Health & Medicine
Hey, Baby, I Think You're Cute
Jokes abound on how the person sitting next to you at the bar becomes more attractive with each martini you drink. But it turns out that not even a sip of gin is needed to feel a boost in attraction.
Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia found that male undergraduates were far more likely to consider women attractive if they had just been exposed to alcohol-related words like "keg," "drunk," "wasted," and "booze." What's more, the men didn't know they were seeing the words, which were shown for 40 milliseconds on a computer screen and disguised so they couldn't be identified. The men were asked ahead of time if they thought that alcohol fueled sex drive. Most said they thought it did. Those who thought it didn't found women's photos less attractive.
The findings build on a decade of research in "social cognition," which has shown that people's actions are far more influenced by subtle social cues than most of us would like to believe. "Once these things are activated, they can very insidiously affect your behavior with no awareness," says Ronald Friedman, a psychologist who led the research, published in the May journal Addiction . "The things that drive our behavior are pretty much mysterious to us."
More-Specific Cholesterol Advice
For decades, doctors told patients with high cholesterol to cut down on fat, particularly saturated fat. When the typical low-fat diet didn't work, they prescribed lipid-lowering drugs--one reason for the nearly 140 million annual statin prescriptions.
Christopher Gardner, a Stanford University researcher, says the message has been too simple. "People ate a box of fat-free cookies, but no whole grains. They looked at the label and decided which potato chips to buy based on the fat." But low-fat versions of junk food don't drop cholesterol much.
Gardner, whose study was published last week in Annals of Internal Medicine, divided 125 people with elevated total and LDL, or bad, cholesterol into two groups. Half ate a typical low-fat diet including refined carbohydrates like white flour, dry processed cereals, and "diet" foods such as light chips and low-fat cookies. The other group ate a plant-based low-fat diet including fruits and vegetables, beans, whole grains like oatmeal, and nuts. The level of nutrients and calories was the same. The result? Nobody lost or gained weight and both groups lowered cholesterol. But those on the plant-based diet lowered their cholesterol twice as much as the typical low-fat group did. "What does work," Gardner says, "is eating salads, beans, fruits, and vegetables."
An Unkind Cut
A common surgery is probably headed for medical obscurity. A new analysis of episiotomy, the surgical snip to enlarge the opening for vaginal births, concludes that it doesn't do any good and may be harmful.
Most women tear anyway when the baby emerges, so doctors reasoned that a clean surgical incision would heal faster. An episiotomy also shortens the time a woman spends pushing, so doctors thought it would reduce her future risk of incontinence.
But those assumptions don't hold up, according to the review in last week's Journal of the American Medical Association. Worse, episiotomy may increase the risk of tearing all the way back to the rectum. Episiotomies are already becoming less common, says obstetrician Laura Riley of Massachusetts General Hospital, but plenty of doctors do them routinely--about a third of U.S. vaginal births include the snip. Says lead author Katherine Hartmann of the University of North Carolina, "This may be the last part of really medicalized childbirth to go away."
This story appears in the May 16, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.