Researchers believe that facial expressions may influence emotional responses. It is believed that the brain uses facial responses as a feedback mechanism for emotional responses. If facial movements are restricted the less feedback the brain receives and less emotional response the person feels. Botox injects in the face prevent facial movements because the drug paralyzes muscles that are responsible for creating wrinkles.

In recent years, Botox has subject to regulatory and legal scrutiny after the FDA warned that the primary ingredient in Botox, botulinium A, can migrate away from the injection site and cause damage to muscles in other areas of the body. Botox is marketed and manufactured by Allergan, Inc. of Irvine, California. Last month, a jury in Oklahoma awarded a $15 million verdict against Allergan on behalf of a physician who suffered botulism poisoning after receiving Botox injections.

It is, if you believe Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez. The leader recently told a gathering of her nation’s pork farming industry that she has heard that eating a piece of grilled pork is better in the bedroom than taking the popular erectile dysfunction drug.

“I’ve just been told something I didn’t know; that eating pork improves your sex life,” the President confided in a recent speech, according to a Reuters news report. “I’d say it’s a lot nicer to eat a bit of grilled pork than take Viagra.”

Her evidence that eating pork works better than Viagra? A recent romantic getaway with her husband that included a diet of barbecued pork, she said.

“Things went very well that weekend, so it could well be true,” the President said in a speech televised across her South American country.

Argentines eat more beef per person than any nation in the world, but the government reportedly is trying to boost the popularity of pork due to rising steak prices.

So, will the President’s shockingly unconventional endorsement of the alleged sexual health benefits of eating pork cause people in Argentina and around the world to eat more pork? We’ll have to wait and see.

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs for short, have been used for about 40 years as flame retardants in foam furniture, electronics, fabrics, carpets and plastics, according to a Los Angeles Times report. Health concerns about the chemicals have led to bans in some states and a general decline in their use.

However, PBDEs are still used and now are being blamed for causing infertility in women exposed to the chemicals, according to researchers from the University of California, Berkeley. PBDEs have been linked to reproductive and other health complications before, including a 2008 study which found a link between the chemicals and thyroid levels in men and a more recent study which concluded they can cause neurodevelopmental delays in young children.

Pregnant Women Studied

For the study, the researchers measured PBDE levels in blood samples from 223 pregnant women, mostly Mexican immigrants living in an agricultural community, the Times reports. The women were asked how long they had been trying to get pregnant by being sexually active without using birth control.

The researchers found women with the highest concentrations of the chemicals in the blood were more likely to have difficulty becoming pregnant. For every 10-fold increase in blood concentration of PBDEs, there was a 30 percent decrease in the likelihood of becoming pregnant each month, the study found.

“It’s a pretty strong effect,” Kim Harley, associate director of the Center for Children’s Environmental Health Research at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health and a lead author of the new study, told the Times. “They can all become pregnant, but they all had very different amounts of time it took them to become pregnant.”

Most People Have PBDEs in Their Blood

PBDEs are so widely used in various consumer products and foods that an estimated 97 percent of Americans have detectable levels of the chemicals in their blood. Household products sprayed with the chemicals to make them flame resistant are the leading way people are exposed to the chemicals.

However, researchers said it is still unclear why exposure to PBDEs causes infertility in women.

A combination of the cancer agent DFMO and the arthritis drug sulindac has been found to lower the risk of developing colon polyps, which can lead to colon cancer, according to a WebMD report. However, the same researchers who found the benefits of the drug cocktail now say it may only work in people who limit their intake of polyamines.

Polyamines are chemicals found in food which have been shown to increase the risks of colon cancer. Red meat and other foods which are high in polyamines appear to interfere with the drugs’ ability to fight cancer, the scientists said.

In patients who consumed large amounts of polyamines in their diet, the mix of DFMO and sulindac “clearly had no benefit,” the study found.

Colon cancer is a leading killer of Americans, claiming about 160,000 lives in 2009. About one in 19 people in the United States will contract colon cancer.

Researchers from the University of California, Irvine examined data on about 200 people who participated in their original study of DFMO and sulindac. All of the patients had at least one colorectal polyp, also known as adenomas, removed in the past year.

The study participants were categorized depending on their level of polyamine intake. The study team found people with the highest consumption of polyamines had larger polyps and more advanced polyps with greater odds of going on to cancer compared to people with lower levels of the chemicals.

A new study conducted by the Archives of Internal Medicine followed 1,506 female soccer players aged 16 to 19 for nine months while they participated in a training program or a control group. The training group concentrated on motor skills and body control, as a means to prepare the young women for sports-specific stresses. Sessions consisted of warm-up, balance, muscle activation, strength and core stability. The other group did its training and warm-up routine as usual.

Among the players who took part in the special training program, three sustained injuries. Although the injuries were serious, all three returned to the field within six months of being hurt. Thirteen players in the control group had knee injuries, most of which were severe. Only four returned to full activity within six months.

The researchers concluded that the training program was linked to a 77% lower frequency of any knee injury, and a 90% lower rate of non-contact knee injuries. Study authors emphasized that the program requires no special equipment and is easy to incorporate into regular sports practices.

Mothers-to-be who allow oral bacteria to go unchecked can cause their babies to be born with low birth weight or prematurely, a new study finds. In one case, bacteria from a mother’s gums led to an infection in a full-term baby that was stillborn, according to an MSNBC.com report.

The dangers of gum disease bacteria to unborn babies have been reported before, but the new study from researchers at Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio is the first to connect a mother’s gum infection to a stillborn birth, officials said.

Earlier studies of the oral bacteria Fusobacterium nucleatum in mice found the bacteria could spread from the bloodstream to the placenta. The university study was designed to determine whether the same was possible in people.

The researchers said bacteria from a mother’s mouth can easily enter her bloodstream once her gums are open and bleeding. From there, the bacteria can be quickly passed to the fetus through the placenta.

The California woman whose baby was stillborn reportedly experienced heavy bleeding from her gums associated with gum disease during her pregnancy. About 75 percent of pregnant women develop the condition due to normal hormonal changes and mild gum disease can be treated simply by brushing and flossing more often, researchers said. However, more serious cases of bloody gums during pregnancy may require dental surgery.

While the study’s findings and the report of the stillborn baby may scare many expectant mothers and drive them to obsessively brush and floss, physicians caution against feeling overly alarmed, MSNBC.com reports.

“This is just one case,” said Dr. Richard H. Beigi, an obstetric infectious disease specialist and an assistant professor of reproductive science at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “Most pregnant women have bleeding gums and most don’t have dead babies. This can happen, but it’s rare. And this finding doesn’t mean that it’s increasing.”

Researchers from the University of Denmark’s National Food Institute tested the well-known health adage and found apples contain pectin, a chemical compound that can increase levels of good bacteria in the body’s digestive system, producing better digestion and lower risks of some diseases.

The study findings were published online Jan. 20 in the journal BMC Microbiology.

“In our study we found that rats eating a diet high in pectin, a component of dietary fiber in apples, had increased amounts of certain bacteria that may improve intestinal health,” study co-researcher Andrea Wilcks said in a news release from the journal’s publisher. “It seems that when apples are eaten regularly and over a prolonged period of time, these bacteria help produce short-chain fatty acids that provide ideal pH conditions for ensuring a beneficial balance of microorganisms. They also produce a chemical called butyrate, which is an important fuel for the cells of the intestinal wall.”

While the study is an encouraging sign of the health benefits of eating apples, it may be too soon to rush out the farmers market and buy a bunch. The study was conducted on laboratory rats and need to be further investigated and refined to apply the findings to humans, the researchers said.

The Food and Drug Administration said it is now considering adopting tougher rules and new warnings for tanning beds that use sunlamps which are linked to increased cancer risks.

Last summer, the World Health Organization’s cancer division put tanning beds on its list of cancer-causers. While tanning bed use has long been suspected of probably causing cancer, recent medical studies have now found that the risk of melanoma jumps by 75 percent in people who used tanning beds in their teens and 20s, according to an Associated Press report. Those findings were the final nail in the coffin for tanning beds as far as the FDA is concerned.

While tanning beds already carry some warnings about a link to cancer, the FDA recently decided those labels must be more visible and better convey the risks to users, especially to young people. In March 2009, an advisory FDA panel of scientific experts was asked to consider recommending stricter tanning bed regulations, including stricter warnings.

Part of the FDA’s concern is how often people use tanning beds, which can determine the cancer risk. In additional to melanoma skin cancer, UV exposure from the “fake bake” also is linked to basal and squamous cell carcinomas, which affect more than 1 million Americans a year, the AP reports.

A new study from researchers at Texas AgriLife Research says the sweet, tropical fruit often whipped into smoothies, blended into a margarita, or eaten right out of the skin doesn’t get enough credit for its ability to reduce cancerous cells, particularly those in the breast and colon, according to a UPI news report.

Instead, other fruits like blueberries, acai berries, and grapes get all the credit for their cancer-fighting properties, even though the little mango does just as good a job, the researchers said. It’s a bit of a mystery as to how the mango does so well against cancer, since it contains about five times less anti-oxidant capacity than a typical wine grape, the study found.

The study tested mango polyphenol extracts on colon, breast, lung, prostate, and leukemia cancer cells and found the substances held their own in terms of fighting the cancer cells while not harming adjoining healthy cells.

So have a mango and fight cancer!

The study tracked women who received a shot of depot medroxyprogesterone acetate, also known as DMPA or Depo-Provera, every three months. Forty-five percent of the study subjects experienced bone mineral density losses of 5 percent or more in the hip or lower spine. The researchers said that the bone loss was significant because recovering bone mass can be a slow process. Many women experience hip fractures later in life.

Over two million women in the United States choose Depo-Provera as a birth-control method. Researchers caution women to take calcium supplements and avoid smoking if they use the contraceptive. The study was published in the January issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Many American women choose to have so-called C-sections instead of vaginal births, but the procedures are still major surgeries which increase the risks of infection, bleeding, blood clots, and injuries to organs, the researchers said.

The Minnesota researchers say most mothers should wait for spontaneous labor and C-sections should be reserved for cases of diabetes, high blood pressure, where the baby or mother are in danger, or where the mother is at least 10 days past her due date, according to a Reuters news report.

The university team examined birth certificates for about 38,000 women from 13 New York State hospitals from January 2004 to March 2008. They excluded women who had scheduled or previous cesarean deliveries and those who had come to the hospital with ruptured membranes.

They found that all groups of women who had induced labor faced increased risk for C-section, except for women who were delivering after 39 weeks, according to Reuters. The study’s findings are published in the January 2010 issue of the medical journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.

A new study has found that calorie counts listed on restaurant foods and frozen meals sold in supermarkets may not accurately reflect the actual calories in the foods. In some cases, there were more than twice as many calories in the meals than the amount listed on the menu or packaging, according to the study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

For the study, researchers evaluated 29 quick-serve meals, dishes served in sit-down restaurants, and frozen entrees sold in grocery stores. They found the measured energy values of the quick-serve and restaurant meals were on average 18 percent more than the stated values. The calories in frozen meals from grocery store freezer sections were an average of 8 percent more than listed.

Some restaurant meals contained as much as 200 percent of the stated calorie count and free side dishes offered along with the meals packed an average of 245 percent more calories than was listed, the researchers said.

“These findings suggest that stated energy contents of reduced-energy meals obtained from restaurants and supermarkets are not consistently accurate,” the study’s authors said in a statement summarizing their research. “If widespread, this phenomenon could hamper efforts to self-monitor energy intake to control weight and could also reduce the potential benefit of recent policy initiatives to disseminate information on food energy content at the point of purchase.”

The study is an important finding because millions of women take folic acid tablets or multivitamins containing the ingredient just before conception through the first trimester. However, the study’s findings apply only to taking folic acid later in pregnancy and the recommendation to take 400 micrograms of folic acid per day earlier in pregnancy still stands, according to a Reuters news report.

For the study, researchers examined asthma rates among more than 400 children and found just under 12 percent of the children had developed asthma by age 3, and the same percentage had the lung disease at age 5.

Overall, the study found children whose mothers took folic acid in late pregnancy — from the 30th week on — were 25 percent more likely to have asthma at age 3 compared with children whose mothers did not take folic acid at that point in pregnancy.

The children also were more likely to have persistent asthma symptoms from the age of 3 through age 5, the study found.

The study’s authors said they are not sure why folic acid supplements in late pregnancy appear to increase asthma risks in some children. However, animal studies suggest that folate can alter the activity of immune-system-regulating genes in the lung tissue, potentially making it more susceptible to allergic reactions, Reuters reports.

In the study, 50 breast cancer patients were randomly given acupuncture or drug therapy for 12 weeks. After the treatment period ended, patients were tracked for one year to monitor their overall health.

Both groups of patients initially experienced a 50 percent reduction in hot flashes and depression, indicating that acupuncture was as effective as the drugs. Acupuncture was also reported to improve patients’ energy and clarity of thought. Two weeks after the treatment stopped, hot flashes increased in the medication group but remained minimal in the acupuncture group. Researchers concluded that acupuncture had more benefits, as opposed to more side effects, for breast cancer patients.

There is currently a lack of clinical trial data about use of medications during pregnancy, the FDA said. Pregnant women had to wait months for clinical trials testing the safety of the H1N1 vaccine, for instance. It is estimated that about two-thirds of women who give birth have taken at least one prescription drug, according to a study in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

To overcome the many challenges posed by the lack of data, the program will link health care information for mothers and babies in each of the participating research sites. The 11 participating sites have information for about 1 million births over the past seven years. “This program is a great example of FDA and the private sector working together to improve the health of pregnant women and their children,” Commissioner of Food and Drugs Margaret Hamburg said.

The program is a collaboration between the FDA and researchers at the HMO Research Center for Education and Therapeutics.