Braves Fans the Dirtiest According to Study

Men are dirtier than women. Scientists confirmed this by spying in public restrooms, watching as one-fourth of the men left without washing their hands.  The worst offenders were at an Atlanta Braves game.

Wednesday's results mark the American Society of Microbiology's latest look at how many people take what is considered the single easiest step to staying healthy: spending 20 seconds rubbing with soap under the faucet.

In 1996, the society first studied how often people wash up after using the toilet. Researchers lingered in public restrooms while surreptitiously counting. They concluded about one-third did not wash.

Every few years, the research is repeated. This time, 83 percent of people washed.

The worst hygiene was at Atlanta's Turner Field, where 37 percent of the men left the bathroom without washing and 16 percent of the women did.

Click Here For The Complete Story=>  http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/4896734

Many of my patients already know that when you stop taking your hormones, your hot flashes usually return.  Somebody not quite as enlightened as you'all wanted to prove this.  And wouldn't you know . . . they proved it. 

Pills May Merely Delay Hot Flashes.  Study of Women who Stopped taking Hormones sees Symptoms of Menopause Recur.

By Lindsey Tanner

CHICAGO - Judy Smith says she had five blissful years without hot flashes while participating in a landmark study of hormone supplements. But when she quit taking them, the symptoms returned for her and many other participants, suggesting that the pills might postpone but not prevent menopausal symptoms.

"You can't necessarily expect to just skip that stage' by taking hormones, said Dr. Judith Ockene of the University of Massachusetts.  The survey, which appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association, also found that menopause symptoms can last longer than many women thought. More than one-third of women who reported symptoms after stopping the study pills were in their 60s and 70s at least 10 years older than the average age of menopause.

Click Here For The Complete Story=> http://www.presstelegram.com/Stories/0,1413,204~21474~2962000,00.html

I thought this next article was rather interesting.  I cannot explain the association, and I doubt that it's anything but coincidence, but who knows?  Maybe there is something to it. 

Breast Cancer, Handedness Could Be Linked
Study Finds Higher Rate of Disease in Left-Handed Women

September 26, 2005

Are left-handed women at increased risk for breast cancer? A new study suggests that might be the case.

Cuno Uiterwaal of the University Medical Center in the Netherlands examined the relationship between handedness and breast cancer in 12,178 healthy, middle-age women.  Between 1982 and 2000, the left-handed women in the study were more than twice as likely as right-handed women to develop breast cancer before going through menopause, the researchers found. The association held up even after the researchers took into account other factors, such as social and economic status, smoking habits, family history of breast cancer, and reproductive history.

Much more research is needed to explore whether the relationship is real and what may explain it. But the researchers speculated that left-handed women may be at risk for breast cancer because they were exposed to higher levels of certain hormones in the womb.  Women exposed to the hormonal drug diethylstilbestrol, or DES, for example, when they were in the womb were more likely to be left-handed, they noted.

Click Here For The Complete Story=>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/25/AR2005092501152.html

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