In fact, investigators have found that women who drink wine are likely to gain very less weight than those who stick to mineral water – moreover, moderate drinkers also possess a lower risk of obesity than teetotallers.

According to the investigators, the study suggests a calorie from alcohol has less impact on weight than a calorie from other foods and that the way the body deals with alcohol is more complex than realised.

And, one theory is that in regular drinkers the liver develops a separate metabolic pathway to break down alcohol, with surplus energy turned mainly into heat, not fat, The Sunday Times reported.

Scientists have found that more Americans now drink sugar-sweetened sodas, sport drinks and fruit drinks daily, and this increase in consumption has led to more diabetes and heart disease over the past period.

Using the Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) Policy Model, a well-established computer simulation model of the national population age 35 and older, researchers estimate that the increased consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks between 1990 and 2000 contributed to 1,30,000 new cases of diabetes, 14,000 new cases of coronary heart disease (CHD), and 50,000 additional life-years burdened by coronary heart disease over the past decade.

Researchers said that sugar-sweetened soda, sport and fruit drinks (not 100 percent fruit juice) contain equivalent calories, ranging from 120 to 200 per drink, and thus play a role in the nation’s rising tide of obesity.

Previous research has linked daily consumption of these sugary drinks to an increased risk of diabetes, even apart from too much weight gain.

“The CHD model allows us to incorporate data from other studies that demonstrate an association between daily intake of sugared beverages and diabetes risk; we can then translate this information into estimates of the current diabetes and cardiovascular disease that can be attributed to the rise in consumption of these drinks,” said Litsa Lambrakos, study lead author and internal medicine resident at the University of California- San Francisco.

Health policy experts suggest curbing the consumption of sugared drinks through an excise tax of 1 cent per ounce of beverage, which would be expected to decrease consumption by 10 per cent.

“If such a tax could curb the consumption of these drinks, the health benefits could be dramatic,” said Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, senior author of the study and associate professor of medicine at the University of California , San Francisco.

The results have been reported at the American Heart Association ’s 50th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention.

Stress not only hurts your brain, but also has a bad effect on teeth, claims a new study.

Boffins writing in BioMed Central’s open access journal Head & Face Medicine studied the causes of ’sleep bruxism’, gnashing teeth during the night, finding that it was especially common in those who try to cope with stress by escaping from difficult situations.

Maria Giraki, from Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf, Germany, worked with a team of researchers to study the condition in 69 people, of whom 48 were ‘bruxers’.

She said, “Bruxing can lead to abrasive tooth wear, looseness and sensitivity of teeth, and growth and pain in the muscles responsible for chewing. Its causes are still relatively unknown, but stress has been implicated. We aimed to investigate whether different stress-factors, and different coping strategies, were more or less associated with these bruxism symptoms”.

Tooth grinding was measured by thin plates that were placed in trial participants mouths’ overnight, while stress and coping techniques were assessed by three questionnaires. Bruxing was not associated with age, sex or education level, but was more common in people who claimed to experience daily stress and trouble at work.

Giraki adds, “Our data support the assumption that people with the most problematic grinding do not seem to be able to deal with stress in an adequate way. They seem to prefer negative coping strategies like ‘escape’. This, in general, increases the feeling of stress, instead of looking at the stressor in a positive way”.

According to an investigator in Ohio State University’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, an urine test that can concurrently measure the extent of a potential carcinogenic process and a marker of garlic consumption in humans has been studied, the test suggested that the more garlic people consumed, the lower the levels of the potential carcinogenic process were.

The research is all about body processes associated with nitrogen-containing compounds, scientists say.

“What we were after was developing a method where we could measure in urine two different compounds, one related to the risk for cancer, and the other, which indicates the extent of consumption of garlic,” said Earl Harrison, Dean’s Distinguished Professor of Human Nutrition at Ohio State, an investigator in Ohio State University’s Comprehensive Cancer Center and senior author of the study.

“Our results showed that those were inversely related to one another – meaning that the more we had the marker for garlic consumption, the less there was of the marker for the risk of cancer.” He added further.

Confronted with critical unavailability of vaccines, the Centre had given its affirmation for stimulation of three state owned vaccine manufacturing units, the Central Research Institute at Kasauli in Himachal Pradesh, Pasteur Institute of India at Coonoor and BCG Vaccine Laboratory in Chennai.

After a calculated assessment and evaluation, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had canceled the suspension of licenses of these vaccine manufacturing units.

The government had suspended the licenses of these vaccine manufacturing units two years ago.

The government said in its order that these units should ensure that the production of vaccines be fully compliant with the Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards within three years. It also probed the Central Research Institute, Kasauli to submit quarterly progress reports to the government.

A leading newspaper in Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald published about a research that was carried out by Nepean Hospital in Sydney. The study said that 10 percent of the people who are regular players of the video games suffer from symptoms of addiction.

Approximately 1 out of every 10 people suffers from this addiction. The study concluded that 8 percent of the 2000 gamers who were above 14 years of age have an addiction problem.

About 1/4th of the gamers claimed that their addiction was pushing them towards financial instability and family problems in their life. Another 3/4th people admitted to loss of sleep.

Moderately remarkable, the young males were among the most affected with this addiction.

Scientists at UMass Lowell have discovered a new contrivance by which a key protein linked to Alzheimer’s disease can spread within the human brain. According to the researchers, the finding gives new hope that the disease may someday be cured.

“My team has discovered two different ways in which tau is secreted by neurons, or brain cells. This might explain how tau-containing lesions seem to propagate between adjacent, interconnected parts of the brain during the development of the disease,” UMass Lowell biological sciences professor and study’s lead author Garth Hall said.

Until very recently, it was universally assumed that tau is never secreted from or transferred between neurons, and that CSF-tau only appears after many neurons have died and irreversible harm has been done to the brain.

The findings were published in the February issue of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Prostate cancer is treated by diminishing male hormone testosterone from the patient- but while this kills most of the cells, the few that remain lead to recurrent, incurable disease.

Now, scientists have come up with an astonishing way to treat the disease, by using estrogen, a hormone normally associated with women.

According to them, the research provides proof of the controversial concept that estrogens could be good for men and can be used medicinally to treat prostate cancer.

With the increasing number of research labs developing a line of medicines made of cow feces and urine in India, the cows are now are again becoming the most sacred animal. The medicines developed from the cow feces and urine combines both the practical and spiritual aspects and scientists in Ahmedabad, India formulate cures ranging from cancer to bad breath.

“These formulas are not new,” said Kesari Gumat, a scientist at the Ahmedabad Research Center. “They are contained in ancient Hindu holy texts. We are just making them with a scientific approach.”

More than 300 cows call the research center home, where their excrement is collected and spread on the ground to dry in the sun. Visitors are asked to remove their shoes and socks before having to walk across the field of feces.

“Walking on fresh cow dung is very healthy,” Gumat said. “It kills all the germs and bacteria and heals wounds. And dry cow dung is a great scrub to get rid of dead skin and improve blood circulation.”

The list of uses of cow feces and urine is a long one, including soap and toothpaste, incense sticks, and even a soft drink waiting for government approval that’s main ingredient is cow urine.

Cows are sacred to the Hindus in India. The process of preparing the feces and urine to develop medicine is very intricate.

According to a recent Australian study, mums working part-time nurture healthier children than their colleagues who stay at home or have a full-time job.

The study, ‘Do Working Mothers Raise Couch Potato Kids?’ shows that kids of part-time mums have less junk food, watch less TV and are less likely to be overweight or fat. The study group carried out face-to-face interviews with mothers and measured their child’s height and weight at age’s four to five, and again two years later, at six to seven years of age.

The study of over 4,500 Australian pre-schoolers found part-time mums let their children watch about an hour less TV each week than both stay-at-home mums and full-time working mothers. Their kids consumed fewer snack foods, had more time to exercise and were exposed to less junk-food advertising.