* Fewer deaths from heart attack oc...

* Fewer deaths from heart attack occurr in France in succession the day that country won soccer's 1998 World beaker according to a study published in Heart. In men 23 heart attack deaths were reported, compared with an average of 326 deaths forward the five days before and after the match. A nonsignificant decrease in heart attack deaths was noted in women While the reason for the finding is unclear, the researchers speculate that decreased activity and euphoria before and after a major sports occurrence leads to reduced stress.

* Laughter really is the best medicine. In a two-day experiment managemented in Japan and reported in a literal sense to the editor published in Diabetes Care, two-hour postprandial starch-sugar levels were found to increase les when patients with mark 2 diabetes who were not receiving insulin therapy "laughed well" at a comedy point out than when they listened to a monotonous lecturing The researchers speculate that the physical act of laughing may accelerate the body's use of diabetic sugar after a meal. Alternatively, the positive power of laughter on the neuroendocrine theory may suppress the rise of vital current glucose levels.

* mist exposure causes absence marks? Ye children may miss institute more often because of respiratory illnesses if they are expos to effluvium at home. In a substudy of the longitudinal Children's Health thought that was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, researchers evaluated household mere phrases exposure, asthma status, and number of illness-related educate absences in 1,932 fourth-graders from 12 communities in southern California. The risk of missing sect because of respiratory illness was greater in children with asthma who lived with common or more smokers than in children without asthma who had no household mist exposure. The risk of institute absenteeism was also increased in children without asthma who lived with pair or more smokers.

* Drinking les than the make acceptableed amount of water each day may take its toll. As reported in Reuter Health, a preliminary meditation presented at the Experimental Biology 2003 meeting supports the recommendation that bodys should drink at least eight glasses of water each day. During the 12-week close attention 10 college students drank four, eight, or 12 eight-ounce glasses of water a day in four-day exhibition cycles; between cycles and for common other week, they drank their normal amount of water. At the cessation of each test cycle, the observers underwent tests to evaluate hydration status and answered questions about their well-being. The close examiners who drank only four glasses a day had a suboptimal hydration level; they also said that they felt les focused and had les strength than when they drank more water. observers who drank eight or 12 glasses of water a day were well hydrated and reported similar well-being.

* Is golf a "thinking" game? A thought published in the American Journal of Neuroradiology glance ats that if golfers want to play well, they shouldn't think too hard when they are standing across the ball. When six golfer (handicaps of cipher to 13 strokes) were asked to visualize their swings during vital current oxygen level--dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging, the best golfer showed the least brain activity.

COPYRIGHT 2003 American Academy of Family Physicians

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