* Misconception is that cancer hits hardest in rich nations
* Africa seeing more than a million new cancer cases a year
* Some countries have no oncologists, few treatment options
By Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent
ACCRA, May 1 (Reuters) - In Emanuel Adu's language, Twi, people call the skin cancer that is invading his cheek and nose "sasabro". It means a disease that eats away at you.
The 73-year-old former cocoa farmer has come to the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra, miles from his home, to be treated with one of the two radiotherapy machines in Ghana.
"I had heavy bleeding and discharge from my nose. The doctor told it me was cancer, a cancer called melanoma, but I had not heard those words before," he explains in the consulting room.
Most of Africa's around 2,000 languages have no word for cancer. The common perception in both developing and developed countries is that it's a disease of the wealthy world, where high-fat, processed-food diets, alcohol, smoking and sedentary lifestyles fuel tumour growth.
Yet Adu's is one of an estimated one million new cancer cases sub-Saharan Africa will see this year - a number predicted to double to 2 million a year in the next decade.
How can a continent hope to diagnose and treat, let alone fight to prevent a disease that has no name?

CANCER KILLS THE POOR TOO
It's a question David Kerr has been struggling with for several years. A cancer specialist based at Britain's Oxford University and former president of the European Society of Medical Oncology, Kerr set up the charity AfrOx in 2007 to help African countries seek to prevent and control cancer.
"There have been some marvellously effective campaigns around AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria, and of course infectious diseases like those are terribly important," he said in an interview. "But already there are more deaths in the world from cancer than from AIDS, TB and malaria combined."
By 2030, according to predictions from the World Health Organisation (WHO), 70 percent of the world's cancer burden will be in poor countries, a prediction Kerr says leaves most lay people, and even many doctors, "utterly astonished".
"They think cancer is a disease of the wealthy. But the reality is that, in part because of success in tackling infectious diseases, Africans are living longer. It's almost a booby prize that they're now living long enough to get cancer."
For many women in Africa, that means diseases like breast and cervical cancer have become common causes of death before their victims have begun to learn about them, let alone find words for them.
A study published in 2011 found that since 1980 new cervical cancer case numbers and deaths have dropped substantially in rich countries, but increased dramatically in Africa and other poor regions. Overall, 76 percent of new cervical cancer cases are in developing regions, and sub-Saharan Africa already has 22 percent of all cervical cancer cases worldwide.
The same research found that some poorer countries saw a rise in breast cancer cases of more than 7.5 percent a year over the 30 year period studied - more than twice the global rate.

"EXPLOSION OF CANCER"
Such data come as no surprise to Verna Vanderpuye, a clinical oncologist and radiotherapy consultant at the Korle Bu hospital where Adu will come for his treatment every day for the next two weeks.
"There's an explosion of cancer here," she said in an interview in her overrun consulting room.
Unlike the diseases she is trained to treat, the oncologist is a rare thing in Ghana. She is one of only six trained cancer doctors who serve a country of 24 million people.
Good quality data are hard to come by, but Vanderpuye says the two main hospitals equipped to treat cancer - hers and another further north in Ghana's second city of Kumasi - are seeing between 5,000 and 7,000 new cancer patients a year.
"That's just the tip of the iceberg. That's only those who actually come to the health facilities. We don't really know what's really happening across the country," she says.
It seems a drastic situation. But Ghana has come a long way. Until 2007, there were no oncologists at all - and that's still the case in some neighbouring countries. Sierra Leone, for example, has more than 6 million people and no cancer doctors.
"Countries in the region like Sierra Leone, Togo, Guinea have absolutely nothing in terms of cancer care," said Kerr. "That means Ghana's six or so oncologists have to serve neighbouring countries as well."
The result is that the reality for many in Africa is that a cancer diagnosis means a painful and distressing death.
The overwhelming number of cases and the paucity of funds, doctors and treatment mean it's difficult to know where to start, Kerr says. But cancer experts - foreign and African - and patients and advocacy groups say what's needed first is greater awareness.

KNOWING THE ENEMY
Ellen Awuah-Darko is doing what she can.
The 75-year-old founder of the Accra-based Jead Foundation for breast cancer says her own experience - of finding a lump and ending up paying tens of thousands of dollars to be treated in the United States - made her to try force change.
"In America I had to put down $70,000 before they'd even talk to me," she said. "I was lucky, I could afford it after my husband died and left me money, but I thought 'why should I get treatment when others can't'."
Now, every Wednesday, Awuah-Darko goes with healthcare workers into communities in the Eastern Region of Ghana to offer women breast screening. It's not the high-tech mammogram or ultrasound scan women in wealthy countries are used to, but a simple breast examination and a lesson in how to self-check.
"Early detection can save your life. I want everybody to know that. It's not something people should be ashamed of or embarrassed about," she said.
But she and the handful of cancer specialists are fighting deep cultural resistance - not only to the idea that cancer affects people here, but also to the idea they must talk about it, look for it and recognise it to start fighting against it.
Even among the young and educated, cancer is often taboo.
"They don't want to use the C-word," says Vanderpuye. "That's also one of the main reasons why someone wouldn't want to come here - because it means she has 'the C'.

"HUMONGOUS FOUL-SMELLING TUMOURS"
In the chemotherapy ward at Korle Bu, oncology nurse Juliana Tagoe, explains why patients often don't want to talk about cancer.
Many people see the disease as a spiritual punishment, she says. "They think someone has done wrong and this is the effect - God is punishing them. They feel stigmatised."
In rural communities where spiritual and tribal leaders are revered, the use of prayer, ritual and herbal remedies is common. Awuah-Darko says witch doctors tell patients with tumours to "treat it like a boil, and just put some herbs on it". Others are told simply to pray for it to be taken away.
In the months or years that intervene, the tumours spread and grow to sizes barely seen by doctors in developed countries.
Kerr talks of patients in Africa with tumours that protrude through the breast or encircle the whole chest, while Vanderpuye describes patients with "humongous, foul-smelling tumours" she has little hope of treating.

INFECTIONS
Both Kerr and Corey Casper, who runs the Uganda Programme on Cancer and Infectious Disease associated with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, say another focus of efforts to tackle this looming cancer epidemic is to try to prevent the cancers caused by infections.
While many cancers are linked to lifestyle factors such as unhealthy diets and smoking, a large number - particularly in Africa - are caused by infections likes hepatitis B and C, which cause liver cancer, and the human papillomavirus (HPV) that causes almost all cervical cancers.
In wealthy countries, having hepatitis vaccines as part of routine childhood immunisation programmes, and introducing national campaigns programmes with new HPV vaccines from drugmakers Merck and GlaxoSmithKline has brought rates of liver and cervical cancer down significantly.
If such nationwide HPV vaccine campaigns could be introduced in Africa, experts say, the effect on rates of death and disease could be dramatic. Global health groups are working with drugmakers on securing a discounted price for HPV shots for poor countries, but getting them to Africa could take years.
Akosua - a name meaning "Sunday" that this patient gives instead of her real name - has no concept yet of how an injection made by a Western pharmaceutical company could have prevented the cancer spreading inside her.
The 48-year-old farmer has cervical cancer and has suffered with a lot of pain and bleeding, but for now the fact that she's come to the hospital and is seeing an oncologist is foreign territory enough.
"But I'm not afraid," she says. "I've been seen by the doctor now. I know I am in the right place to get the right treatment."

It’s officially May. So despite the puddles, floods and rapidly more ridiculous-sounding drought warnings, let’s put thoughts of April showers behind us and remember how beautiful Britain looks when the sun comes out!

With the Olympics and Queens Jubilee on the way this summer, 2012 is not the year to be jetting off to foreign lands.

Santorini, Sardinia and the Seychelles are making way for Scotland, St Ives and Saunton Sands, this year, as people jump on board the ‘staycation’, according to The Pure Package, who deliver freshly prepared, delicious, ethically sourced meals to make sure their customers are bikini-ready.

Need some holiday inspiration on a wet day? Click no further...

Whoever said that money doesn't grow on trees was right. It grows on a small, bushy plant.

Just one type of currency, though: silver dollars (Lunaria annua).

You have a couple of options for planning your investment. For quickest returns, sow seed indoors in a seedling flat filled with moist potting soil. Kept at about 70 degrees Fahrenheit, the seeds germinate within two to three weeks. Plant the seedlings outdoors at the same time you plant out tomatoes, then harvest your first dollars later this summer. If you plant very soon, you may still be able to get a return on your investment this year.

Despite the "annua" in the botanical name, however, silver dollar plant often behaves more like a biennial than an annual, growing only leaves the first year then expiring the next year after making flowers and dollars.

The second, more relaxed way to grow silver dollar plant is as a biennial. Sow the seeds outdoors sometime in early summer — timing is not critical — to rake in your dollars early next summer.

Whichever method you choose, give silver dollars a site with well-drained soil in sun or partial shade. Avoid a rich soil, though, or plants put their energy into making leaves at the expense of flowers and dollars.

Decorate your home with some of these unique and colourful flowers.

MORE THAN JUST SILVER DOLLARS

The flowers that foreshadow the silver dollars are pretty, but not enough to warrant giving the plant a prominent spot in your flower bed. A better location is in a separate cutting garden, a wild area, or nestled — and somewhat lost — among other kinds of flowers.

The money plant's flowers have four petals in the shape of a cross, putting it in the Mustard Family, along with broccoli, radish and alyssum. Usually, the flowers are pink or purple, except for one variety with white flowers. For a little more pizazz, there is a variety, Variegata, with white margins on its leaves.

Silver dollar plant, along with other members of the Mustard Family, ripens its seeds within a dry fruit called a silique. As the silique ripens, the two outside halves dry, then fall away to leave the ripened seeds still on the plant and suspended within a translucent and silvery round septum, about the size of a silver dollar.

For dried flower arrangements, cut stems just as the outsides of the pods are beginning to yellow, then hang them upside down in an airy location. Once the outsides dry, rub them off with your fingers without damaging the delicate membrane between them.

AN INVESTMENT IN 'HONESTY'

You might say the silvery orbs that remain also resemble the moon, leading to another common name for the plant, moonwort, as well as the botanical name Lunaria.

And money and honesty go hand in hand, right? Perhaps that's how silver dollar plant also came to be called "honesty." Some people say it got that name because you can actually see the seeds within the ripened fruits.

Your initial investment in silver dollar plant can be made with seeds from a seed packet, or with seeds snatched from a dried arrangement. You will get compound interest on your initial investment because silver dollar plant self-sows. Too readily in some situations, so put your investment where you can keep a close eye on it, or where other equally exuberant plants can help check its spread.

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http://leereich.blogspot.com/

http://leereich.com/

Sports drinks and energy drinks aren't just a source of sugar for kids -- they could also be responsible for tooth enamel damage that increases the risk of cavities and decay, according to new research.

A study in the journal General Dentistry showed that tooth enamel is damaged after being exposed to sports drinks or energy drinks for just five days, with energy drinks causing two times as much enamel damage as the sports drinks.

"Teens regularly come into my office with these types of symptoms [of tooth decay, sensitivity and cavities], but they don't know why," Academy of General Dentistry spokesperson Jennifer Bone, DDS, MAGD, said in a statement. "We review their diet and snacking habits and then we discuss their consumption of these beverages. They don't realize that something as seemingly harmless as a sports or energy drink can do a lot of damage to their teeth."

For the study, researchers from Southern Illinois University School of Dentistry looked at the levels of acidity in nine different energy drinks and 13 different sports drinks. They found that not all acidity levels were the same between brands, nor were they the same between flavors within the brands.

Then, the researchers soaked tooth enamel samples in each sports or energy drink. The samples were soaked for 15 minutes in each drink, and then were soaked for two hours in artificial saliva, for four times a day for five days.

The researchers found that enamel damage was evident after just five days.

Bone recommended that people who drink sports and energy drinks rinse out their mouths with water or chew a sugar-free piece of gum right after drinking the beverages. In addition, she said to wait at least an hour to brush your teeth after drinking the beverages, lest your toothbrush spreads the acid from the beverages all over your teeth.

Recently, a study showed just how damaging soda is to the teeth, too. LiveScience reported on a study also published in General Dentistry showing how the citric and phosphoric acids found in sodas are corrosive to teeth.

Around one in 20 prescriptions written by family doctors contain an error, according to a study published today.

Most mistakes were classed as mild or moderate, but around one in every 550 items was judged to contain a serious error, the research commissioned by the General Medical Council (GMC) found.

The most common of the prescribing or monitoring errors were lack of information on dosage, prescribing an incorrect dosage, and failing to ensure that patients were properly checked with blood tests.

One in eight of all patients had a prescription item with an error - this rose to four in 10 patients aged 75 years and older.

A number of factors were found to be associated with increased risk of prescribing or monitoring errors and these included the number of medicines a patient was taking (there was a 16% increased risk of error for each additional medicine) and the age of the patient (children and those aged 75 years and older were almost twice as likely to have an error as those aged 15-64).

Researchers concluded that causes included deficiencies in the training of GPs regarding safe prescribing, time pressure, and lack of robust systems for ensuring that patients receive necessary blood tests.

Despite these concerns, they found that GPs took prescribing very seriously and used a range of strategies to try to avoid serious errors.

Professor Tony Avery of the University of Nottingham's medical school, who led the research, said: "Few prescriptions were associated with significant risks to patients but it's important that we do everything we can to avoid all errors.

"GPs must ensure they have ongoing training in prescribing, and practices should ensure they have safe and effective systems in place for repeat prescribing and monitoring."

The researchers recommended a greater role for pharmacists in supporting GPs, better use of computer systems and extra emphasis on prescribing in GP training.

Professor Sir Peter Rubin, chairman of the GMC, said: "GPs are typically very busy, so we have to ensure they can give prescribing the priority it needs.

"Using effective computer systems to ensure potential errors are flagged and patients are monitored correctly is a very important way to minimise errors.

"Doctors and patients could also benefit from greater involvement from pharmacists in supporting prescribing and monitoring.

"We will be leading discussions with relevant organisations, including the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Care Quality Commission, and the chief pharmacist in the Department of Health, to ensure that our findings are translated into actions that help protect patients."

The study took place in 15 general practices from three areas of England, regarded as reasonably representative of other general practices in England, and a total of 1,777 patients were included in the study.

Dr Clare Gerada, Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) chair of council, said: "There are over one million patient consultations in general practice every day across the UK, and this report demonstrates that in 95% of cases GPs prescribe safely and effectively in the best interests of their patients.

"GPs strive to keep their prescribing skills up to date to provide the safest possible patient care, but any error is regrettable and taken very seriously. The report helpfully identifies some areas where improvements can be made."

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: "Patient safety is paramount. The vast majority of prescriptions are checked by community pharmacists, who spot and put right any errors when they are dispensed. Patients can be confident that the medicines they receive are safe and appropriate.

"We have worked to improve and increase the training medical students receive in prescribing skills, and we are working with GPs to see how we can best support them to work with pharmacists and improve the safety and effectiveness of prescribing.

"We will continue to work with pharmacists and GPs to reduce prescribing errors and make the best use of medicines."

It's been a year since the royal couple tied the knot, and we haven't seen a single slip-up: No public tantrums, sloppy make-out sessions or tense moments. Can you say the same about your relationship?

If Will and Kate have taught us anything, it's that in public you should treat your partner like royalty, with respect and mutual support, couples therapy expert Debra Macleod observes.

"They are poised and present a united front in public, regardless of what conflicts might be happening personally. They do this because they value their commitment and they are looking at the long-term, big picture of their marriage," she says.

And of course, because gossip magazines would royally trash the royal couple if they didn't have a picture-perfect marriage. We so-called "commoners" may have far fewer eyeballs watching, but our imperfect relationships could easily become the subject of friends' and family's gossip as well.

She recommends every couple create a "public profile" -- i.e. have a discussion with your spouse around what kind of image you want to project to the world and how to reflect it. That conversation could cover how each person socializes in public, both together and solo, as well as public displays of affection.

And if you're ever unsure, just think: What would Will and Kate do?

Public Fights

What should couples do when private anger boils over into public life? Try to appear supportive in public and exercise self-control until you can work things out in private, Macleod suggests. Instead of screaming at your partner, take 10 seconds to quietly consider where they are coming from and nip a potentially nasty argument in the bud.

"This doesn’t just protect the privacy and integrity of a marriage, it also protects their reputation as husband and wife. It does no good to show the world your problems," she warns. "That’s even more essential for Will and Kate, as their fights won’t just be in front of friends, they will be in front of the world."

PDA

It took years before a photographer snapped Will and Kate kissing in public, and even now they tone it down.

Public displays of affection can be ridiculously adorable, but consider your surroundings and company, as what's appropriate changes with the setting. Like, for example, when you're on Buckingham Palace's balcony, in front of thousands of people... And the Queen of England. That's a strictly chaste kiss, no groping situation.

Inner Circle

Just like Will and Kate, "commoners" need to keep criticisms on lockdown in front of his/her spouse's "inner circle"; family, colleagues and friends.

"No doubt (Kate) has had to bite her tongue on more than one occasion when dealing with her mother-in-law and extended family. It is the same as a loving wife who has chosen to accept the idiosyncrasies of her mother-in-law, just to make life easier and avoid unnecessary conflict with her husband," Macleod says.

Going Solo

When Will or Kate steps out solo, they still don't step out of bounds -- at least, not lately, and definitely not since getting hitched.

"I would be surprised to see Kate socialize with opposite-sex friends, without her husband being present," Macleod says. "Common couples often make the same choice when they choose not to socialize with ex-partners or the swinging single secretary from work."

Whether or not you'll both make that choice, make your opinions known about what kind of behaviour (flirting, excessive drinking, etc.) is OK by you or over the line.

Support Each Other

If the royal marriage sticks (fingers crossed), it's because they support one another -- and it shows in public interviews, Macleod observes.

"I advise my clients to take an 'I’ve got your back' approach," she says. "If someone speaks ill of your spouse in public, you rush to their defence."

Multitasking is pervasive in our society, despite the fact that it often leads to sub-par quality of work and added stress. So why do we do it, even when research -- and personal experience -- shows it doesn't really work?

A small new study in the Journal of Communication suggests it's because multitasking makes us feel better emotionally.

"There's this myth among some people that multitasking makes them more productive," study researcher Zheng Wang, assistant professor of communication at Ohio State University, said in a statement. "But they seem to be misperceiving the positive feelings they get from multitasking. They are not being more productive -- they just feel more emotionally satisfied from their work."

The study included 32 college students, who all carried a device similar to a cell phone for four weeks. They were also asked to report their activities three times a day -- like when they watched, read or listened to a computer, radio, TV or print material -- and how long they participated in each activity, as well as if they were multitasking by doing another activity at the same time.

The researchers asked the study participants say why they did each activity (or combination of activities, if multitasking) -- whether it was for social purposes, for fun or entertainment, for study or work purposes, or because of a habit or to provide background noise. The study participants rated the "strength" of each need out of 10 points, and then whether the need was actually met out of four points.

Researchers found that people were more likely to multitask if they needed to work, study or complete a habitual task. But the researchers found that multitasking wasn't actually effective in terms of fulfilling those needs.

However, the researchers did find that emotional needs -- like having fun, being entertained or relaxed -- were met by multitasking.

Want tips to becoming a unitasker, instead of an inefficient multitasker? Read HuffPost blogger Dr. Jim Taylor's tips here.

No one ever likes to lose a friend, but ever since Facebook became a social media powerhouse, it's happens all the time. While it's not the same thing as losing the BFF you've known since the fifth grade, finding out someone has un-friended you on Facebook can still hurt -- particularly if you have no idea why.

Enter Erin M. Bryant and Jennifer Marmo, two students out of the University of Arizona who co-authored a study on the unspoken guidelines to Facebooking. The 23-page study was conducted using two experiments. Part one utilized a focus group of 44 students to create 36 rules to friendship on Facebook. The second part then put those rules to the test by having the focus group rank them in terms of importance when it came to friends who were described as "close", "casual", and just "acquaintances".

Each rule fell into one of five categories: means of communicating, deception and control, relational maintenance, negative consequences for the self, and negative consequences for a friend. According to Marmo, the experiment came about after the two students were curious about the rules of Facebook that no one teaches.

“There’s no handbook for how to use Facebook. There isn’t an instruction manual telling you how to act, how to behave,” said Marmo in an interview with the National Post.

Below is a collection of the top 10 tips Facebook users ought to keep in mind if they want to keep their friends. Story continues below:

TEXT VERSION OF SLIDESHOW HERE

While Facebook does have some rules, such as explicit bans on hate speech and nudity, it leaves user interaction up to the user -- a blessing as there's almost no limits when it comes to sharing photos or videos of a memorable party, and a curse if half of those party photos could damage your reputation.

The do's and don'ts of Facebook may be pretty basic, but they serve as a humble reminder that just because you're friends with someone online, it doesn't reflect the strength of the friendship, according to Bryant.

"Even though I'm letting you see these things [on my profile], I don't expect you to suddenly try to IM me on Facebook," said Bryant in an interview with Live Science. "It creeps me out if you come post on my wall."

Readers interested in checking out the remaining 26 guidelines can find their study in April's edition of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.

SLIDESHOW TEXT VERSION:

• Think of it as online karma: if someone has posted on your wall then they're going to be expecting a response.
• The old adage of "If you don't have anything nice, don't say it at all" still applies on Facebook.
• Everything you post of a friend's wall has consequences, remember that.
• Should a friend delete a wall post, photo or tag then there's probably a valid reason why.
• Social media may be great for sharing and keeping in touch with people but it's not a replacement for human contact. Remember, Facebook friends chat. Real friends chat in person.
• No one wants to be friends with a liar, so keep deception to a minimum or save it for those dating websites.
• Nowadays it's increasingly harder to disconnect from Facebook, thanks to mobile devices. But that doesn't excuse you from becoming a Facebook addict. After all, no one likes hanging out with a person who can't be torn away from a screen for more than five minutes.
• In many ways, Facebook can be a double-edged sword. Case in point: just because that photo at the office Christmas party had over 50 likes doesn't mean it can't come back to nip you in the butt by someone seeking vengeance.
• Most people involved in the study said use a "common sense" rule in their interactions with Facebook friends.
• When in doubt, ask yourself this: "what would my boss or my friend's boss think if they saw this post?"

If you thought living in a smoke-free apartment was enough to protect you from secondhand smoke, think again.

Thirty-eight percent of people in the study (who were non-smokers) reported smelling tobacco smoke on a weekly basis, and 12 percent said they smelled smoke on a daily basis.

And almost a third of people in the study said that they've smelled tobacco smoke in their apartment buildings, and half of those people said they've even smelled smoke in their own apartment units. (All of these people are non-smokers.)

The research was presented at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies. It included 323 eligible responses from the nationally representative 2011 Social Climate Survey.

The study, conducted by researchers from the American Academy of Pediatrics Julius B. Richmond Center of Excellence, also showed that 41 percent of apartment residents who had kids reported smelling smoke, compared with just 26 percent of residents without kids.

The researchers also found that government housing subsidy recipients were more likely to smell smoke in their apartments than people who didn't receive subsidies.

"This exposure could put children at risk for respiratory diseases and illness if it is persistent or if the child has a significant respiratory illness such as asthma or cystic fibrosis," study researcher Dr. Karen M. Wilson, MD, MPH, FAAP, section head of pediatric hospital medicine at Children's Hospital Colorado and assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said in a statement.

Apartments aren't the only places where kids are exposed to secondhand smoke. A recent study published in the journal Pediatrics shows that 22 percent high-schoolers and middle-schoolers are exposed to secondhand smoke by riding in a car with a smoker, the Associated Press reported.

While this figure is down from 40 percent in 2000, study researcher Brian King, of the CDC, told the AP that the figure is "certainly problematic."

According to the American Cancer Society, secondhand smoke is a "known human carcinogen," meaning it's known to cause cancer. Breathing in either the smoke that comes from a lighted cigarette, or the smoke that comes out from a person's mouth after he or she has exhaled, is considered dangerous, though smoke directly from the cigarette has higher carcinogen levels than exhaled smoke, according to the ACS.

The Environmental Protection Agency reported that kids who are exposed to secondhand smoke also have increased risks of asthma, pneumonia, bronchitis, middle ear infections and sudden infant death syndrome.

Most everyone can agree there's a time and a place for swearing -- when you've hit yourself with a hammer, say, or when you're particularly angry or excited. In short, swearing should be a special occasion language, but for many of us, it's become more and more of a default reaction.

The rebellious element of swearing has always been part of its charm, and studies have even shown it can help relieve pain. But curse words can also be offputting, unprofessional and offensive, and may even keep people from giving you emotional support. If people in your office have started putting on headphones as soon as you walk in the room, it could be time to tone down the cussing.

The video above maps out a few easy steps to keep yourself from swearing, and we think it covers most of the bases, particularly when it addresses the laziness aspect of the practice. But because they don't go into enough details, we thought it'd be handy to lay out some other options for when you get the inevitable impulse to swear.

SEE: 20 great alternatives to everyday swear words:

Do you have some other favourite alternative swear words you like to use? Let us know in the comments below, or at @HuffPostCaLiv.

Shortly after his first birthday, Shawn Stockman says his son Micah suddenly began to change. The R&B singer who earned accolades and world-renown as one fourth of the group Boyz II Men says he never expected that his son would develop a condition that would change both of their lives -- autism.

"It was drastic because Micah was the first one to talk, he was the first one to walk. Everything seemed to be very, very normal," Stockman told CNN, describing how he learned he had a twin son with autism. "I did not know what to do, and one thing a man hates when it comes down to his family is not knowing what to do," Stockman said.

According to the CDC, symptoms of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) vary greatly from one child to the next. While some show hints of future problems within the first few months of life, others may not show any signs until 24 months or later.

Some children with an ASD seem to develop normally until around 18 to 24 months of age and then they stop gaining new skills, or they lose the skills they once had. Studies have shown that one third to half of parents of children with an ASD noticed a problem before their child’s first birthday, and nearly 80%–90% saw problems by 24 months of age.

But while the rate of diagnosis for autism spectrum disorders appears to be the same among all racial groups -- one in 88 -- a study by a Florida State University researcher published earlier this year found that African-American children tend to be diagnosed with autism later than white children, resulting in a longer and more intensive intervention.

Last fall, The Huffington Post spoke with five moms of children with autism -- Shannon Nash, Tisha Campbell-Martin, Donna Hunter, LaDonna Hughley and Tammy McCrary -- whose quest for answers in diagnosing and treating their children for ASD is documented in a short film called "Colored My Mind."

For most of these moms, the biggest challenge has been a lack of knowledge. When Hughley's son Kyle was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome at the age of seven, for example, "no one was talking about autism," she says. "At that time they were using verbiage like 'retarded'" she adds. Kyle is now 22.

"It seems like every five to 10 years you see these shifts in the autism treatments and movements and acceptance," says Nash. "It's getting better and better, but you've gotta have access to it, you've gotta know about it and be educated about it," she says, explaining how her son benefited from early intervention.

But the cost of those early autism intervention treatments can be prohibitive for many parents, Stockman says. "We've learned in the midst of our journey with Micah how fortunate we are to have money. There's no way a normal couple or a single mom could afford this."

Campbell-Martin estimated that six months worth of treatment for her son, Xen, cost $100,000.

In January, experts from the American Psychiatric Association proposed changes to the definition of autism, which would sharply reduce the skyrocketing rate at which the disorder is diagnosed, according to the New York Times. It might also make it harder, however, for those who would no longer meet the criteria to get health, educational and social services the research suggests.

Stockman says that the financial barriers to autism treatment are the reason he has launched a non-profit called Micah's Voice, dedicated to footing the bill for one to two families seeking treatment for autism each year.

Have you got food poisoning? Forget asking your GP for antibiotics, as scientists reckon garlic is not only great at fighting vampires – it also beats food poisoning.

Researchers from the Washington State University discovered that garlic is 100 times more effective than two commonly used antibiotics when it comes to treating poisoning caused by the most common source of bacterium: campylobacter.

The study discovered the garlic compound 'diallyl sulfide' was able to penetrate through the bacterium’s slimy biofilm layer and kill the cell by shutting down its growth and metabolism.

However, antibiotics erythromycin and ciprofloxacin did not have the same ability.

"This work is very exciting to me because it shows that this compound has the potential to reduce disease-causing bacteria in the environment and in our food supply," said lead author Dr Xiaonan Lu, in a statement.

Adding to this, Michael Konkel, a co-author who has been studying this particular type of food poisoning for 25 years, said: "This is the first step in developing or thinking about new intervention strategies.”

The study results were published in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.

Emmelyn Roettger of Washington D.C. was accepted into the high-IQ society Mensa in March, the month before her third birthday. (Above: Watch Emme at 2 years old playing with her science kit.)

At the age of 2, the toddler could write her name and count to 100, MSNBC reports. Now, she's familiar with the concept of mitosis and metaporhosis and with an IQ of 135, she's the youngest U.S. member of Mensa. (To put into perspective, Albert Einstein's IQ is estimated at around 160.)

Early on, when Emme was only 9-months-old, doctors thought she might be on the autism spectrum. Their reasoning was that she wasn't crawling or reaching for toys. Her mother, Michelle Horne, had another theory though. She suggested testing Emme's vision. The baby was found to have vision-impairment due to a lazy eye and got a pair of glasses. Emme also wears a patch now to help correct the problem.

"It was so obvious that any delays she had were vision-related. From there on out, she just took off," Horne told MSNBC.

As a toddler, Emme started to excel in math and showed high-level verbal skills, too. Her parents brought her to the Wechsler Preschool to take the Primary Scale of Intelligence test, and she scored in the 99th percentile across the board. Horne told MSNBC that at first, her husband thought submitting Emme's test scores to Mensa was "a silly idea." But Horne looked at the society as a resource because of the activities and support they offer.

The Mensa for Kids website has games and lesson plans to help children of extreme intelligence succeed. Just last month, 4-year-old Heidi Hankins joined Mensa with an IQ of 159. In 2009, two toddlers under the age of 3, Oscar Wrigley and Elise Tan Roberts also became members.

While these kid’s rare talents are indisputable, experts like cognitive psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman question whether the word "genius" is appropriate at such a young age. Studies show that IQ scores at age 3 are strongly correlated with scores at age 21, Kaufman wrote in a HuffPost blog. But, he continues, "it's extremely dangerous to try to predict an infant's future level of academic success based on a single, brief test of attention administered before the first year of life." Because IQ scores are relative to a certain age group, Kaufman says that calling a young child a genius based on IQ alone is inaccurate. "To become a genius takes so much more than just being high on one trait," he explains.

MSNBC reports that Emme's parents haven't considered what lies in their daughter's future. For now, "they take her to zoos, playgrounds and play dates, and they plan outings that tap into the family's love of space exploration."

For more of Emme's story, click over to MSNBC.

By Fred Guteri
(Click here for the original article)

A highly controversial research paper on bird flu was released today by the journal Nature. It shows that a particularly troublesome strain of avian influenza, designated H5N1, which has been worrying public health officials for more than a decade, has the potential to become a human pandemic. In other words, H5N1 bird flu, which so far has been highly lethal to humans but has not acquired the ability to spread easily among us, could do so at any time.

The researchers, under the direction of Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, crossed an H5N1 virus with the H1N1 pandemic virus of 2009, which spread like wildfire from one end of the world to another. The 2009 pandemic, you’ll recall, caught public health officials by surprise but luckily turned out to be mild. Kawaoka’s lab-made hybrid virus spreads among ferrets by airborne droplets expelled during the course of respiration–just as human influenza viruses such as the 2009 pandemic strain spread from person to person. Kawaoka’s concoction does not kill ferrets, and probably wouldn’t kill humans, but the feat is troubling because it demonstrates that an H5N1 virus that can spread among humans is most likely possible. (We don’t know for sure because it was tested only on ferrets, not humans, of course.)

Whether an H5N1 virus could acquire the two deadly traits–transmissibility and lethality–at the same time is a burning question. (Kawaoka’s paper does not address it.) If one could, it would be bad news indeed. The 1918 flu virus, an H1N1 type, killed about 2 or 2.5 percent of the people it infected but spread so readily the death toll reached 20 million to 50 million. By contrast, about 60 percent of the 600 or so people who have caught H5N1 in the past few years have died. A highly transmissible H5N1 virus with a 60 percent fatality rate could kill hundreds of millions of people, perhaps billions.

That’s not likely to happen, fortunately. The known H5N1 viruses that currently exist in nature do not attach to the upper respiratory tracts of humans, so most victims caught the virus from close contact with birds. And there is reason to think that a highly lethal but poorly transmissible virus like H5N1 would change in the process of becoming transmissible—that in acquiring the ability to spread, the virus would have to make genetic tradeoffs that compromise its ability to kill. For instance, one reason that the Ebola virus doesn’t spread widely among humans is that it is too efficient—mortality is as high as 90 percent—which means victims die before they can infect many others. We do not know, however, to what extent a human-transmissible H5N1 virus would have to make this tradeoff. Scientists differ widely in their opinions on this point.

The strain that Kawaoka concocted in his lab seems to be mild—it made ferrets sick, but didn’t kill them. Even if his virus is not itself dangerous, however, it demonstrates that an H5N1 strain could one day arise that turns into a worrisome human pathogen. As Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, has pointed out, a human-transmissible virus with a lethality rate 20 times lower than current wild strains of H5N1 would still kill more efficiently than the 1918 flu. The degree to which H5N1 is potentially dangerous to humans is the subject of much speculation.

In part because of all the uncertainty, the biosecurity community has been in an uproar ever since the Kawaoka paper came to their attention last year. (Things really got stirred up when Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam made remarks at a conference in Malta about similar work on H5N1 transmissibility, which he submitted to Science but has been held up by the Dutch government.) Many security experts believe no work on H5N1 transmissibility among mammals should have been conducted in the first place, and that the world would be a safer place if information about the results of the Kawaoka and Fouchier experiments and their methods were never disseminated. (Although the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity voted to green-light the publication of both papers, that vote came only after the results and the methods used to make the viruses had been disseminated to hundreds of people in the course of the standard pre-publication review process; holding up publication at that point, in this age of Wikileaks, probably would have been futile.) Recently the U.S. government has called for risk-benefit assessments of pathogens on its select agent list before research is conducted (H5N1 is on that list), but compliance is left to the funding agencies. Some biosecurity experts are calling for further restrictions in H5N1 research on transmissibility among mammals, such as limiting the work to labs with the highest biosafety standards.

Many scientists believe this would be a mistake. They think that research on what could possibly make H5N1 deadly to humans is too urgent to be put under onerous security constraints. I interviewed Kawaoka in 2010, during the course of research for my book, The Fate Of the Species (which Bloomsbury releases on May 22). At the time, Kawaokoa was deeply worried about the danger of H5N1 bird flu. There had been outbreaks among poultry in 1997 and again in 2004 in Hong Kong, and the virus had shown other signs of restlessness—it had killed wild birds, which usually carry H5N1 without symptoms, and it had shown a propensity to spread outward from east Asia, despite the culling of millions of chickens and other poultry. How long would it be before nature’s roulette wheel produced a human version of H5N1?

Kawaoka got a taste of how nasty bird flu can be when he arrived in the United States in 1983 as a young researcher in the lab of Robert Webster at St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Webster was investigating the theory that birds provide a reservoir for human influenza viruses (which has since been confirmed and is now accepted as conventional wisdom). Webster got wind of an outbreak of avian influenza on poultry farms in Pennsylvania and raced to the scene, sending tissue samples back to Kawaoka, who analyzed them in the lab.

The 1983 demonstrated to the young Kawaoka how changeable and dynamic a flu virus can be. The outbreak started out in April 1983 as a mild virus—it make chickens a little wheezy, but didn’t kill many of them. By November, the virus (an H5N2 type) had given rise to a sub-strain that was highly lethal. Chickens started keeling over, and farmers worried for their livelihoods. The U.S. Department of Agriculture came in to handle the outbreak, imposing a military-style culling of 17 million birds from Pennsylvania to Virginia. (No people died in the outbreak, just poultry.)

While all this was going on, Kawaoka, back in Memphis, isolated samples of the virus and infected chickens in the lab to see how the virus worked. The mortality rate among his chickens was 100 percent. When he performed autopsies, he found that the virus had ravaged not just the birds’ gastrointestinal tracts, which you’d expect in a bird flu, but almost every organ—the kind of total attack documented in human victims of Ebola.

Later, Kawaoka decided to compare the April strain and the November one to find out what had changed to make the virus suddenly lethal. He found that the two were identical except for a single protein. “What this tells you,” Kawaoka told me in 2010, “is that a highly pathogenic virus was generated from a single mutation. And it tells you there are many sources of highly pathogenic influenza viruses. It’s all out there in birds.”

Researchers have already found natural strains of H5N1 that have acquired some of the genetic changes that Kawaoka’s recent paper identifies as necessary for transmissibility among ferrets. The research that Kawaoka and other influenza scientists are conducting certainly poses a risk, as some biosecurity experts have pointed out. The experiment that nature is conducting every day, as H5N1 viruses mutate and borrow genetic material from other viruses, is also potentially dangerous. Which should we fear most? On this question there are many opinions, but no definitive answers.

A highly-toxic protein described as the "real bad guy" behind Alzheimer's disease has been identified by scientists.

The molecule recruits other less harmful proteins and makes them deadly to brain cells.

Knowing how it forms and behaves is expected to lead to more effective Alzheimer's treatments.

One experimental drug to emerge from the research has already completed early phase I clinical trials. The protein is a special type of beta-amyloid, which was already known to play a key role in Alzheimer's.

Beta-amyloid clumps together in the brains of Alzheimer's patients, forming deposits that result in the destruction of nerve cells.

"This form of beta-amyloid, called pyroglutamylated (or pyroglu) beta-amyloid, is a real bad guy in Alzheimer's disease," said lead scientist Professor George Bloom, from the University of Virginia in the US.

"We've confirmed that it converts more abundant beta-amyloids into a form that is up to 100 times more toxic, making this a very dangerous killer of brain cells and an attractive target for drug therapy."

He compared the way the protein spread destruction in the brain to the transmission of prion diseases, such as Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (CJD).

Prion diseases are caused by rogue misshapen proteins that toxify other proteins they come into contact with in a chain reaction.

"You might think of this pyroglu beta-amyloid as a seed that can further contaminate something that's already bad into something much worse - it's the trigger," said Prof Bloom.

The research is published today in the latest online edition of the journal Nature.

Prof Bloom's team also looked at interactions between beta-amyloid and tau, another Alzheimer's-related protein.

Mouse experiments confirmed that both beta-amyloid and tau were needed to trigger the destruction of nerve cells.

"There are two matters of practical importance in our discovery," said Prof Bloom.

"One is the new insights we have as to how Alzheimer's might actually progress - the mechanisms which are important to understand if we are to try to prevent it from happening; and second, it provides a lead into how to design drugs that might prevent this kind of beta-amyloid from building up in the first place."

Co-author Dr Hans-Ulrich Demuth, chief scientific officer at the German biotech company Probiodrug, said: "This publication further adds significant evidence to our hypothesis about the critical role pyroglu beta-amyloid plays in the initiation of Alzheimer's disease."

Probiodrug, based in Halle, has completed phase I safety trials of a drug that suppresses an enzyme involved in the formation of pyroglu beta-amyloid.

By: Jennifer Welsh, LiveScience Staff Writer
Published: 05/01/2012 05:06 PM EDT on LiveScience

What gives you the motivation to go the extra mile for a promotion or a perfect test score? It may be your levels of a brain chemical called dopamine. Researchers have found amounts of this chemical in three brain regions determine if a person is a go-getter or a procrastinator.

Dopamine does different things in different areas of the brain. So while high levels in some brain regions were associated with a high work ethic, a spike in another brain region seemed indicate just the opposite — a person more likely to slack off, even if it meant smaller monetary rewards.

"To our surprise, we also found a different region of the brain, the anterior insula, that showed a strong negative relationship between dopamine level and willingness to work hard," study researcher Michael Treadway, graduate student at Vanderbilt University, told LiveScience.

The fact that dopamine can have opposing effects on different parts of the brain puts a wrench in how psychotropic drugs that affect dopamine levels are used for the treatment of attention-deficit disorder (ADD), depression and schizophrenia, Treadway noted. The general assumption has been that these dopamine-releasing drugs have the same effect throughout the brain.

Dopamine brain

The researchers scanned the brains of 25 young adult volunteers and put them through a test to see how hard they were willing to work for a monetary reward. They would choose either an easy or a difficult button-pushing task, and get rewarded either $1 or a variable value of up to $4. They repeated these 30-second tasks for 20 minutes.

Some of the participants opted to work harder for the larger reward by completing the difficult task, while others chose the easier task more often and accepted the small reward. Does this choice make them lazy? Maybe, Treadway said: "They were less motivated by this particular task. We suspect it predicts, to a certain extent, how motivated they might be in other contexts."

They compared testing data with brain scans of these patients, with and without administration of the dopamine-releasing drug amphetamine, which provides a reading of how much dopamine is normally released in different areas in the brain. [Inside the Brain: A Journey Through Time]

"You've got someone deciding, 'Do I want to work a bit more or a bit less? How do I factor in these odds?' Some people just went for it," Treadway said. The researchers found that these hardworking people had the most dopamine in two areas of the brain known to play an important role in reward and motivation, and low dopamine levels in the anterior insula, a region linked to motivation and risk perception.

Motivation and mental illness

These differences may mean that the choice between working hard and slacking off depend on how the brain weighs risk and reward, the researchers said. Some people are more wary about taking a risk and expending extra energy for an unlikely, but larger, reward. Other people concentrate more on the big reward they could get, and downplay the possible losses (of energy and time).

These findings could be important in getting a better grip on mental illnesses characterized by a lack of motivation, such as ADD, depression and schizophrenia, the researchers said. "Understanding some of these region-specific patterns may help us, at some point down the line, do a better job of predicting how patients may respond to different types of medication,"

"We think that part of what is going on in depression is some alteration in motivation pathways and part of the impetus for this study was working towards a model to be able to test the role of motivation in depression," Treadway said. "This may be a way to assess the motivational side of depression."

The study was published today (May 1) in the Journal of Neuroscience.

You can follow LiveScience staff writer Jennifer Welsh on Twitter, on Google+ or on Facebook. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter and on Facebook.

• Top 10 Controversial Psychiatric Disorders
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According to a recent poll, blowing out the candles on your 61st birthday doesn't signal the onset of retirement, but rather that you're happily into middle age.

The poll of 1,080 adults by The Marist College Institute for Public Opinion revealed that 63% of people believe that 61 isn’t old and regard those in their 60s as being middle-aged rather than elderly.

Only 22% of participants thought 61-year-olds were ‘old’ and 15% described them as ‘young’.

So where does that leave actual middle-aged people? Well, it’s even better news for them, as the poll revealed that people aged 45 and above are considered to be 'really young'.

Take a look at our round-up of celebrity women over 50 (who rock it).

By David Biello
(Click here for the original article)

Banned for indoor use since 2001, the effects of the common insecticide known as chlorpyrifos can still be found in the brains of young children now approaching puberty. A new study used magnetic imaging to reveal that those children exposed to chlorpyrifos in the womb had persistent changes in their brains throughout childhood.

The brains of 20 children exposed to higher levels of chlorpyrifos in their mother’s blood (as measured by serum from the umbilical cord) “looked different” compared to those exposed to lower levels of the chemical, says epidemiologist Virginia Rauh of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, who led the research published online by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on April 30. “During brain development some type of disturbance took place.”

The 6 young boys and 14 little girls, whose mothers were exposed to chlorpyrifos when it was commonly used indoors in bug sprays prior to the ban, ranged in age from seven to nearly 10. All came from Dominican or African American families in the New York City region. Compared to 20 children from the same kinds of New York families who had relatively low levels of chlorpyrifos in umbilical cord blood, the 20 higher dose kids had protuberances in some regions of the cerebral cortex and thinning in other regions. “There were measurable volumetric changes in the cerebral cortex,” Rauh notes.

Though the study did not map specific disorders associated with any of these brain changes, the regions affected are associated with functions like attention, decision-making, language, impulse control and working memory. The “structural anomalies in the brain could be a mechanism, or explain why we found cognitive deficits in children” in previous studies, Rauh notes.

The findings echo similar results with animal studies of the insecticide, which remains widely used in agriculture to kill crop-spoiling insects. Rats exposed to the chemical also experience changes to the brain as well as altered behavior—all at doses below those considered safe by current federal guidelines from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The change, at least for rats, is irreversible.

Previous studies have linked chlorpyrifos in children to everything from low birth weight to attention problems in both urban and agricultural exposures. And a low, but measurable, dose reaches yet other populations via food—a study that fed children a diet of organic food showed drops in the levels of chlorpyrifos and other organophosphate pesticides that then rebounded when they returned to their regular diet. The insecticide is used on everything from peaches to cilantro. “It’s the fruits and vegetables,” that can carry chlorpyrifos, Rauh notes.

Of course, it remains unclear what, if any, danger such doses pose but it is now apparent that chlorpyrifos exposure in the womb has impacts on brain structure that persist through childhood, at least. And the children in this study were exposed to lower levels of chlorpyrifos than found in a random sampling from a Cincinnati blood bank (which showed levels twice as high as those in the affected children). It also remains unclear whether the brain changes—some of which skew masculine or feminine brain characteristics—will have an impact in puberty. “Whether or not there would be any measurable effects is not clear,” Rauh says. “Hopefully, going forward, we’ll be able to answer some of those questions and determine whether the process of puberty or other aspects of sexual differentiation could be assessed.”

The good news is that washing fruits and vegetables can rinse away lingering chlorpyrifos and, presumably, mitigate any risk. In addition, although chlorpyrifos can persist in indoor environments, it breaks down relatively quickly when exposed to sunlight and other natural elements. And the EPA is now following up its prior ban on indoor use by re-evaluating its policy more broadly. “We have a lot of risky chemicals in our environment,” Rauh says. “We need to determine if the risk persists, if it is reversible and look at the larger regulatory picture for chemicals.”

As of now, however, the use of chlorpyrifos remains widespread in conventional agriculture. “Eating organic is a great idea, however, it is very expensive and out of reach for many average families,” such as the ones in this study, Rauh notes. It’s a “better idea to wash your apples. That would eliminate a whole variety of problems.”

NEW YORK -- It's a concept that parents may not be familiar with, but experts say it can explain a lot about family conflicts: Is your child's temperament a good "fit" with yours?

For example, a stubborn child who's a chip off the old block might have a lot of showdowns with an equally stubborn mom or dad. But contrasting temperaments don't necessarily assure good results: A determined child might overwhelm an overly flexible parent.

Many personality traits like these are inborn, but "temperaments can also be colored by the environment in which children are raised," said child psychologist Brian Daly, who teaches at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

That means parents who take a step back to consider their child's personality traits may be able to tailor their childrearing style to deal more effectively with problems.

Much of the research on child temperament is based on the New York Longitudinal Study, in which psychiatrists Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess followed a group of children from birth to adulthood beginning in 1956. Thomas and Chess, who were married, found that children's personalities could be put in three basic categories: easy, difficult, and slow to warm up. They also identified nine other variables that measured behaviors and traits like willfulness, moodiness, activity levels, distractibility, attention span, and regularity in sleep, hunger and other biological functions.

One finding from their research was that a good "fit" between children and parents results when adult expectations, values and demands are in accord with a child's natural capacities and behaviors. Their last book, published in 1999, was called "Goodness of Fit." (Thomas died in 2003, Chess died in 2007.)

But their theory was not just a way of letting parents off the hook by blaming kids for personality traits they could not control. The takeaway for parents was that conflicts resulting from a poor fit between parent and child might be ameliorated if childrearing practices could be changed. The theory has withstood the test of time, with psychologists and other experts who work with children and parents still using some of these concepts today.

Resa Fogel, a psychologist who practices in Montclair and Teaneck, N.J., was one of the children in the original study. "When I was little, they came to my house all the time and interviewed and watched me," said Fogel. "They were the nicest people. I thought they were another set of grandparents."

She became interested in psychology, an interest that was fueled when she got a job assisting Thomas in his research at New York University. She used some of the original studies for her dissertation, which looked at how children with difficult temperaments end up behaving.

"You would think people with difficult temperaments are automatically very hard people to be around," she said. "I showed that if there's a goodness of fit between the environment and the person, then even if you have a difficult temperament, you're not going to necessarily misbehave. In other words, there's hope for people who are tough."

Difficult children "are going to be harder" for parents, she acknowledged, "but you have to have the right way of handling it. That's what goodness of fit is. It's like a puzzle you put together."

Arthur Robin, director of psychology training at the Children's Hospital of Michigan in Detroit, said one common problem he encounters is a child with ADHD or "a very hyper-impulsive child" who has "a passive, depressed, lethargic mom. The child is going to get to do anything he or she likes because the mom is not going to have the energy level to set down some structure."

Another common problem is "a very rigid, willful child and a highly flexible parent," Robin said. "The parent is going to go with whatever the child wants. The child is going to end up really spoiled or have a strong sense of entitlement."

Sometimes problems are rooted in the temperament of the parent, not the child. "If a parent is extremely moody, and a child is not very even-tempered, the child is going to get really upset and scared, and may develop in an introverted manner because they can't deal with the extremes of parent moodiness," Robin said.

With willfulness, Robin says, he tries to recast the trait as "determination" and encourages parents to channel it into "positive activities to move the child ahead." Teenagers might be encouraged "to fight for some kind of cause, or sometimes parents can get them to spend a lot of time on creative pursuits, so it's not all channeled into conflicts with parents." Music or artistic pursuits may be an especially good outlet for moody children, Robin said.

Daly said he often encounters families where parents have no problems with one child but a lot of problems with the other. "One child is very well-behaved and fits their parenting style," he explained. "You could say the child's temperament is a good match or fit. They rave about that child; the child is responsive and respectful."

But with the other child, the parents may feel that they're "constantly butting heads. There may be temper tantrums, digging in heels, but without an appropriate result. A lot of times parents have certain values and it can be hard to adjust those values to meet the temperament of the child."

Daly said parents who are just as stubborn as their kids often get into standoffs because "neither will give ground." In these cases, it may not work to take a hard line approach of, "if you can't comply with this, then you're going to get in more and more trouble."

It also pays to pick your battles carefully. When a little girl couldn't get out of the house without a tantrum over what to wear, Daly counseled her parents to let her choose her own outfits even if they weren't quite as coordinated as the parents wished.

With teens, said Robin, if they're "sneaking out in the middle of the night," you have more important things to focus on than whether their room is clean. "The stuff that isn't worth fighting about, let it drop," Robin said.

Therapists may be able to identify new ways to approach recurring conflicts. In one case, Fogel counseled a mom to keep a journal of her son's meltdowns. She soon realized he was getting upset whenever he had to put his shoes on. Turned out he had fine motor coordination problems that made shoe-tying difficult.

Fogel says it's important to include the child as a participant in any effort to change, and that parents should remember, when disciplining children, "You're disciplining to teach."

Another thing to keep in mind when a child's personality presents challenges, Fogel said: "This is the temperament she was born with; this is how she acts, this is how you act. You try to find a way to make things better but there's no magic answer, there's no formula."

That, she added, is "the hard part."

Not a day goes by without news of the latest ‘antioxidant superfood’ and their health-boosting powers.

However, a recent study has suggested that too much of a good thing could be damaging our health, as researchers claim they’ve found a potentially dangerous ‘dark side’ to the ‘healthy’ pigment found in carrots.

Scientists from the Ohio State University discovered that if the body absorbs too much of the natural beta-carotene pigment mostly found in carrots (it’s what gives carrots its orange reddish colour), it partially ‘blocks’ the vitamin from metabolising in the body.

Vitamin A is essential for maintaining eye, bone and skin health, as well as keeping the immune system and metabolism healthy. If vitamin A absorption is blocked, researchers warn that it could cause a number of health hazards.

A potential danger could be an increased chance of lung cancer (as noted in a previous study), which found people who ate beta-carotene were more likely to be diagnosed with the condition than those who never ate foods with the pigment.

SEE ALSO Happy International Carrot Day! Celebrities Who Favour The Orange Hue (PICTURES)

However, although researchers claims the pigment found in carrots “represent a dark side of beta-carotene” and “could basically disrupt or at least affect the whole body metabolism and action of vitamin A”, they added that they aren't recommending individuals stop eating foods high in beta-carotene as more study is needed "to know for sure”.

The results will be published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

The main food sources of beta-carotene are:

• Yellow and green (leafy) vegetables, such as spinach, carrots and red peppers
• Yellow fruit such as mango, melon and apricots

How much beta-carotene is safe?

According to the Department of Health, people should be able to get the amount of beta-carotene they need by eating a varied and balanced diet. However, if you decide to take beta-carotene supplements, it is important not to take too many because this could be harmful.

Do not take more than 7mg of beta-carotene supplements per day - unless advised by a doctor. People who smoke or who have been exposed to asbestos are advised not to take any beta-carotene supplements.