Having More Sex Makes Men More Spiritual, Closer To God

An interesting research has revealed that having more sex increases men's spirituality and belief in God. Apparently, the release of the "love hormone", oxytocin not only promotes social closeness and helps in childbirth, but also triggers increased feelings of religiousness.
 

Reports say that according to the new study by researchers at Duke University, sex can truly be a religious experience, which draws men much closer to God, all thanks to the infamous "love hormone", oxytocin which is usually released during sexual intercourse, childbirth, breastfeeding and increases love and affection.
However, the new study revealed that boosted levels of oxytocin in middle-aged men increased self-reported spirituality and also that this significant effect lasted about a week. For the study, a control group, who received a placebo, did not report an increase in their levels of spirituality. But, those who received the hormone reported more positive emotions during meditation, reported Independent.co.uk.
Patty Van Cappallen, a social psychologist and the lead author of the study said: "Spirituality and meditation have each been linked to health and well-being in previous research. "We were interested in understanding biological factors that may enhance those spiritual experiences," she told the university's newspaper Duke Today. "Oxytocin appears to be part of the way our bodies support spiritual beliefs."

Researchers also said that not all of them had previously reported that faith was a part of their lives. They also said that they expressed a feeling of oneness with other people and living things. Daily Mail reported that oxytocin apparently starts positive emotions like as awe, gratitude, hope, inspiration, love, and serenity. However, it was also found that not everyone was affected equally. Researchers said that those with a certain gene called CD38 which regulated its released in the brain had a much more heightened response.

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Meanwhile, Dr. Van Cappellen also said that an additional study needs to be done with women as the chemical operates differently according to different genders. She added saying: "Spirituality is complex and affected by many factors. However, oxytocin does seem to affect how we perceive the world and what we believe. "Oxytocin's effects on women's spirituality still need to be investigated."

sumber  http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/48438/20160928/having-more-sex-makes-men-spiritual-closer-god.htm

Cuddling Your Cat Can Be Dangerous For Your Health: A Bad News For Cat Lovers

Bad news feline lovers, reports have been scattering that cuddling your cats can do you harm. We all know that pet cat can reduce stress for cat lovers. Research shows that a new disease has been discovered and it may affect the relationship you have with your cats. But can they really do you harm?

A large-scale survey was conducted by doctors from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US. They discovered a cat-borne bacterial disease known as "cats scratch." This disease apparently causes fever, pustules and for some, it may even be deadly.
People get the disease from stray kittens that are more likely infected. It can be transmitted when you are scratched by a cat that has the disease. Not only that, once the cat was infected, you can also be if you don't wash your hands after touching the cat. Infection may be worse if you put your hands in your mouth without cleansing them.
Experts also advise that rough playing and kissing a stray cat should be extremely avoided. Thus, the cat owner should also avoid letting their pets interact with other stray cats because fleas from other cats can also spread the disease, according to The Telegraph.
CDC expert Dr. Christina Nelson said, "The scope and impact of the disease is a little bit larger than we thought, "Cat-scratch is preventable. If we can identify the populations at risk and the patterns of disease, we can focus the prevention efforts."

In line with this, a report by the NHS Choices states that scratches and animal bites are commonly infected. The questions have been running such as people don't know if all the cases have been positively confirmed for it is also possible that some cases are just misdiagnosed as other illness.
For now, cat owners just have to be cautious on dealing with their cats. Diseases these days can come in all sorts of strains and sources. Especially with stray cats, for we don't know how intense the disease they might be carrying.

source http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/47985/20160921/bad-news-cat-lovers-experts-discovered-new-strain-disease-coming.htm

CDC: Sepsis Is A Medical Emergency, Can Be Stopped If Caught Early

The most common illnesses that usually lead to sepsis include pneumonia and infections of the urinary tract, skin and gut. (Image used for representation only.)
(Photo : Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has named sepsis a medical emergency. According to the agency, at least 72 percent of patients with this rapid-acting and fatal illness were seen by doctors and nurses but failed to catch it earlier to prevent it.

The Washington Post reported the CDC identifying pneumonia and infections of the urinary tract, skin and gut as the most common leading illness that usually causes sepsis. Unfortunately, there are no specific tests to check for sepsis and symptoms can be different among each person, which often is the reason why it is not detected early.

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It is a complication of an infection that can lead to life-threatening conditions like tissue damage, organ failure, and even death. However, the report said that there are different ways medical personnel can do to avoid sepsis from happening. These include vaccinating against pneumonia, preventing the spread of infection by hand washing and increase people's awareness about sepsis. "When sepsis occurs, it should be treated as a medical emergency," CDC Director Tom Frieden said in a press release. "Doctors and nurses can prevent sepsis and also the devastating effects of sepsis, and patients and families can watch for sepsis and ask, 'could this be sepsis?'"

According to International Business Times, the six key signs and symptoms of sepsis are shivering, fever or feeling cold, extreme pain or discomfort, clammy or sweaty skin, confusion or disorientation, shortness of breath and an elevated heart rate. In the United States, between one to three million people are diagnosed with sepsis every year. The condition's prognosis is very good if caught early, but mortality rate increases to 25 to 30 percent for severe sepsis and 40 to 70 percent in cases where septic shock happens. The report also said that a person has a 7.6 percent chance of survival when he goes into septic shock with the rate decreasing by the hour without treatment.
"This report is putting a face on sepsis and documenting that it is still a huge problem, and it doesn't have to be. Far too many people die from sepsis today. Sepsis is an unrecognized killer [and] a medical emergency," Frieden said.

Meanwhile, newsy-today.com also reported that included in the CDC's report is a study of 325 patients (246 adults and 79 children) who had been diagnosed of a certain condition between Oct. 2012 and Sept. 2013 at four different hospitals in New York. Results showed that more than 7 to 10 patients had chronic conditions requiring routine care or had visited healthcare services in the 30 days prior. Of those patients, 30 percent died.
It was found that pneumonia, with was the most common illness that led to sepsis with a total of 35 percent. Urinary tract infections were at 25 percent, gastrointestinal infections at 11 percent, followed by skin or soft tissue infections at 11 percent. The most common pathogens identified from blood samples in the study that caused sepsis are Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli , and certain types of Streptococcus.
"An infection that is getting worse and is not treated can lead to sepsis. We call on healthcare providers to take opportunities to prevent, identify, and rapidly treat patients with sepsis and to educate patients and family members about sepsis," Frieden ended.

source :http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/46054/20160825/cdc-sepsis-is-a-medical-emergency-can-be-stopped-if-caught-early.htm#

Pretend Mommy' program doesn't deter teen pregnancy

Teens are more, not less, likely to become pregnant if they take part in prevention programs that use lifelike robot babies to demonstrate the realities of motherhood, a new trial shows.
Australian girls given a baby simulator for a weekend were 36 percent more likely to become pregnant during their teenage years, compared to girls in a control group who only received standard health education, researchers found.
"Unfortunately, and surprising for us, the intervention definitely didn't work. It seemed to increase the pregnancy rate," said study author Sally Brinkman, an associate professor with the University of Western Australia.
Overall, the live birth rate was double for girls who participated in the infant simulator program -- 8 percent compared with 4 percent for the control group, researchers found.
The baby simulator program also appeared to convince girls to give birth rather than seek an abortion once they became pregnant, Brinkman said.
About 54 percent of the pretend mommies opted for abortion after they became pregnant, compared with 60 percent of girls in the control group.
These results run counter to the intention of the program, which has been implemented in as many as 89 countries worldwide. It should make school districts think twice about employing baby simulators in their pregnancy prevention efforts, Brinkman said.
The robot babies are designed to "put students off" the idea of pregnancy by providing a realistic simulation of motherhood, she said.
"They are extremely life-like," Brinkman said. "You have to change their [diapers]. You have to breast-feed them. They cry a lot, right through the night. They're programmed to act like a 6-week-old baby."
For this study, more than 1,260 girls aged 13 to 15 in the Perth, Australia metropolitan area took a six-day pregnancy prevention class that included taking home the baby simulator for a weekend. Another 1,567 girls participated in the control group and received standard health education.
Researchers followed the girls until age 20 to see how many would become pregnant, and whether they would give birth or choose an abortion.
About 17 percent of the baby simulator group became pregnant during their teen years. By comparison, only 11 percent of the control group became pregnant, according to findings published Aug. 25 in The Lancet.
The baby simulators tend to attract a lot of attention, which might blunt the intended message and instead make having a baby seem attractive, Brinkman said.
"It became quite a family thing to look after the baby simulators. There was quite a bit of positive attention as such," she said.
The program also might have failed because the girls didn't have the robot babies long enough to make an impact, Brinkman said.
Based on what's known about the developing teenage brain, it's very likely that girls caring for a baby simulator would come to the "counterintuitive" conclusion that motherhood might be easy and fun, said Bill Albert, chief program officer of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy in Washington, D.C.
"We know through brain research that the part of the teenage brain that is still in high development is the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain that helps you understand future consequences," Albert said.
Teenagers might find it difficult to care for a simulated baby, but they won't necessarily make the connection between that and the even tougher task of raising their own live baby, he said.
"For some teenagers, they actually believe that the simulated baby has to be more challenging than a real baby would be," Albert said.
Teen pregnancy rates have declined significantly over the past two decades in the United States, falling to 24.2 births per 1,000 in 2014, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Albert attributes the decline to teenagers having less sex and using good forms of contraception when they do, including low-maintenance and highly effective methods like IUDs and birth control implants.
Positive peer influence also plays a role, driven in part by MTV shows such as "16 and Pregnant" or "Teen Mom" that show the true challenges of teen motherhood, Albert added.
"Young people tell us over and over again that they see these shows as cautionary tales," he said. "They see them as more sobering than salacious."
More information For more on teen pregnancy prevention, visit the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Copyright © 2016 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

source : http://www.upi.com/

Many teens 'vaping' for flavor, not nicotine

Why are American teens tempted to try an e-cigarette? A new study suggests most are interested in the vaping product's flavoring, not nicotine.
A team led by Richard Miech, of the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, tracked the responses of nearly 15,000 students who took part in a 2015 U.S. nationwide survey.
More than 3,800 of the students -- who were in grades 8, 10 and 12 -- said they had used e-cigarettes at some point.
Of those who had used e-cigarettes within the past month, more than 1,700 had done so at least once; nearly 1,100 had done so up to five times; and more than 600 had done so more than half a dozen times, the findings showed.
Among the students who had ever used e-cigarettes, two-thirds used the device where a non-nicotine, flavored ingredient was used, the survey found.
Nicotine came in at a distant second: Used by 13 percent of 8th graders, 20 percent of 10th graders, and 22 percent of 12th graders.
Relatively few of the students tried vaping marijuana -- just 6 percent to 7 percent of all students, the study found.
The findings suggest that efforts to reduce e-cigarette use among young people may fail if they focus on the dangers of nicotine because most teen users do not believe they are using nicotine, according to the researchers.

"These results indicate that while taking into account [e-cigarette] use does indeed increase tobacco/nicotine prevalence, the impact of [e-cigarettes] is likely not as large as might appear by their recent, dramatic increase in use among adolescents," Miech and colleagues wrote.
But one expert in vaping and smoking questioned the findings.
"Although I appreciate the survey results, I question whether the adolescents actually knew for certain that what they were inhaling did or did not contain nicotine," said Patricia Folan. She directs the Center for Tobacco Control at Northwell Health in Great Neck, N.Y.
"There are nearly 500 types of vaping devices and currently the ingredients in these devices are not always known nor do they appear on the product labels," she said. "Consequently, I would have thought that there would be more teens reporting that they did not know what substances they were vaping."
Folan also believes that there's no "harmless" e-cigarette.
"Even without nicotine, inhaled products that contain flavorings can be damaging to the lung tissue and would not be considered safe for adolescents or adults," she said.
The study was published online Aug. 25 in the journal Tobacco Control.
More information
The U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse has more about electronic cigarettes.
Copyright © 2016 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

sourch :http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2016/08/25/Many-teens-vaping-for-flavor-not-nicotine/8891472167811/