A loving mother who kisses her child’s owies may be providing more health benefits than she knows.

In the study, subjects who had a warm bond with mom expressed fewer genetic markers of inflammation, which over time can take a toll on the body.

(READ the story at LiveScience.com)

Photo courtesy of Sun Star

It may be time to go on a special type of vacation: a drug vacation.* A drug vacation is a time in which you reduce the doses or eliminate entirely whatever over-the-counter drug or drugs you are taking. A drug vacation may give you an opportunity to learn whether you really need to continue taking this drug or not. More important, this vacation will give your body an opportunity to manifest its everyday self-regulating and self-healing propensities without the crutch of a pharmaceutical agent inhibiting or suppressing its important work.

You may not even recognize it, but you may be addicted to one or more of the drugs in your medicine cabinet. You may have noticed but your body has become accustomed to these drugs, and you’ve probably have had to increase or change the dosage over time.

It may be time that you received an intervention, though this time, you should probably intervene on yourself rather than have anyone do it for or to you.

A unique program for patients with depression has achieved a zero suicide rate over the last two and a half years, a stunning decline within a population that, even while receiving mental health treatment, normally loses hundreds per 100,000 every year.

The program, chronicled in an article in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association, was created by the Behavioral Health Services division of the Detroit-based Henry Ford Health System in 2001.

The rate of suicide in Henry Ford’s patient population decreased by 75 percent in the first four years of the program, from 89 per 100,000 patients down to 22, which is significantly lower than the annual rates for suicides in similar patient populations. For the last two and a half years though, that rate has dropped to zero per 100,000. This remarkably low rate of patient suicide stands in marked contrast to an expected rate of 230 per 100,000 as reported from scientific research.

A recent study out of France shows those who drink low or moderate amounts of alcohol are healthier than those who drink more — or who don’t drink at all.

The study, published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, evaluated all sorts of health data on 150,000 people, and the results are part of a growing body of research showing the possible health benefits of alcohol.

(READ More at NPR.org)

Photo by MarcoMaru at Morguefile.com