Blog for Youth

A new study has disclosed that marriage offers few well-being advantages compared to living together.

It was found by the study that marriage benefits diminish over time, while unmarried couples who live together experience greater happiness and self-esteem.

“We found that differences between marriage and cohabitation tend to be small and dissipate after a honeymoon period. Also while married couples experienced health gains — likely linked to the formal benefits of marriage such as shared health care plans — cohabiting couples experienced greater gains in happiness and self-esteem,” said study author Kelly Musick, an associate professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell University’s College of Human Ecology, in a journal news release. “For some, cohabitation may come with fewer unwanted obligations than marriage and allow for more flexibility, autonomy and personal growth.”

The study appeared in the February issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.

According to the results of a new study from Australia, older adults who took vitamin B12 and folic acid supplements for two years had greater improvements on short- and long-term memory tests than adults who did not take the vitamins.

Janine Walker, the lead author of the study and a researcher at Australian National University, said the benefits were modest but encouraging and indicated that the vitamins “may have an important role in promoting healthy ageing and mental wellbeing, as well as sustaining good cognitive functioning for longer on a community-wide scale.” “We felt that older people with elevated depressive symptoms were an important cohort to target given evidence that late-life depression is associated with increased risk of cognitive impairment,” Walker said.

French researchers have reported in a new study that people with certain conditions, including leukemia, other cancers and pregnancy, are at the greatest risk of getting sick from the food-borne bacterium Listeria.

The results “will help focus risk communication for the medical community,” said Ramon Guevara, an epidemiologist for the County of Los Angeles Department of Public Health, who was not involved in the study. “If you do have an outbreak you want to say who are the high-risk people,” he added.

“I would like to target recommendations for prevention to persons with hematological malignancy (blood, bone marrow and lymph cancers), especially those undergoing immunosuppressive treatment,” Goulet said.

According to men’s estimates, men have twice as many sexual partners as women during their lifetime.

Men reported having 9.3 different partners on average while women said they only had 4.7 partners, the Health Survey for England 2010 found.

A quarter of women, on contrast, revealed they had only been with one partner during their lifetimes compared to 17 per cent of men. More than a quarter of young women today lost their virginity when they were below the legal age of consent, the report from the NHS Information centre also revealed.

An anti-corruption and security unit has been set up by Cricket Australia to oversee the integrity of its domestic competitions.

The new body will be led by Sean Carroll, who has worked in the International Cricket Council’s anti-corruption unit, and the unit will preside over the Sheffield Shield, the limited-over competition, and the new Twenty20 Big Bash League.

The creation of the new layer to stamp out corruption comes in the wake of a British court sentencing three Pakistan international cricketers — Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir — to jail terms for their roles in spot fixing that was exposed by a tabloid newspaper during a series in England last year.

Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland announced the appointment Wednesday, only hours after a British newspaper quoted former ICC anti-corruption chief Paul Condon as saying every major cricket country had been touched by corruption in the 1990s.

Sutherland said Cricket Australia thoroughly investigated the issue at the time and found there was no evidence of wrongdoing among its players.

“While there has been no evidence of any problems in domestic cricket it is good to see Cricket Australia being proactive … to protect the local game,” Sports Minister Mark Arbib said. “We are working to empower Australia’s sports to ensure their athletes are protected and that everyone involved with sport understands the importance of combating match-fixing.”

According to a German study, people who have donated part of their liver for transplant can experience physical and psychological complications years after the operation.

The study in the Annals of Surgery said almost half of the 83 liver donors surveyed had complaints ranging from pain and digestive problems to depression three or more years after surgery — but nearly all said they’d donate again.

From news.yahoo.com:

In a living-donor liver transplant, a team of surgeons removes a lobe of the donor’s liver to implant in the recipient. The remaining portion of the donor’s liver regrows to full size within two months.

“There is a risk for some long-term complaints, which may be potentially controllable by workup modifications, improvements in surgical techniques and a thorough follow-up of donors at the transplant centers,” said Georgios Sotiropoulos, lead author and professor of surgery and transplantation at University Hospital Essen in Germany.

“I think the conclusions are cautious and reasonable. We need to keep a close eye on these people,” said Jean Emond, vice chair of the Department of Surgery and director of the transplant center at New York Presbyterian/Columbia Hospital in New York while adding that study findings are consistent with past research though the study did not have a control group.

Prince Harry has decided to break up with underwear model Florence Brudenell-Bruce, his latest sweetheart.

The split came just two months after Prince Harry and Miss Brudenell-Bruce got together.

From Dailymail.co.uk:

The 25-year-old had won the approval of Royal aides and only two weeks ago they were described as a ‘dream couple’.

They were reported to have got so serious that she had been introduced to Prince William and others close to Harry which was seen as a significant step.

A source said she went ‘down a storm in the Royal household’.

One of the reasons behind the split is thought to be his commitment to his work in the Blues and Royals in the Army Air Corps.

‘Harry enjoyed spending time with friends over the summer, but he doesn’t want to be tied town in a relationship when training, so he called time with Flee,’ a source told the Daily Mirror.

A new study has revealed that doctors are testing women for human papillomavirus, or HPV, more often than guidelines recommend.

This is not just a waste of money but it also means that women testing positive could be getting extra treatment that would not necessarily help them and this may come with a risk of complications and side effects.

From Reuters.com:

Doctors use the HPV test in addition to Pap smears to screen women for signs of cervical cancer. But researchers say that in young women, a positive test gives doctors very little information, since HPV is common in women in their 20’s and probably won’t lead to cancer.

Still, “there’s a much greater emphasis on avoiding a single cancer versus literally thousands of women being over-screened and over-treated,” said Philip Castle, an HPV expert at the American Society for Clinical Pathology in Chicago, Illinois, who wrote a commentary on the new study in Obstetrics & Gynecology.

“It’s quite clear that HPV testing can be used in a very beneficial way,” Castle said, including for routine cancer screening in older women and to clarify some types of “equivocal” Pap smears. “But misuses of it just have no place in medical practice,” he said.

A study of 340 men has revealed that would-be fathers should make the most of sunny days to top up their tan.

The study revealed that vitamin D, produced by the body when exposed to the sun, has the ability to boost the quality of sperm.

From Dailymail.co.uk:

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen tested the quality of sperm from 300 men chosen at random and carried out a detailed analysis of samples from a further 40 in the laboratory.

At the same time the level of vitamin D in their blood was measured. Almost half had an insufficient amount – linked to lack of exposure to natural sunlight or time in a solarium.

Sunlight is the major source of vitamin D, which helps regulate levels of calcium and phosphorus to generate healthy bones.

In addition, the number of healthy sperm in men with insufficient vitamin D was considerably lower than in those with normal levels. The ability to absorb calcium was also inhibited.

The study also disclosed that the male sperms become better at swimming towards the egg, have greater speed, and are more penetrative with Vitamin D.

A research has suggested that middle-class ‘yummy mummies’ are more likely to give birth by caesarean than their working-class counterparts.

The analysis of thousands of births revealed that as the number of C-sections has soared, the social status of the women having them has changed.

From Dailymail.co.uk:

The finding appears to further vindicate the perception that caesarean births have become fashionable among affluent women who are ‘too posh to push’.

Celebrities who have given birth by C-section include Liz Hurley, Victoria Beckham, Patsy Kensit and Britney Spears.

But the trend for middle-class women to put off starting a family until they have established a career and are financially secure is also likely to have contributed to the rise, because older women are more prone to difficult pregnancies and births.

Researchers from the Medical Research Council and the Scottish Chief Scientist’s Office scrutinised hospital records of births in Scotland from three time periods – 1980-81, 1990-91 and 1999-2000.

The study was published in the journal BMC Public Health.