Cheerleading is linked to very serious injuries
Over the last 25 years, cheerleading accounted for two-thirds of all catastrophic sports injuries experienced by high school and college females in the U.S., a much higher proportion than previously thought, a new report says. “If these cheerleading activities are not taught by a competent coach and keep increasing in difficulty, catastrophic injuries will continue to be a part of cheerleading,” said Frederick Mueller, director of the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research, based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Chewing gum can help after surgery on gut
Chewing gum after abdominal surgery may help in recovery, British researchers found. They found that chewing gum reduced the time for the gut to become active and lowered the incidence of obstruction of the bowel that sometimes follows surgery. The authors, writing in the August issue of The Archives of Surgery, suggest that chewing gum stimulates the release of gastrointestinal hormones while avoiding the nausea and vomiting often caused by eating too soon after an operation.
Premature births linked to infections
Infections of amniotic fluid may be a major cause of premature births, says a study led by researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine. The researchers analyzed amniotic fluid from 166 women in preterm labor and found that 15 percent of the samples contained bacteria or fungi. Women with the highest degree of infection were most likely to deliver more premature, sicker infants.
Likely culprits cleared of diverticulitis risk
A new study questions the conventional wisdom that people with diverticular disease should avoid eating popcorn, seeds, nuts and corn. The study of more than 47,000 men found that eating those foods did not seem to increase the risk of diverticulitis, an inflammation of the pouches that form in the colons of people with diverticulosis. It has been believed that those foods may be more likely to become lodged within the pouches, but no such link has been proved.
