Croon to your heart's beat

Pump up your heart
Watch what you put in your ears. The wrong music could hurt your heart, say University of Maryland researchers. They found that the blood vessels of people who were subjected to songs they didn't like constricted by six per cent in just 30 minutes. On the flip side, listeners who grooved to their personal playlists saw their blood vessels expand by 26 per cent. That means their bodies were pumping out more nitric oxide, a chemical that helps prevent the clots that can lead to a heart attack, says researcher Michael Miller, MD.

A flu-proof plan
If you still haven't gotten your flu shot, here's more incentive to do so: The influenza vaccine may help prevent potentially fatal blood clots. French researchers recently found that people who had been vaccinated were 48 per cent less likely to develop the dangerous blood-clotting condition-deep-vein thrombosis- than those who skipped the injection. Inflammation produced by the viral infection may thicken your blood, increasing the odds of deadly clotting.
Tell us where it hurts
Your nervous system sometimes leads you to perceive that pain from an injury is coming from a different area, an anomaly known as 'referred pain'.

Pain in…
May be caused by…

Your ears
A cavity or gum disease

Your right shoulder
A gallbladder attack or an inflamed liver

Your leg
A herniated disk in your lower back

Your elbow
Problems in your cervical spine

Your left elbow
A heart attack!
Pulse
(Facts you never knew)

Plastic bottles
A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that people with the highest urine levels of bisphenol A, a chemical in plastics, are more likely to develop diabetes than others.

Tall order
New British research has determined that a man's risk of developing prostate cancer over a five-year period increases by 6 per cent for every four inches of height above 5'8". The hormones involved in human development may also spur cancerous growth.


Lick your wounds
Ever wondered why mouth ulcers clear up in days but a shaving cut takes weeks to heal? Scientists from the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology found human spit heals wounds super fast. When they created a fake wound, and applied human saliva, it healed in 16 hours.

A protein in saliva called histatin is anti-bacterial and promotes cell-repair. It's easy to create, so could soon be on our shelves in salve form as an active alternative to antibiotic creams.

Fact of life
4.2 crore Indians suffer from thyroid-related disorders.
Source: Indian Thyroid Society