Men care more for cars than health

Is it any surprise that most men find it easier to love their cars more than themselves?

Almost 70 percent of American men said they find it easier to care for their cars than their personal health, according to a survey released on Monday.

And 40 percent said they would be more likely to address issues with their car than their health.

"For many men, tuning up our cars is easier than getting checkups for our health," NASCAR driver Terry Labonte says in a statement.

Labonte, who was named one of NASCAR'S (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) top 50 greatest drivers, is a spokesman for a national campaign launched by Men's Health Network and the drug company Abbott Laboratories which both conducted the poll, to encourage men to visit their doctors more often.

The survey of 501 men, aged 45 to 65, and their spouses or partners reveals that 28 percent of men do not visit the doctor regularly, and more than 40 percent of the women questioned said they are worried about their husband's or partner's health.

A similar number of women also said they are more concerned about their men's health than their own.

Cockroach allergen blamed for asthma

Cockroaches have been identified as a possible explanation for dramatic neighborhood variations in asthma rates among New York City children.

In some neighborhoods, 19 percent - nearly one in five - of children have asthma, while in others the rate can be as low as 3 percent. Heavy traffic, industrial incinerators and other outdoor air pollution sources have all been blamed in the past.

But researchers at Columbia University have now found that children living in neighborhoods with high rates of asthma were twice as likely to carry antibodies against a cockroach protein in their blood, a sign the children had been exposed to the insects and were likely allergic to them.

In addition, homes in the neighborhoods with high rates of asthma contained more of the allergen produced by cockroaches in household dust.

The study provides "further evidence that cockroach exposure is part of the story", study author Matthew Perzanowski says.

"Cockroach allergen really could be contributing to disparities in asthma prevalence, even in an urban environment like New York City."

VR numbs the pain of elderly patients

Distracting patients by immersing them in a virtual world, sometimes by using a video game, appears to help reduce pains even in elderly patients who aren't used to such exposure, according to a US study.

"I was surprised to see the level of analgesic response that the elderly patients demonstrated, because these subjects had little or no previous experience with video games or virtual reality (VR) distraction, unlike our younger subjects," says Sam Sharar, an anesthesiology professor at Washington University, who worked on the study.

The VR therapy involves a video game on a head-mounted display developed by Hunter Hoffman, a cognitive psychologist and researcher at the University of Washington.

In the experiment, presented at the annual meeting of the American Pain Society, 25 adults aged 60 and older were randomly assigned to either a low-immersion or a high-immersion VR environment, using a program called SnowWorld.

The high-immersion group moved along a virtual path through an icy canyon populated by snowmen, igloos, penguins, mammoths and fish, viewing it all though a display that blocked most of their vision of the real world.

With the click of a mouse they could toss snowballs at all the creatures.

The low-immersion group used the same program with a display that did not block out the real world.

Also, the image resolution was reduced, there were no sound effects, and no game-like interaction with the world - simply a virtual walk on a path through a snowy canyon.

Sharar's team performed two thermal simulations of the pain of a lumbar puncture, otherwise known as a spinal tap, for 30 seconds, once while subjects were not immersed in the VR program, and again when they were.

"Results showed a significant reduction in sensory, emotional and cognitive pain components with VR treatment of either kind," the researchers say in the abstract for their presentation.

Reuters