Stress

"Oh, you mean the guy with the 70-year-old head and the 20-year-old body-builder body? That picture has got to be Photoshopped." Dr. Jeffry Life smiles when I tell him about the general reaction I get about the famous picture of him with his shirt off, the shot that turned a mild-mannered doctor in his mid-60s into a poster boy for super-fit aging and controversial hormone replacement Appearing in medical-clinic ads in airline magazines and...

Nobody has yet used the "c" word — cheating — to describe the imbroglio that has scrambled the testing schedule at Chatsworth High this month. But another "c" word — confusion — has forestalled end-of-the-year revelry for dozens of hardworking students, who will have to retake or reschedule a series of Advanced Placement exams. The official statement from Los Angeles Unified about the testing problems blames "an irregular pattern in conducting" an AP psychology exam last week.

Growing up in a stressful environment isn't conducive to becoming a well-adjusted adult. Studies have shown that people who faced constant stress during childhood have an increased risk of being depressed later. How are the two related? A study published this week by the journal Nature Neuroscience may have found a link. It reports that stress at a young age permanently alters the activity of a key gene in the brain, resulting in a lifetime of elevated levels of a hormone that contributes to depression.

NEW YORK — Spanish-language media giant Univision Communications touted something that its English-language broadcast rivals cannot: Prime-time ratings at its flagship TV network, Univision, have grown 7% during the current season. Ratings gains in an era of shrinking TV audiences are uncommon as major broadcasters struggle to maintain their standing. Cable channels, social media and advances in technology — including digital video recorders — continue to nibble away at viewership, particularly among younger audiences.

Teas from across the globe are becoming more and more popular in the U.S. One relative newcomer, yerba mate, is attracting fans for its allegedly jitter-free caffeine boost and high antioxidant content. Lab research suggests some potential health benefits from drinking yerba mate, but studies of lifelong yerba mate drinkers in the tea's native South America suggest the brew increases the risk of some cancers -- a fact most marketing campaigns omit.

The economy, the economy, the economy -- Americans seem able to think of little else. How could they? The negative reports on job losses, on tanking investments, housing prices and consumer confidence keep coming, leaving us not just unwilling to spend, but stressed out and fearful. That stress takes a toll -- on sleep, mood, physical health, relationships, diet (and thus weight) and, perhaps, our willingness to indulge in favorite vices. "Times of economic stress lead to increased rates of depression," says Dr. Christopher Palmer, director of continuing education at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass.

Oprah Winfrey recently informed the nation on "Good Morning America" that she "blew out her thyroid" at the end of last season because of stress. But that isn't exactly a medical term. No one blows out a thyroid, says endocrinologist Dr. Terry Smith of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. "What is that? Like a right rear tire on a Ferrari?" he asks.

Casey Abrams wowed audiences on Season 10 of "American Idol" with his unique bluesy singing style. But his talent was briefly overshadowed when he was hospitalized during the show for complications of ulcerative colitis, a condition he was diagnosed with in college, but hadn't publicly revealed. Looking back now, Abrams says the episode was a blessing in disguise. "When I read on TMZ that I was in the hospital I thought, I guess I have to talk about it now. It was a good kick in the butt to get it out there.

Los Angeles will gay anybody up. In the two months since I moved here, I've bought a yellow convertible Mini Cooper, a pair of Guess jeans and started using one of those fitness balls as my desk chair. This is a town so gay that Republicans don't even run for mayor. So when ABC Entertainment President Steve McPherson told Time magazine, in a story about the preponderance of gay TV show creators, that "if being gay makes you that talented, I'm going gay," I had to give it some serious thought.

Could stress play a role in the development of breast cancer? Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago wondered about this. After all, the components of what experts call “psychosocial stress” - including fear, anxiety and isolation - could take a toll on the autonomic nervous system, which helps regulate heart rate, respiration and other important bodily functions. So they found 989 women who had been diagnosed with breast cancer in the previous three months and asked them a lot of questions to assess their level of stress.

On May 1, Gavin Smith disappeared. After returning from a Las Vegas conference, the longtime 20th Century Fox executive -- who distributed such hits as "Titanic" and "Avatar" -- inexplicably missed a school pickup for his teenage son. His Mercedes is missing along with him. His family and authorities have been unable to locate him either through cellphone records or credit card billings. This week, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department intensified its search, but detectives said they have no solid leads.

SEATTLE — In a move to improve treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder, the Army is discouraging the use of traditional definitions such as feelings of fear, helplessness and horror — symptoms that may not be in a trained warrior's vocabulary. It also is recommending against the use of anti-anxiety and antipsychotic medications for such combat stress in favor of more proven drugs. The changes are reflected in a new policy document released this month, one that reflects a growing understanding of the "occupational" nature of the condition for many troops.

WASHINGTON — There were no silver spoons, but lots of school loans. Grandmother worked her way up the ranks at the bank. Later, it took two incomes to pay the condo mortgage and the bills. If all this doesn't sound familiar, it soon will. As he heads into a faceoff with Republican Mitt Romney, President Obama's speeches are revisiting parts of the life story that helped propel his rise. There are nods to his humble beginnings, his hardworking grandmother and the stresses of debt — in short, stories that best connect with the middle-class voters his reelection may depend on. "Michelle and I, we've been in your shoes," the president told students Tuesday at the University of North Carolina as he called on Congress to extend a break in school loan interest rates.

As Democrats launch their general election assault on Mitt Romney, their approach has sounded familiar to those who followed the meteoric rise and fall of Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, corporate chieftains who lost their Republican bids for senator and governor in California two years ago. Much as Fiorina and Whitman emphasized their business experience, Romney's presidential campaign has presented him to voters as the man to tackle the nation's...

Benjamin Franklin once said there are two certainties in life: death and taxes. Now, researchers have found that taxes might make death just a little more certain. Deaths from traffic accidents rise 6% on tax day, that mid-April paroxysm of collective financial agony, according to a study published in Wednesday's edition of the Journal of the American Medical Assn. A pair of Canadian researchers tallied up U.S. tax day traffic fatalities for each year between 1980 and 2009, then compared the figures to those from two "control" days, exactly one week before and one week after.

In between quarters, Andrew Bynum rested his legs and received some words of wisdom. He could've aptly described it as "getting his Zen on," as he did last week on why he doesn't participate in team huddles. But this had nothing to do with meditating or thinking about former Lakers Coach Phil Jackson. It had everything to do with following a simple piece of advice during the Lakers-Rockets game. He had picked up a technical foul late in the third quarter and the Lakers coaching staff feared he'd get another.

Men who are narcissists may be at risk for some health problems, since they could have inherently higher levels of the stress-related hormone cortisol even when they're not under pressure, a study finds. Cortisol, which is released by the body when it's under duress or going through an intense activity, can have some benefits--lending an energy surge, helping the body burn fat, and boosting memory. But too much cortisol from chronic stress can have deleterious effects, such as higher blood pressure, lower immunity and higher levels of abdominal fat. Researchers tested the saliva of 106 undergraduate students (79 women, 27 men)

Demi Moore isn't the first celebrity to be hospitalized with what has been described in numerous media reports as exhaustion, and she won't be the last. But is exhaustion a true medical condition, or a euphemism for something else? It can be the real deal, says Dr. Kent Shoji, an emergency room physician at Marina del Rey Hospital . Think of it as an umbrella condition for a number of possible symptoms that cause the body (and sometimes the mind) to become completely run down, so much so that it requires a trip to the doctor or the ER. "If you look at the body as a system," he says, "any type of stressors that someone has to compensate for can really affect the overall well-being and health of an individual.

Just before noon on a December morning in 1988, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake shook over 40% of the territory of Armenia, centered in the northern city of Spitak. The temblor leveled entire towns and cities, killed an estimated 25,000 Armenians - two-thirds of them children trapped and crushed in their crumbling schools - and hastened the dissolution of the Soviet Union, of which Armenia was then a part. But the Spitak disaster was more than a geopolitical milestone. The earthquake was, in the words of one researcher, a "psychiatric calamity" that has yielded a trove of knowledge aboutpost-traumatic stress disorder.

If your office seems like it's going to the dogs, try bringing your dogs to the office. Researchers reported Friday that bringing Rover to work seems to reduce stress on the job. "Pet presence potentially can be a low-cost wellness intervention," said Randolph Barker, a professor of management at Virginia Commonwealth University's business school in Richmond, Va., who led the study in the International Journal of Workplace Health Management....