Drinking alcohol can damage your liver and your brain. (Credit: Marlon E./Flickr Creative Commons)
Drinking is not only hard on your liver -- it may be killing your brain cells, NBC news reports. According to a new study out of Rutgers University, moderate or binge-drinking of alcohol can decrease your creation of brain cells by as much as 40 percent. Alcohol can affect your body's ability to regenerate cells or to repair damaged ones, and moderate drinking is classified as only a few drinks... so if you don't want to give up happy hour all together, doctors recommend alternating alcoholic drinks with water. This keeps you hydrated, and slows down your booze consumption.
A new form of contraception and STD prevention is being developed at a bioengineering lab at the University of Washington, the Los Angeles Times reports. A study out of the school shows that "electrically spun cloth with nanometer-sized fibers" can create a physical barrier inside a woman and stop the transmission of HIV and sperm.
Unemployed people are more likely to have heart attacks than those who are employed HealthNews reports. According to a new study, people who have recently lost their jobs are more likely to suffer a heart attack than their employed peers. Although conclusive evidence doesn't show that unemployment actually causes the heart attack, researchers say it may not having a job can lead to "stress, worsening lifestyle and poor management of chronic conditions" -- on top of probably not having health insurance.
Drug makers are protesting having to pay for a drug take-back program in California, the New York Times reports. Under a new law, these manufactures may have to establish and pay for a program that allows people to turn in their unused medicine. Leftover pills can pose health risks around the home; Young children can swallow them accidentally, and teen experimenting with drugs might take them.
Speaking of drugs, pot is now legal in Washington and Colorado -- but how will employers deal with employees who decide to take advantage of this new law? Bloomberg Businesweek reports that because pot is still illegal at the federal level, this poses especially difficult dilemmas for government-run agencies or police who are caught in between two law sets. For employees who decide to use the drug on their off hours and then fail a drug test at work, what should the consequences be? Should there be any?
