health (Page 6)

If you worry about getting sick, are you more likely to become ill? This doesn’t sound fair but alas, it may be true.

It works that way with rats, anyway. Robert Roy Britt writes in LiveScience.com that when young female rats, of a breed that is know to be cancer-prone, were placed in an unfamiliar environment, the ones that became apprehensive developed cancerous tumors much sooner than the rats with more equanimity. There was no difference between the time they got the cancer and the time of death in the two sets of rats?the apprehensive ones just got sick sooner.

There’s a lesson there for humans in how to live.

Art credit: freeimages.co.uk
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US citizens are sicker, in general, than their UK and Canadian counterparts, and working moms are healthier than stay-at-homes.

While it may seem incredibly stressful to the women who are accomplishing this feat, holding down a job and being a mom in a steady relationship helps keep women healthy and in good shape, while a career as a homemaker seems to increase the chances of becoming obese.

Statistics show that by the age of 54, women who had been partners, parents, and employees were significantly less likely to report ill health than women who did not fulfil all three roles.
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We recently reported that here in the US, we’re not as healthy as we think we are. The British are actually healthier than we are. Now Mike Stobbe writes in LiveScience.com that Canadians are healthier than Americans as well.

Livescience.com reports that Americans are 42% percent more likely than Canadians to have diabetes, 32% more likely to have high blood pressure, and 12% more likely to have arthritis. Harvard Medical School researchers Dr. Steffie Woolhandler says, “We’re really falling behind other nations.”
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In the US we tend to think we’re fairly healthy. We have plenty of food, as well as access to some of the best physicians in the world. But a recent study by the Journal of the American Medical Association reveals that we’re not nearly as healthy as we like to think we are. In fact, the health of the RICHEST American is as bad as that of the worst educated, lowest paid English citizen.

Despite their high-fat diet and sedentary lifestyle, the English are still less likely to have Type II diabetes than people in the US. The researchers say, “Americans are much sicker than the English.”
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