Men and Women Really Do See the World Differently

Guys' eyes are more sensitive to small details and moving objects, while women are more perceptive to color changes, according to a new vision study that suggests men and women actually do see things differently.

"As with other senses, such as hearing and the olfactory system, there are marked sex differences in vision between men and women," researcher Israel Abramov, of the City University of New York (CUNY), said in a statement. Research has shown women have more sensitive ears and sniffers than men.

"[A] recent, large review of the literature concluded that, in most cases females had better sensitivity, and discriminated and categorized odors better than males," Abramov and colleagues write Tuesday (Sept. 4) in the journal Biology of Sex Differences.

Abramov and his team from CUNY's Brooklyn and Hunter Colleges compared the vision of males and females over age 16 who had normal color vision and 20/20 sight — or at least 20/20 vision with glasses or contacts.

In one part of the study, the researchers asked the volunteers to describe different colors shown to them. They found that the guys required a slightly longer wavelength of a color to experience the same shade as women and the men were less able to tell the difference between hues. [Your Color Red Really Could Be My Blue]

The researchers also showed the participants images made up of light and dark bars that varied in width and alternated in color so that they appeared to flicker, a measure of participants' sensitivity to contrast. Compared with the women, the male volunteers were better able to identify the more rapidly changing images made up of thinner bars, the researchers said.

Abramov explained in a statement these elements of vision are linked to specific sets of thalamic neurons in the brain's primary visual cortex. The development of these neurons is controlled by male sex hormones called androgens when the embryo is developing into a fetus.

"We suggest that, since these neurons are guided by the cortex during embryogenesis, that testosterone plays a major role, somehow leading to different connectivity between males and females," Abramov said. "The evolutionary driving force between these differences is less clear."

Previous research found that men and women also focus differently. In experiments at the University of Southern California, researchers found that men are likely to fixate on the mouth of a person in conversation and also are more likely to be distracted by movement behind that person. Meanwhile, women tend to shift their gaze between a speaker's eyes and body, and they are more likely to be distracted by other people, the researchers found.

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Alcohol May Rewire Brain

New research on mice suggests heavy drinking may rewire the brain in a way that makes it harder for alcoholics bounce back from a traumatic experience.

In the study, a research team at the University of North Carolina (UNC) gave one group of mice heavy doses of alcohol (equivalent to twice the legal driving limit for humans) over the course of a month. Another group of mice was not given any alcohol and both groups were trained to fear the sound of a tone with mild electric shocks.

When the sound was repeatedly played without the shock, the mice in the control group eventually stopped being afraid of it. But the mice made alcoholics froze in place whenever they heard the tone, even when the threat of being shocked was long gone.

The researchers also looked at the brains of both groups. Compared with the control subjects, the alcohol-exposed mice had differently shaped nerve cells in the brain's prefrontal cortex and weakened activity of a key receptor, NMDA, the researchers found. Alcohol abuse might cause these specific changes in the brain, producing anxiety problems.

"Basically, our research shows that chronic exposure to alcohol can cause a deficit with regard to how our cognitive brain centers control our emotional brain centers," UNC researcher Thomas Kash explained in a statement.

The researchers drew similarities between this pattern and human patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), who have trouble psychologically recovering from trauma and experience fear when real danger is no longer present.

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South African Scientists Claim Breakthrough Drug Cures All Strains of Malaria

Malaria is the scourge of tropical nations, crippling its victims with symptoms like debilitating fever, convulsions and nausea, and killing half a million people annually. Now researchers in South Africa say they may have a one-size-fits-all solution, in the form of a new drug that could work with just one dose.

The drug is a synthetic molecule in a class of compounds known as aminopyridines, which are precursors to many drugs for neurological disorders. Scientists at Australia’s Griffith University were screening more than 6 million drug compounds and suggested aminopyridine for further study. Then a team of scientists led by Kelly Chibale at the University of Cape Town tested several of these compounds, settling on a suitable molecule that will now be tested further.


Most cases of malaria in Africa are caused by a parasite called Plasmodium falciparum, which lives in the salivary glands of female mosquitoes and is transferred into the human bloodstream when the bug bites.

This new drug killed the parasites instantly, according to reports from Cape Town media and the UCT — even those that are resistant to other anti-malarial drugs. Animal tests have not shown any negative side effects. Clinical trials on humans are set to start in 2013, South African government officials announced this week.

Efforts to curb malaria have extended all the way to mosquito eradication and genetic modification, yet the search for a cure-all has proved elusive. Malaria treatment involves a course of drugs, but in some cases the parasites have evolved to resist them.

South African officials trumpeted this new drug as a potential lifesaver for hundreds of thousands of people — and found on their own soil. “This is the first ever clinical molecule that’s been discovered out of Africa, by Africans, from a modern pharmaceutical industry drug discovery program,” Chibale was quoted saying.

Much more research remains to be done, and it could be at least seven years before any pill derived from this new compound is distributed throughout malaria-afflicted regions. But still, if this works, it could be an enormous breakthrough in a field that has haunted humanity — and the efforts of scientists to thwart it — for centuries.

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Why Your Cellphone Has More Bacteria Than a Toilet Seat

Cellphones carry 10 times more bacteria than most toilet seats, so it shouldn't be surprising that a man in Uganda reportedly contracted Ebola after stealing one.

He stole the phone from a quarantined ward of a hospital, near the site of a recent Ebola outbreak, reports said.

But regardless of your proximity to an Ebola outbreak, your cellphone is still probably pretty grimy, said Charles Gerba, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona.

"They've got quite a bit on them," Gerba said. "When's the last time you cleaned your cellphone?"

While toilets tend to get cleaned frequently, because people associate the bathroom with germs, cellphones and other commonly handled objects — like remote controls— are often left out of the cleaning routine.

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Retinal Detachement

Retinal detachment is a very serious condition that occurs when the retina pulls away from its supporting eye tissues. Since the retina can't work properly under these conditions, permanent vision loss may occur if a detachmentisn't repaired within 24-72 hours. There is no pain associated with retinal detachment, but if you notice vision problems -- such as seeing flashes of light, floaters, or a darkening of your peripheral vision -- contact your eye doctor immediately. Early diagnosis is key to preventing vision loss associated with a detached retina.

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Technology and Health

Now you can check your blood pressure using your iPhone or iPad with two products that make it easy — download an app onto your iOS device, put on a blood pressure cuff, tap the touchscreen, and soon you have a blood pressure reading that you can track every day. They’re quick and reasonably priced, but are they accurate?

For my tests, I pitted the iHealth BP3 for iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad against the Withings Blood Pressure Monitor, which also works with the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad. Our family doctor’s been taking blood pressure readings for 30 years, so I figured he’d be a good one to give me his opinion about these devices. So I took both units to his office and comparing their readings with that of an old-fashioned manual blood pressure cuff in his skilled hands.

This $99.95 iHealth BP3 blood pressure monitor also functions as a charging dock. I tested it with an iPad, iPad 2 and an iPhone 4, all of which fit easily into this attractive desktop unit. You plug the air hose into the side of the dock, and the other end is permanently attached to the blood pressure cuff.

The doctor showed me the proper way to use a blood pressure cuff, placing it about an inch above the elbow, and after touching the start button, the iHealth was doing its work, making a subdued whirring sound. Take a look at the video below that compares the two test units, and you’ll get an idea of how they work — they feel just like any other blood pressure cuff, and for this iHealth unit, the whole process took only 31 seconds for each test.

The free iHealth app looks great on the iPad and iPhone. It displays systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings as well as pulse rate. I especially like its graphing feature, which works in both portrait and landscape mode, showing you the history of blood pressure readings over time. I also like the way it can share blood pressure readings via email, but I’m not sure I’d want to opt for its other capabilities: sharing on Facebook or Twitter.

After two tests on each arm (with a bit of waiting in between for blood vessels to go back to their normal state), the blood pressure readings were all in the same range of around 120/80. While none of the readings were exactly alike, all were within the margin of error of the traditional blood pressure cuff used by the doctor.

This $129 Withings Blood Pressure Monitor is a self-contained unit, connected via the universal dock connector that plugs into an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. Its blood pressure cuff is more rigid, making it slightly less comfortable than the iHealth, but a little easier to manage when you’re placing it on your arm.

When you first connect the unit to your iOS device, you’re prompted to download the free Withings app. Because I already use a Withings Wi-Fi scale, I already had the app on my iPhone and iPad, and I immediately realized the advantage Withings has here: On a single graph, you can see daily measurements of your weight and body fat percentage delivered by Wi-Fi, along with your blood pressure readings from this blood pressure device. You can email all that data to your doctor or caretaker, too. This e-medicine routine gives you an idea of what the remote health care of the future might be like.

As I did with the iHealth BP3, my doctor and I performed three separate blood pressure readings on each arm (each test taking 35 seconds to complete, 4 seconds slower than the iHealth), and compared those to the readings taken by the doctor using the traditional blood pressure cuff. All the readings from the Withings unit were within the same range as the conventional blood pressure cuff and the iHealth BP3.

The doctor says: “It’s equally accurate,” but he thought the Withings self-contained blood pressure cuff was bulkier and less comfortable than the iHealth’s, and noticed that the way the connector plugged into the iPhone and iPad (without that dock used in the iHealth) made the screen less convenient to operate and view.

As you saw in the video above, the Withings system offers its results on a nicely designed app that shows the systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings as well as heart rate. The Withings app also allows its readings to be shared on Facebook and Twitter, and has the added advantage of connecting with Microsoft HealthVault and GoogleHealth, allowing you to keep all of your health records in one place.

Which is best? Both units are easy to use, accurate, and work well. If you don’t already have a charging dock for your iPad or iPhone, the iHealth would be a more practical choice, and at $99.95, it’s a better overall value. If you already have a Withings Wi-Fi scale, you might want to choose the Withings blood pressure monitor (even though it costs $29.05 more than the iHealth BP3), so you can coordinate your weight and body fat measurements with your blood pressure readings and see them all on one graph together.

Best of all, neither of these units require a stethoscope and medical training to use and are reasonably priced (especially if you already have an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch), giving you daily readings of your blood pressure that might make you aware of a previously unknown condition, and perhaps even save your life.

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Australian scientists implant early prototype of a “bionic eye” into a patient

A team of Australian scientists have implanted an early prototype of a “bionic eye” into a patient who suffered profound vision loss due to a retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disease. A University of Melbourne release describes the retinal prosthesis, which consists of a retinal implant with 24 electrodes.

In this recently posted video, the researchers discuss the process of designing, building and testing this early prototype to ensure its safety and efficacy for human implantation. Additionally, the recipient shares her experience participating in the project.

Similarly, researchers at Stanford have developed a retinal prosthesis that uses near-infrared light to deliver images and are continuing to test and refine the device

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Why memory and math don’t mix

They require opposing states of the same brain circuitry

Can you compute your taxes while simultaneously remembering what you had for lunch yesterday? Neither can I. But doing two things at once isn’t always hard – in fact, it can be as easy as listening to music while driving, or talking while washing the dishes.

Today, though, Stanford neuroscientist Josef Parvizi, MD, PhD, and his colleagues have shown in a study that recalling your own experiences and performing externally oriented tasks such as arithmetical reasoning are mutually exclusive. That’s because the same brain circuitry that must be activated for the former to proceed must be actively suppressed during the latter activity. As I describe in a release:

The researchers showed that groups of nerve cells in a structure called the posterior medial cortex, or PMC, are strongly activated during a recall task such as trying to remember whether you had coffee yesterday, but just as strongly suppressed when you’re engaged in solving a math problem.

The PMC sits roughly where the brain’s two hemispheres meet, making it one tough place to visit, technically speaking. Yet neuroscientists would love to learn much more about the PMC, because it’s known to be a key player in introspective activities such as remembering past experiences, imagining the future, and just plain daydreaming.

So Parvizi and his team turned to epileptics for assistance. These patients, whose seizures were unresponsive to drug therapy, had already had small sections of their skulls removed and plastic packets containing electrodes placed at the surface of their exposed brains. Their brain activity was then monitored for close to a week, so when seizures inevitably came, their exact point of origination could be identified. Then, surgeons could excise a tiny piece of tissue at that spot, breaking the positive-feedback loop of electrical-wave amplification that is a seizure.

Five to seven days of lying in a hospital bed leaves these people,  shall we say, bored out of their skulls, yet perfectly conscious.

Finding eight patients whose electrodes were situated close to the PMC region (the brain’s hemispheres are spaced far enough apart to shoehorn in an electrode-containing packet without causing any damage or pain), Parvizi’s team got their permission to do a study requiring no further medical manipulation and only modest mental effort. The volunteers were given laptops on which appeared batteries of true/false statements about memory (“I had coffee this morning”) or math (“67 + 6 = 75″) and recorded activity in the PMC.

The result: All the brain circuits flagged by the electrodes as highly active during the recall exercise were not merely passively silent, but actively suppressed, during arithmetical calculation. “It’s essentially impossible to do both at once,” says Parvizi.

And another important point about the work, pointed out to me by Parvizi: Epileptics are the unsung heroes of brain research. Much of what we know about how our cerebral operating systems is the result of these patients’ willingness to put their brains in the service of scientific research - literally.

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Cholera

Cholera is an infectious disease with diarrhea caused by eating food or drinking water contaminated with a bacterium called Vibrio cholerae.

Cholera was prevalent in the U.S. in the 1800s before modern water and sewage treatment systems eliminated its spread by contaminated water. However, cholera outbreaks are still a serious problem in other parts of the world, where cholera affects an estimated 3-5 million people and causes more than 100,000 deaths each year. Rarely, contaminated seafood has caused cholera outbreaks in the U.S.

The disease is most common in places with poor sanitation, crowding, war, and famine. Common locations include parts of Africa, south Asia, and Latin America. If you are traveling to one of those areas, knowing the following cholera facts can help protect you and your family.

Cholera Causes

Vibrio cholerae, the bacterium that causes cholera, is usually found in food or water contaminated by feces from a person with the infection. Common sources include:

• municipal water supplies

• ice made from municipal water

• foods and drinks sold by street vendors

• vegetables grown with water containing human wastes

• raw or undercooked fish and seafood caught in waters polluted with sewage

• When a person consumes the contaminated food or water, the bacteria release a toxin in the intestines that produces severe diarrhea.

It is not likely you will catch cholera just from casual contact with an infected person.

Cholera Symptoms

Symptoms of cholera can begin as soon as a few hours or as long as five days after infection. Often symptoms are mild. But sometimes they are very serious. About one in 20 people infected have severe watery diarrhea accompanied by vomiting, which can quickly lead to dehydration. Although many infected people may have minimal or no symptoms, they can still contribute to spread of the infection.

Signs and symptoms of dehydration include:

• Rapid heart rate

• Loss of skin elasticity (the ability to return to original position quickly if pinched)

• Dry mucous membranes, including the inside of the mouth, throat, nose, and eyelids

• Low blood pressure

• Thirst

• Muscle cramps

If not treated, dehydration can lead to shock and death in a matter of hours.

Cholera Treatment and Prevention

Although there is a vaccine against cholera, the CDC and World Health Organization don't normally recommend it because it may not protect up to half of the people who receive it and it lasts only a few months. However, you can protect yourself and your family by using only water that has been boiled, water that has been chemically disinfected, or bottled water. Be sure to use the bottled, boiled, or chemically disinfected water for the following purposes:

• Drinking

• Preparing food or drinks

• Making ice

• Brushing your teeth

• Washing your face and hands

• Washing dishes and utensils that you use to eat or prepare food

• Washing fruits and vegetables

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Facts About Dreaming

Dreams can be entertaining, disturbing, or downright bizarre. We all dream -- even if we don't remember it the next day. But why do we dream? And what do dreams mean, anyway?

What Are Dreams?

Dreams are basically stories and images our mind creates while we sleep. Dreams can be vivid. They can make you feel happy, sad, or scared. And they may seem confusing or perfectly rational.

Dreams can occur anytime during sleep. But most vivid dreams occur during deep, REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, when the brain is most active. Some experts say we dream at least four to six times per night.

Why Do We Dream?

There are many theories about why we dream, but no one knows for sure. Some researchers say dreams have no purpose or meaning and are nonsensical activities of the sleeping brain. Others say dreams are necessary for mental, emotional, and physical health.

Studies have shown the importance of dreams to our health and well-being. In one study, researchers woke subjects just as they were drifting off into REM sleep. They found that those who were not allowed to dream experienced:

• Increased tension

• Anxiety

• Depression

• Difficulty concentrating

• Lack of coordination

• Weight gain

• Tendency to hallucinate

Many experts say that dreams exist to:

• Help solve problems in our lives

• Incorporate memories

• Process emotions

• If you go to bed with a troubling thought, you may wake with a solution, or at least feel better about the situation.

Sigmund Freud believed dreams are a window into our subconscious. He believed they reveal a person's:

• Unconscious desires

• Thoughts

• Motivations

• Freud thought dreams were a way for people to satisfy urges and desires that were unacceptable to society.

Perhaps there is merit with all these theories. Some dreams may help our brains process our thoughts and the events of the day. Others may just be the result of normal brain activity and mean very little, if anything. Researchers are still trying to figure out exactly why we dream.

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LASIK Eye Surgery

LASIK, which stands for laser in-situ keratomileusis, is a popular surgery used to correct vision in people who are nearsighted, farsighted, or have astigmatism.

All laser vision correction surgeries work by reshaping the cornea, the clear front part of the eye, so that light traveling through it is properly focused onto the retina located in the back of the eye. LASIK is one of a number of different surgical techniques used to reshape the cornea.

What Are the Advantages of LASIK Eye Surgery?

LASIK has many benefits, including:

• It works! It corrects vision. Around 90% of patients will have their desired vision after LASIK. An enhancement can further increase this number.

• LASIK is associated with very little pain.

• Vision is corrected nearly immediately or by the day after LASIK.

• No bandages or stitches are required after LASIK.

• Adjustments can be made years after LASIK to further correct vision.

• After having LASIK, most patients have a dramatic reduction in eyeglass or contact lens dependence and many patients no longer need them at all.

What Are the Disadvantages of LASIK Eye Surgery?

Despite the pluses, there are some disadvantages to LASIK eye surgery:

• Changes made to the cornea cannot be reversed after LASIK.

• LASIK is technically complex. Problems may occur when the doctor cuts the flap, which can permanently affect vision.

• LASIK can rarely cause a loss of "best" vision. Your best vision is the highest degree of vision that you achieved while wearing your contacts or eyeglasses.

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How to Get Rid of Gingivitis

Gingivitis is a common form of gum disease that causes swelling or inflammation of your gums. Gingivitis can cause your gums to become swollen and begin to bleed just by brushing the teeth, eating or just touching the gums. The condition is the preclude to periodontal disease, which is a disease of the tissues that surround the neck and root of the teeth. There is a way to get rid of gingivitis, but it has to done every day or it won’t help for long.

Instructions

Use dental floss to clean between your teeth. You need to floss first so you loosen anything caught between your teeth. Use either dental floss, floss picks or floss wands. They are available in waxed, non-wax, flavored or unflavored.


Brush your teeth. Brushing after you floss will help to get rid of anything loosened between your teeth. Rmember to brush along the gum line, up, down and across your teeth because plaque can get set up at the gum line, not just between the teeth.


Scrape your tongue with a tongue scrapper or the back of your toothbrush. Scrape back to front several times. This will help to remove any bacteria on your tongue, which can contribute to bad breath and plaque buildup.


Make a paste with baking soda and peroxide. Apply this paste to your gums, gently massaging it in. Leave it on for a few minutes and then rinse with water.


Rinse with mouthwash. There are many brands and flavors of mouthwash. Find one that can help prevent gingivitis, and that helps reduce plaque buildup and kills oral bacteria. This, in turn, helps defeat and prevent bad breath.


Visit your dentist. If your gums are puffy, red, swollen or bleeding, you need to see your dentist. Getting a professional tooth cleaning will help remove the plaque and tartar that cause gingivitis and can prevent the gingivitis from progressing to periodontal disease.

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10 Easy Ways to Get Stronger Without Machines or Weights here

Sit-Ups, Push-Ups, Chin-Ups, Running, Martial Arts, Sports, Swimming, Aerobics, Hiking, Yoga

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Exercise May Fight Depression in Heart Failure

Exercise helps people with heart failure feel a bit better, physically and emotionally, a new study shows. It may also lower a person's risk of dying or winding up in the hospital.

Up to 40% of people with heart failure grapple with depression. The combination often leads to poor health outcomes. One study found seriously depressed people with heart failure were more than twice as likely to die or be hospitalized over the course of a year compared to other people with heart failure who weren't depressed.

"Whenever patients are more depressed, their motivation goes down. Their ability to keep up with their doctors' recommendations goes down. Their ability to get out and do basic physical activities like walking goes down," as does their health, says David A. Friedman, MD, chief of Heart Failure Services at North Shore-LIJ Plainview Hospital in New York. "It's a vicious cycle."

"This [study] ... shows a non-drug way to try to improve patients' mood and motivation. That's the best thing you can do," says Friedman, who was not involved in the research.

Testing Exercise for Depression

For the study, which is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers assigned more than 2,322 stable heart failure patients to a program of regular aerobic exercise or usual care. Usual care consisted of information on disease management and general advice to exercise.

The exercise group started with a standard exercise prescription for patients in cardiac rehab: three 30-minute sessions on either a treadmill or stationary bike each week. After three months, they moved to unsupervised workouts at home. At home, their goal was to get 120 minutes of activity a week.

Just as happens in the real world, most exercisers fell short of their weekly goals.

Despite the fact that they weren't as active as they were supposed to be, they still had slightly better scores on a 63-point depression test than the group assigned to usual care. There was a little less than a one-point difference between the two groups. But the differences persisted even after a year, leading researchers to think the result wasn't a fluke.

And the exercisers were about 15% less likely to die or be hospitalized for heart failure compared with the group getting usual care.

Researchers think the differences between the two groups were small because most people in the study weren't depressed to begin with. Only 28% had test scores high enough to indicate clinical depression.

But the more depressed a person was, the more they had to gain from regular exercise. After a year, test scores of depressed patients were about 1.5 points better in the exercise group compared to those assigned to usual care.

"We know that exercise is beneficial in terms of improving cardiovascular fitness. Now we know depression is also reduced in these patients," says researcher James A. Blumenthal, PhD, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

"For people who were more depressed, they experienced a greater reduction in their depressive symptoms with exercise," he says.

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Curing the College Acne Blues

Why your skin can break out in college and what you can do about it.

College may be good for the mind, but it can be tough on your skin. Maxine Hillman, a 21-year-old junior, can attest to this. She had struggled with acne since the fourth grade, but with the help of a dermatologist, she finally got it under control in her teens. That is, until her first year at the University of California, San Diego. Pizza, breadsticks, and ice cream, a heavy course load as a linguistics and Latin double major, and a shift in sleep patterns ("I was napping more than I did in preschool") all led to what she calls "a monumental skin freak-out."

"The college years are a prime time for breaking out, even for people who went through the bulk of their teen years without acne," says Jody Levine, MD, assistant clinical professor of dermatology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. "Your skin reflects your overall health, and the disruptions in diet, exercise, and sleep, plus stress, can all lead to acne flare-ups."

For Hillman and other young adults battling breakouts, sticking to a simple skin care routine is the best defense. Here's what our experts recommend.

Facial Skin Care

Cleanse Before bedtime, wash your skin with a cleansing bar or lotion formulated for the face, such as Neutrogena Fresh Foaming Cleanser ($5.49), Levine says. If you have dry skin, says Adam Friedman, MD, director of dermatologic research at New York City's Montefiore Medical Center, choose a mild non-soap cleanser like Cetaphil Daily Facial Cleanser ($8.49) to avoid stripping away the oils your skin needs. Don't skip this daily step! Going to sleep with the day's accumulation of grime, dead skin cells, and makeup clogging your pores can lead to acne bacteria growth, says Friedman.

In the morning, just splash lukewarm water over your face. "Overwashing will dry out your skin and rinse away those good oils and fats that protect skin from the nastiness in the world, like dirt and bacteria," Friedman says.

For acne-prone skin, choose a cleanser with benzoyl peroxide or salicylic acid. These ingredients kill the bacteria that cause acne and remove excess skin cells that can clog pores.

Hydrate and Protect Every morning, year-round, smooth on a lotion with a sun protection factor (SPF). "Damaging rays come through clouds and even glass," says Levine. "When you make using sunscreen every morning part of your routine, it becomes a habit so you don't have to think about it."

While your skin is still damp, apply a broad-spectrum, moisturizing sunscreen with an SPF 30 or higher. You want a broad-spectrum product because it protects against both UVA radiation (the aging rays) and UVB (the burning rays) as well as skin cancer. Make sure the label says "noncomedogenic," which means it won't clog pores.

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Shingles

Shingles or Something Else?

Small blisters that appear only on the lips or around the mouth may be cold sores, sometimes called fever blisters. They're not shingles, but are instead caused by the herpes simplex virus. 

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Are Mites Causing Your Rosacea?

Bacteria From Tiny Bugs May Be at the Root of Troubling Skin Condition

A tiny mite may be the cause of the skin condition rosacea.

Rosacea causes flushing, redness, and bumps across the nose, cheeks, chin, and forehead. It usually strikes after age 30 and affects more women than men. It tends to flare in response to certain triggers, like sun exposure or emotional stress.

“Previously, people had no real idea what caused the condition,” says researcher Kevin Kavanagh, PhD, a biologist at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth in Kildare, Ireland.

Antibiotics can help clear a rosacea flare-up. And doctors once thought that was because of the drugs’ calming effect on underlying inflammation. But puzzlingly, other drugs that target inflammation, like corticosteroids, don’t seem to help.

So Kavanagh and his team started searching for bacteria that might trigger rosacea.

How Mites Might Cause Rosacea

“We found these bacteria inside these little Demodex mites,” Kavanagh says.

Demodex mites live on the skin of 20% to 80% of adults. The tiny bugs are invisible to the naked eye. Until recently, it was thought that the mites lived harmlessly, feeding off the oily sebum that coats the skin.

Kavanagh says changes in the skin brought on by age, stress, or illness sometimes allows the population of Demodex mites to swell. Research shows that people with rosacea have more than 10 times as many Demodex mites on their skin as people without the condition.

“When each of those [mites] dies, they release bacteria into the skin,” he says.

Those bacteria trigger an immune reaction that causes redness and inflammation of the skin. The mites themselves don’t seem to be harmful, Kavanagh says. It’s the bacteria they have inside their bodies.

“You can think of them like a bus,” he says. “They bus in large numbers of bacteria. But it’s not the bus that’s the problem; it’s the bacteria that get off the bus that’s the problem.”

Kavanagh sums up the research linking Demodex mites to rosacea in a new review published in the Journal of Medical Microbiology.

More Research Needed

Right now, the idea that mites may cause at least some cases of rosacea is still just a theory. But experts who were not involved in the research say there's convincing evidence to back it up.

"It's not far-fetched at all," says Michele Green, MD, a dermatologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. "It makes perfect sense to me."

Green says the mite theory fits many features of the disease. She says many people with rosacea notice that their skin gets worse after exposure to heat and humidity, conditions that also help mites thrive.

Pharmaceutical companies also think there's something to the idea. Galderma, the company that makes Metrogel, a topical antibiotic often prescribed to treat rosacea, is reportedly testing a product that targets Demodex mites.

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Pinkeye

What Is Pinkeye?

Pinkeye -- also called conjunctivitis -- is redness and inflammation of the clear membranes covering the whites of the eyes and the membranes on the inner part of the eyelids. Pinkeye is most often caused by a virus or by a bacterial infection, although allergies, chemical agents, and underlying diseases can also play a role.

Is Pinkeye Contagious?

Viral and bacterial pinkeye are extremely contagious. It's easily spread through poor hand washing or by sharing an object (like a towel) with someone who has it. It can also spread through coughing and sneezing. Kids diagnosed with infectious pinkeye should stay out of school or day care for a short period of time. Allergic pinkeye (caused by seasonal pollens, animal dander, cosmetics, and perfumes) and chemical pinkeye (from chemicals or liquids, including bleach and furniture polish) are not contagious.

Symptom: Eye Redness

Redness of the eye is the typical, telltale symptom of pinkeye. Pinkeye is a common condition that is rarely serious and unlikely to cause long-term eye or vision damage if promptly detected and treated.

Symptom: Swollen, Red Eyelids

The symptoms of infectious pinkeye typically begin in one eye and involve the other eye within a few days. Symptoms of allergic pinkeye usually involve both eyes. Swelling of the eyelids is more common with bacterial and allergic pinkeye.

Symptom: Lots of Tearing

Viral and allergic pinkeye are known for causing more tear production than usual.

Symptom: Itchy or Burning Eyes

You would know it if you felt it -- that overwhelming itchy, burning feeling in the eyes, which is typical of pinkeye.

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