Women Suffer More when Pretending to Be Happy

Pretending to be happy can actually make you more miserable - especially if you're a woman, according to a new study.Researchers found that walking around with a forced smile and faking happiness simply led to people feeling gloomier. So, putting a brave face on your woes could actually be counterproductive.


The research found that women suffered more than men when pretending to be happy.Psychologist Dr Brent Scott, who led the study, said employers should take note because forcing workers to smile when dealing with the public can backfire.He said: "Smiling for the sake of smiling can lead to emotional exhaustion and withdrawal, and that's bad for the organisation."

Dr Scott said the research showed customer-service workers who 'fake smile' throughout the day worsen their mood and then withdraw from work, so their productivity drops.He added: "Bosses may think that getting their staff to smile is good for the organisation, but that's not necessarily the case."Dr Scott, assistant professor of management at Michigan State University, analysed a group of bus drivers during a two-week period.The study is one of the first of its kind to examine emotional displays over a period of time and compare the different effect that has on men and women.

His team examined the effects of surface acting - or fake smiling - compared to what was termed 'deep acting', or cultivating positive emotions by recalling pleasant memories.

Dr Scott said: "Women were harmed more by surface acting, meaning their mood worsened even more than the men and they withdrew more from work."However, they were helped more by deep acting, which means their mood improved more and they withdrew less."

Dr Scott suggested women tend to suffer more when pretending to be happy because they are expected to be more emotionally expressive than men.Therefore, faking a smile while feeling down is more likely to go against their normal behaviour and cause more harmful feelings.

Although, 'deep acting' seemed to improve mood in the short-term, Dr Scott says it's not a long-term solution to feeling unhappy.He said: "You're trying to cultivate positive emotions, but at the end of the day you may not feel like yourself anymore."

Originally Posted: Top Diagnosis

Do Not let your Tears with Him at the Night

Guide: In author’s opinion, tears are one of detoxification recipe, and I always can not help to move with those girls who cried very pitiful. But now as reported by the journal “Science” that they found women’s emotional tears would produce physiological effects on men’s sexual arousal…



We produce tears in response to insults to the eyes --- the sting of onion fumes, a tiny insect that flew into your cornea. But we also produce emotional tears. And it’s long been known that emotional tears are chemically different from poke-in-the-eye tears. Now researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel find that women’s emotional tears have definite physiological effects on men. The work appears in the journal Science.

The researchers knew that mouse tears contain pheromones that convey information to other mice. So they looked for similar kinds of signals in human tears.

Two women volunteered to watch sad movies and have their tears collected. Twenty-four men were then asked to sniff the movie tears or a saline solution. The men noted no particular smell in either sample of salty water. But the men’s own body chemistry could tell the difference.

When the men looked at emotionally neutral images of women’s faces after sniffing real tears, they reported less sexual attraction. The men also had lower levels of testosterone and less physiological arousal after smelling emotional tears compared with saline. Future studies will look at men’s tears, once researchers have collected enough videos of heartbreaking losses in big football games.


Originally Posted: Top Diagnosis

Mobile Phones can Diagnose STD and Measuring Blood Pressure Soon

Guide: Today, functions of mobile phone turn to more and more powerful, it is no longer just a convenient communication tool, all aspects in people’s living have close relations with mobiles, perhaps in the near future, mobile phones can help people to detect various diseases anywhere and anytime, which will be more conducive to help people to prevent and diagnose various diseases, thus produce more benefits to people's health.




Mobile phone technology is quickly changing the way the world operates. Today, we tell about two new projects involving mobile health, also known as m-health.

Doctors and technology experts in London are developing a new way to test for sexual infections. The new device uses mobile phones and computers to help people find out if they have been infected with a sexual disease. People will be able to perform the test in the privacy of their own homes.

People place urine or saliva on a small piece of paper. They place the test strip in a small device that contains a computer chip. Then they place the device in their mobile phone or a computer for testing.

Within minutes, they receive information telling them if they have a sexual disease. And they receive advice on what to do next.

Claudia Estcourt is with Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry. She is also part of the research team working on the project.

CLAUDIA ESTCOURT: "This isn't designed to replace traditional clinics. This is really opening testing up to people who might find it embarrassing or difficult to get into their clinic. And this might be a much quicker, easier option for them --- that they can be assured of very accurate results."

Health experts say many young people are too ashamed to visit a clinic to be tested. This increases the risk of them passing on sexual diseases. The researchers hope the tests will help persuade people to be tested and reduce the number of sexually transmitted infections.

Dr. Estcourt says the project is still seven to ten years away from completion. But she says it holds great promise for the future.

CLAUDIA ESTCOURT: "Clearly one of the major implications of something like this would be for use in developing countries: maybe for testing HIV, maybe for testing for tuberculosis, or perhaps even malaria."

Researchers at the University of Toronto in Canada are studying a mobile phone system that may help people with diabetes control their blood pressure.

The system collects blood pressure readings from home testing devices that have wireless technology. The readings are then sent to a health-care monitoring system.

Patients receive a mobile phone message telling them how they are doing. If their blood pressure is too high, they are advised to make an appointment with their doctor. Several high readings will cause the system to automatically contact the doctor.

Patients in the study used the mobile phone system for one year. The researchers found that thirty-seven percent of the patients were able to get their blood pressure under control. This compares with about fourteen percent of patients using common equipment.

Originally Posted: Top Diagnosis

Cancer, Purely a Man-made Disease in Modern Society

Is the common nature of cancer worldwide purely a man-made phenomenon. That is what some researchers now suggest.

Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide, however, scientists have only found one case of the disease in investigations of hundreds of Egyptian mummies, researcher Rosalie David of the University of Manchester in England said in a statement.

"This might be related to the prevalence of carcinogens in modern societies," write Rosalie David and Michael Zimmermann of Villanova University, Pennsylvania. Cancers are "limited to societies that are affected by modern lifestyle issues, such as tobacco use and pollution resulting from industrialization".

In a review of published analyses of tens of thousands of ancient skeletons and hundreds of mummies, David and Zimmermann found only a handful of cases of cancer. One recent finding, of colorectal cancer, was identified as the first ever discovered in a mummy. They also examined ancient texts and literature from Egypt and Greece, and say that there's little sign that cancer was a common ailment.

A quote from David put out by the University of Manchester saying "there is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer. So it has to be a man-made disease, down to pollution and changes to our diet and lifestyle" caused particular consternation.

Still, other specialists in cancer and in human fossils have strong doubts about this view. "Cancer is very rare in modern societies in humans under age 30," said oncologist John Glaspy at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. "In ancient times, people rarely lived to be much older than that. So cancer was rare. The 'sin' of modern societies is having people live to be much older."

Originally Posted: Top Diagnosis

New Study: Lactate Level May Detect CNS Aging

The study test on small mice found that, scientists may finally have the possibility to monitor the aging process of human through measuring the lactate level of the brain.

Scientists have long suspected that it is the gradual damage of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) resulted in aging. But at present, there are few means to track symptomatic stages of CNS aging.

Thus, although metabolic changes are implicated in mtDNA mutation-driven aging, the manifestations remain unclear. Here, we used normally aging and prematurely aging mtDNA mutator mice to establish a molecular link between mitochondrial dysfunction and abnormal metabolism in the aging process.

Using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy and HPLC, we found that brain lactate levels were increased twofold in both normally and prematurely aging mice during aging. To correlate the striking increase in lactate with tissue pathology, we investigated the respiratory chain enzymes and detected mitochondrial failure in key brain areas from both normally and prematurely aging mice.

We used in situ hybridization to show that increased brain lactate levels were caused by a shift in transcriptional activities of the lactate dehydrogenases to promote pyruvate to lactate conversion. Separation of the five tetrameric lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) isoenzymes revealed an increase of those dominated by the Ldh-A product and a decrease of those rich in the Ldh-B product, which, in turn, increases pyruvate to lactate conversion. Spectrophotometric assays measuring LDH activity from the pyruvate and lactate sides of the reaction showed a higher pyruvate → lactate activity in the brain.

We argue for the use of lactate proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy as a noninvasive strategy for monitoring this hallmark of the aging process. The mtDNA mutator mouse allows us to conclude that the increased LDH-A/LDH-B ratio causes high brain lactate levels, which, in turn, are predictive of aging phenotypes.

Originally Posted: Top Diagnosis

Taking Too Much Soft Drinks May Speed Up Aging

Aside from being damaging for our figure and our bones, it turns out that fizzy drinks are also bad for our skin, for they contain phosphate, which speeds up the aging process, a recent study cited.

The study reported :“Research shows that soft drinks may not only break our body fit, damages our bones, but also hurt our skins, which is because phosphate, which gives many soft drinks their tangy taste, can accelerate ageing”.

The findings of the study shows that the mineral, phosphate, which is also added to processed meats, cakes and breads, was found to make the skin and muscles wither and could also damage the heart and kidneys. Although the experiments were carried out in mice only, the researchers from Harvard University believe the results show the potential consequences of high doses of the mineral” .

“Humans need a healthy diet and keeping the balance of phosphate in the diet may be important for a healthy life and longevity. Avoid phosphate toxicity and enjoy a healthy life.” Researchers said additionally.

Originally Posted: Top Diagnosis