The eight-hour work day is becoming obsolete, as companies pressure employees for “productivity”—that is, long work days. But employees ‘may pay the ultimate price for overworking, a new British study finds. Researchers followed more than 7,000 healthy, middle-aged U.K. government employees for roughly 12 years and discovered that those who reported clocking 11-hour days had a 67 percent higher risk […]
Read more
Over the past decade, thanks in part to widespread restrictions on when and where people can light up, the number of Americans who smoke has rapidly declined. But despite that reduction, some 58 million Americans are still regularly exposed to secondhand smoke, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Although this is a 50 percent drop […]
Read more
Eating fruits and vegetables contaminated with pesticide residue may lower men’s sperm counts, a new study has found. Researchers at Harvard University surveyed 155 men who had sought fertility treatment about their eating habits. They found that subjects who ate more soft, thin-skinned fruits and vegetables such as apples, grapes, and potatoes—foods that tend to contain high levels of pesticide […]
Read more
Being a pessimist may be raising your blood sugars and blood pressure which may lead to heart disease. During an 11-year study of over 2000 men and women – some optimists and some pessimists – they found that the 121 people who died of heart disease were pessimists. The pessimists think that their lives are much gloomier, so they have […]
Read more
A new World Health Organization report shows that 3.3 million people die each year from alcohol use. Here’s a look at annual alcohol intake around the world in liters per person over age 14:
Read more
Worrying about everyday problems will shorten your life. A British study found that people who reported feeling even mild anxiety—the sort that distracted them, depleted their self-confidence, or occasionally kept them awake at night were 16 percent more likely to die over a 10-year period than people with no such concerns. About one in four people experiences mild anxiety, but […]
Read more
If you’re worried about infertility, don’t try to Google the term with a computer on your lap, says the London Telegraph. A new experiment suggests that radiation from a single Wi-Fi-enabled laptop may be strong enough to cause cell damage in sperm. Argentine researchers took samples of ejaculated semen and left them directly under a computer—simulating holding a laptop directly […]
Read more
Overdoses of prescription painkillers have become one of the leading causes of death among women. More women now die from overdoses of prescription pills like OxyContin, Vicodin, and Percocet than from cervical cancer, homicide, or street drugs such as heroin and cocaine, a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows. “We need to better understand how […]
Read more