American Morning
[BLEEP!] That hurts! Swearing helps?
By Caitlin Hagan
CNN Medical Associate Producer
OK America, I confess: Sometimes I can be a little bit of a potty mouth. (Mom, maybe this is not a great blog for you to read.) Yes, I know those dirty little words are unbecoming to some and I really should watch my language (and I really do try!) but sometimes, when I’m walking through my condo and I stub my baby pinky toe on a table leg and the pain takes my breath away and brings tears to my eyes and makes me freeze with my foot mid-air in ridiculous pain….well, I can’t be held accountable for anything four-lettered I may say. (D**n it!)
Thankfully, Dr. Richard Stephens and his team at Keele University in the United Kingdom just published a study that says swearing actually has a pain-lessening effect. (See Mom? It’s healthy!) When we swear, we increase our threshold for pain, meaning we can bear it longer and don’t feel it as much. Stephens is not sure why this happens, only that for some reason, “swearing appears to increase our pain tolerance.”
What do you think? Is swearing helpful or distasteful?
Study: Night owls may benefit from evening strength
[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/07/09/woman.sick.bed.art.jpg caption="Some people who appear to have insomnia are biologically night owls, one expert says."]
(CNN) - If you have a hard time crawling out of bed in the morning, it could be that your body is biologically programmed to start the day later.
Experts say a spectrum of natural sleeping and waking rhythms exists, ranging from extreme morning people to extreme "night owls."
A new study examines how morning people compare with night owls on a strength test and looks at what other physiological processes may contribute to their performance.
Researchers tested participants' leg muscle strength at various points in the day. They looked at nine "early birds" and nine "night owls," who were classified as such based on a questionnaire.
Surprisingly, morning people's strength tends to remain constant throughout the day, but night owls have peak performance in the evening, said researchers from the University of Alberta in Canada.
"We thought that morning people would be better at this in the morning, but they never changed," said study co-author Olle Lagerquist, a Ph.D. candidate in neurophysiology at the University of Alberta.
That may be because evening people show increased motor cortex and spinal cord excitability in the evening, about 9 p.m., meaning they had maximal central nervous system drive at that time, Lagerquist said.
Food rehab: Why we can't eat just one
All of us crave certain foods, chewy chocolate chip cookies, pizza, or a comfort food like mac and cheese. Or in my case all of the above. But why do we crave them? Why are they so irresistible? Even addictive?
Remember the Lay’s potato chip commercial, “Betcha can’t eat just one”? Turns out there’s scientific evidence our brains are being hijacked by food and we may be helpless. But there’s hope. Dr. David Kessler, Former FDA Commissioner, has written a book, “The End of Overeating”, detailing why we are so addicted to food.and how to overcome this addiction, a sort of Food Rehabilitation.
Dr. Kessler told me food makers stimulate our desire to eat even when we’re full by combining fat,sugar, and salt in all kinds of different ways. He says, “add flavor, add texture, add temperature, add color and what do we end up with? One of the great public health epidemics of our time.” And there are other factors that go into why we can’t resist.
He goes on, “back 20 years ago, the average bite had about 20 chews. Today food goes down in one or two chews.It’s a wash. We get stimulated and we reach for more and more.”
In other words we just can’t help ourselves. Just ask four star chef Daniel Boulud, chef and owner of “Daniel” restaurant in New York City. He treated us to a tasting menu—a bite sized symphony of sweet, salty and fatty foods:
"We could end up like Canada"
The Senate's top republican, Mitch McConnell is sounding a warning about a Democratic plan for government-run health insurance. He says "the U.S. could wind up like Canada." So is that so bad? CNN's Dana Bash traveled to Ontario, Canada to find out.
Insurance companies dumping sick people?
Democrats on Capitol Hill are passing around new details on a revised plan for health care reform. The president took his version of the plan to an online town hall meeting Wednesday, taking aim at so-called "scare tactics" from his opponents.
Critics say it's the first step towards government-run health care. CNN's Jim Acosta sat down with one insider from the health insurance industry.
Health insurance 'insider' speaks out
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/07/02/acosta.insurance.insider.art.jpg caption="Wendell Potter is the former chief spokesman for health insurance giant Cigna."]
By CNN's Jim Acosta & Bonney Kapp
Last year, Wendell Potter stepped down from his post as the chief spokesman for the health insurance giant, Cigna. Potter tells CNN he is finished with defending an industry he calls “beholden to Wall Street.”
At a hearing last week before the Senate Commerce Committee, the former vice president of corporate communications at Cigna testified, “I know from personal experience that members of Congress and the public have good reason to question the honesty and trustworthiness of the insurance industry."
The committee’s chairman, West Virginia’s democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller told Potter, “you are better than Russell Crowe on ‘The Insider,’” referring to the award-winning 1999 film about cigarette company executive Jeffrey Wigand who blew the lid on the tobacco industry’s practices.
In his testimony and in an interview with CNN, Potter described how underwriters at his former company would drive small businesses with expensive insurance claims to dump their Cigna policies. Industry executives refer to the practice as "purging," Potter said.
“When that business comes up for renewal the underwriters jack the rates up so much the employer has no choice but to drop insurance,” Potter said.
CNN obtained a transcript of a 2008 Cigna conference call with investors in which company executives use the term “purge.”
But in an email to CNN, Cigna spokesman Chris Curran denied the company engages in “purging.”
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