 years. This is despite the fact that Qnexa, manufactured by Vivus Inc., had been rejected by health experts in 2010 because of its potential side effects, including heart attacks and serious heart rhythm abnormalities. The FDA will be deciding on Qnexa’s fate sometime this month.

Like many new drugs, this one isn’t really new. It combines two existing drugs -- the appetite suppressant phentermine and the anti-seizure/migraine medication topiramate (Topamax).

If phentermine sounds ominously familiar, it’s because it was one-half of the drug called fen-phen, which was yanked off the market after it was linked to pulmonary hypertension -- high blood pressure in the lungs -- and heart valve disease. It may have led to as many as 49 deaths and more than 100 adverse reactions, many of them grave, though they were traced to the “fen” (i.e., fenfluramine) part of the combo.

A year ago, studies funded by Vivus found that obese people who took Qnexa lost an average of 22 pounds in a year, which was accompanied by lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Data suggests that the drug is best at helping people lose about 10 percent of their weight. That may not help you get into a size 6. But many experts say that 10 percent is the threshold where the health benefits of losing weight, particularly a lower risk of heart disease, start to kick in.

But do we really need a new anti-obesity drug? Don’t we have, well, diet and exercise? That’s a question posed, and answered, by Dr. Mark Hyman -- physician and author of The Blood Sugar Solution -- in a recent blog. “There is a solution to our obesity epidemic. But it’s not at the bottom of a pill bottle. It’s at the end of our forks,” he wrote. “Diet is simply more effective than any medication and works better, faster and cheaper not just as prevention, but also as treatment for what ails us in the 21st century.”

So What’s the Answer?
While Hyman makes it sound easy, he needs to talk to the millions of people who lose weight every year and gain it back, along with some bonus pounds. A 2007 UCLA review of studies on dieters found that one-third to two-thirds regain more weight than they lost. Essentially, the researchers said, the biggest risk factor for weight gain is going on a diet. Read more about the UCLA findings.

Dieting should be the answer, but it may not be the entire solution, says Dr. Melina Jampolis, a physician nutrition specialist in San Francisco and author of several books on weight loss, including The Calendar Diet: A Month By Month Guide to Losing Weight While Living Your Life , which she designed for her patients.

Jampolis’ stock-in-trade is nutrition and dieting, yet she says she welcomes a new weight loss drug. “There are simply too many obesity-promoting factors in our environment for many people to overcome. I believe a medication that could help them reduce 10 percent of their body weight when combined with diet and exercise would be very beneficial.”

So beneficial, says Jampolis, that the pros outweigh the cons for many people. “I’m much more concerned about the side effects of obesity, including heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, cancer and fatty liver. The only concern is carefully screening women who are or may become pregnant -- the drug may cause birth defects -- and certainly monitoring those with heart disease closely.”

What do you think? Would you take a new weight loss drug that could cause serious side effects to eliminate the serious side effects of your weight? (And I’m not just talking muffin top and thunder thighs.)

Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.