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Brown Fat: Obesity Cure or Weight-Loss Fad? Carpentier & Spiegelman Studies

Can brown fat be used to ‘cure’ obesity? Or is it the new weight-loss buzzword, no less a fad than multivitamins and protein diets that end up causing more harm than good?

The answer to both questions is ‘maybe’ — based on the most current information scientists have at hand, including the results of two recent studies on brown fat.

Brown fat, the brown-colored fatty tissue found mainly in patches along the neck and between the shoulders of newborn mammals and in adults of hibernating animals, exists to warm the body.

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Citicoline Energy Drink: Improves Brain & Heals Stroke?

Do Citicoline drinks and gels sharpen mind, boost energy? In today’s globalized and hypercompetitive world, people need to speed up just to keep pace. This culture of speed is driving the demand for energy drinks and supplements, marketed on claims that drinking them clears your mind and helps you focus.

Last year, Americans spent about US$9 billion on energy drinks, according to the Council for Responsible Nutrition. In most of these drinks, caffeine or sugar provides the energy jolt.

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PSA Prostate Cancer Tests: Good or Bad? Adverse Risks & Side Effects?

A blood test that is currently used to screen for prostate cancer leads to frequent overdiagnosis, and this prompts men to undergo invasive treatments that harm them with painful and often life-altering side effects like impotence and incontinence.

Those were the findings of an investigative panel convened to advise federal authorities on the test’s efficacy. The panel’s report was publicized in October last year (2011).

Prostate cancer treatments leave many survivors with erectile dysfunction, incontinent, and with difficulty urinating and controlling bowel functions, says the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) in its report, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

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Penile Tattoo Risks & Side Effects + Priapism Treatment & Prevention

Man gets permanent erection from tattoo: An erect penis for three months — is this great or is it dangerous? However exciting being Mr. Permanent Hardick may sound, doctors say this is not only bad but can even be a medical emergency.

In a recent paper, doctors from the Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences in Kermanshah, Iran wrote on the first reported case of a man who got a permanent semi-erection after having his penis tattooed.

Doctors diagnosed the 21-year old man, who presented himself at the hospital with “a partially rigid penis of three-month duration,” with non-ischemic priapism, the ABC News Blog reports. This condition results from the inability of blood to exit the penis.

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Sleep Apnea Health Risks: Heart Attack & Deafness?

A sleep disorder that interrupts breathing can raise women’s risk of dying from heart attacks and having other cardiovascular problems in much the same way as it does for men.

What’s more, obstructive sleep apnea is also linked with sudden hearing loss, particularly in men.

These are recent findings of two independent studies, the first one by researchers from Spain, and the second from a new study in Taiwan.

But treating severe apnea at night with a mask and breathing device called continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, can also help reduce the risk of heart attack deaths in women with apnea—just as it can in men, the Spanish researchers report.

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Are Strawberries With Methyl Iodide Safe to Eat?

Green groups, California regulators face off over strawberry farm poison: Before you pop that strawberry into your mouth, consider this: you could be helping poison the farmers who grow these strawberries, as well as their children, and the groundwater in the farms they tend.

That’s according to the Pesticide Action Network (PAN), other environmental activists and scientists who are behind a suit asking California’s pesticide regulators to overturn its decision allowing the use of methyl iodide as a fumigant, mostly in strawberry farms.

According to PAN, exposure to methyl iodide “causes late term miscarriages, contaminates groundwater and is so reliably carcinogenic that it’s used to create cancer cells in laboratories.”

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