Last week, Healthy Living's reporter Catherine Pearson put the magnifying glass on the complex relationship between homelessness and healthcare in the United States. She wrote:

And for countless men, women and children themselves, homelessness is an insurmountable sentence to a lifetime of poor health and inadequate care -- both of which can feed on one another in an unforgiving cycle ... Radical poverty puts enormous stress on the U.S. health care system, which often struggles to address poor patients' most basic needs. People who live in what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls "low socioeconomic circumstances" are far more likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors, have limited access to health care, get poorer quality of care and, not least, simply wither and die.

Through the heartwrenching story of Ron, a 64-year-old man who has been homeless on-and-off for 30 years, readers learned about housing-first initiatives, such as the pilot program HUES to Home, and got a closer look at emergency shelter programs.

Our commenters had strong reactions to the potential solutions to this problem: Are we restoring the lives of the homeless in the right way? If not, what can we do instead?

Some moms are just born philanthropists. They volunteer their time helping out at nursing homes, they give us a box for donations during Halloween and they make sure we collect canned foods for food banks every year.

Mother's Day is a reminder to think about how much our moms have done for us throughout our lives. Whether it was taking us to school on early mornings or teaching us the basic skills on how to take care of others, the value of motherhood is felt all over the world -- no matter how much our families may vary.

And all of mom's hard work seems to be paying off, especially for us. Moms who encourage community involvement can help their kids get ahead. "Scholarships and other opportunities that reward volunteer experience feed into a positive loop of more opportunities, networking and open doors," according to Craig and Marc Kielburger of Free The Children.

This Mother's Day, we have 10 gift ideas to not only thank our moms, but to help other moms around the world too:

For The Mom Who Loves To Ride
If your mom loves the feeling of wind blowing through her hair and saving money on gas, a new bike is probably the best idea. Starting at $500, when you buy a bike from KONAWORLD, they'll also send one to a city in Africa.

For The Mom Who Is Trying To Save Paper
For some women, water is life's most precious and scare resource. On Mother's Day, buying an e-card through Water.org, starting at $25, could supply a person with safe water for life and allow you to create a personalized message for your own mom.

For The Mom With A Sweet Tooth
Our mothers have always told us to eat our fruits and vegetables. This year, let her share her message with other kids who need it. Through Plan Canada, you can buy 10 mango trees for school gardening programs for $100.

For The Mom Who Loved To Send Us To School
If your mom spent most of her years dragging you out of bed or reminding you about your 9 a.m. exam, this gift is the perfect way to give back. For $50, you can supply an entire classroom with everything from pencils to notebooks.
Supply A Classroom, Available through World Vision, $50.

For The Artistic Mom Who Loves To Collect Things
Your mom's house reminds you of an antique shop or a museum, so why not get her something else to add to her collection? This $100 bronze sculpture is crafted by artisans in West Africa and ensures artists get fair payment for their work.

For The Mom Who Loves To Accessorize
For moms who love to spend money on accessories, this pink beaded bracelet is another option. For $50, these Pamoja bracelets are hand-crafted and made for Mother's Day, with all proceeds going directly back to artists around the globe.

For The Mom Who Loves Giving Back
Our mothers brought us into this world, but not all moms have safe and healthy environments in which to do so. Birthing kits help moms across the globe have clean and safe pregnancies, and this package by The Birthing Kit Foundations, helps women understand clean birthing practices.

For The Mom Who Bought You Your First Pet
Moms have been known to take all of our nagging when it comes to buying us puppies and ponies -- which is why a flock of chicks is the perfect gift that gives back. With donations starting at $20 to Heifer International, families from Cameroon to the Caribbean can add eggs to their diets.

For The Mom Who Needs To Remember Her Dates
If your mom is still against any type of technological advancement for the calender, then the good old printed version is perfect for her. Outdated gift? Not when it can give back. Anytime you buy a calender, greeting card or small boxes from Seva, all funds go back to helping people restoring eyesight and preventing blindness.

For The Mom That Loves Options
Some moms are just too picky. In some cases, this works. At Kiva.org, your mom (and you) can both lend a minimum of $25 to organizations of your choice that are looking to change lives in their communities -- including choosing women-owned businesses.

Consuming the nutrient choline -- found in broccoli, eggs and milk -- during pregnancy could help to reduce the risk of the child later developing diabetes or high blood pressure, a new study suggests.

Researchers from Cornell University found in the 12-week study that consumption of 930 milligrams of choline a day by women in their third trimester of pregnancy is linked with a 33 percent decreased concentration of cortisol -- the stress hormone -- in their babies. This is compared with a control group of pregnant women who consumed 430 milligrams of choline a day.

The choline intake linked with the decreased cortisol is more than twice as much as is currently recommended, which is 450 milligrams a day, researchers reported.

"The study findings raise the exciting possibility that a higher maternal choline intake may counter some of the adverse effects of prenatal stress on behavioral, neuroendocrine and metabolic development in the offspring," study researcher Marie Caudill, associate professor of nutritional sciences, said in a statement.

"A dampening of the baby's response to stress as a result of mom consuming extra choline during pregnancy would be expected to reduce the risk of stress-related diseases such as hypertension and type 2 diabetes throughout the life of the child," Caudill added in the statement.

The researches said that choline may work at decreasing cortisol by altering gene pattern expressions that are responsible for the making of cortisol.

"This study provides compelling evidence that maternal choline intake during the third trimester of human pregnancy can modify global and site-specific epigenetic marks in fetal-derived tissues," the researchers wrote in the study.

However, Caudill cautioned that more research is needed to confirm the results of the study, as well as to see long-term what the effects would be of a pregnant woman's increased choline consumption. The research is published in The Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

Choline is a nutrient that is vital to proper functioning of the body. Everyone -- even people who are not pregnant -- has a daily recommended amount to consume per day. For adults ages 19 and older the suggested amount is 425 milligrams per day for women and 550 milligrams per day for men. For children ages 1 to 13, the recommended amounts range from 200 to 375, according to the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University.

However, it is possible to have too much choline. (Click here to read more about the health effects of too much choline.)

The most plentiful sources of choline in the diet include a 3-ounce serving of pan fried beef liver, which has 355 milligrams of choline; one cup of toasted wheat germ, which has 172 milligrams of choline; and one large egg, which has 126 milligrams of choline, the Linus Pauling Institute reported.

CHICAGO -- Men rarely get breast cancer, but those who do often don't survive as long as women, largely because they don't even realize they can get it and are slow to recognize the warning signs, researchers say.

On average, women with breast cancer lived two years longer than men in the biggest study yet of the disease in males.

The study found that men's breast tumors were larger at diagnosis, more advanced and more likely to have spread to other parts of the body. Men were also diagnosed later in life; in the study, they were 63 on average, versus 59 for women.

Many men have no idea that they can get breast cancer, and some doctors are in the dark, too, dismissing symptoms that would be an automatic red flag in women, said study leader Dr. Jon Greif, a breast cancer surgeon in Oakland, Calif.

The American Cancer Society estimates 1 in 1,000 men will get breast cancer, versus 1 in 8 women. By comparison, 1 in 6 men will get prostate cancer, the most common cancer in men.

"It's not really been on the radar screen to think about breast cancer in men," said Dr. David Winchester, a breast cancer surgeon in NorthShore University HealthSystem in suburban Chicago who was not involved in the study. Winchester treats only a few men with breast cancer each year, compared with at least 100 women.

The researchers analyzed 10 years of national data on breast cancer cases, from 1998 to 2007. A total of 13,457 male patients diagnosed during those years were included, versus 1.4 million women. The database contains about 75 percent of all U.S. breast cancer cases.

The men who were studied lived an average of about eight years after being diagnosed, compared with more than 10 years for women. The study doesn't indicate whether patients died of breast cancer or something else.

Greif prepared a summary of his study for presentation Friday at a meeting of American Society of Breast Surgeons in Phoenix.

Dr. Akkamma Ravi, a breast cancer specialist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, said the research bolsters results in smaller studies and may help raise awareness. Because the disease is so rare in men, research is pretty scant, and doctors are left to treat it the same way they manage the disease in women, she said.

Some doctors said one finding in the study suggests men's breast tumors might be biologically different from women's: Men with early-stage disease had worse survival rates than women with early-stage cancer. But men's older age at diagnosis also might explain that result, Greif said.

The causes of breast cancer in men are not well-studied, but some of the same things that increase women's chances for developing it also affect men, including older age, cancer-linked gene mutations, a family history of the disease, and heavy drinking.

There are no formal guidelines for detecting breast cancer in men. The American Cancer Society says routine, across-the-board screening of men is unlikely to be beneficial because the disease is so rare.

For men at high risk because of a strong family history or genetic mutations, mammograms and breast exams may be helpful, but men should discuss this with their doctors, the group says.

Men's breast cancer usually shows up as a lump under or near a nipple. Nipple discharge and breasts that are misshapen or don't match are also possible signs that should be checked out.

Tom More, 67, of Custer, Wash., was showering when he felt a pea-size lump last year near his right nipple. Because a golfing buddy had breast cancer, More didn't put off seeing his doctor. The doctor told More that he was his first male breast cancer patient.

Robert Kaitz, a computer business owner in Severna Park, Md., thought the small growth under his left nipple was just a harmless cyst, like ones that had been removed from his back. By the time he had it checked out in 2006, almost two years later, the lump had started to hurt.

The diagnosis was a shock.

"I had no idea in the world that men could even get breast cancer," Kaitz said. He had a mastectomy, and 25 nearby lymph nodes were removed, some with cancer. Chemotherapy and radiation followed.

Tests showed Kaitz, 52, had a BRCA genetic mutation that has been linked to breast and ovarian cancer in women. He may have gotten the mutation from his mother, who is also a breast cancer survivor. It has also been linked to prostate cancer, which Kaitz was treated for in 2009.

A powerboater and motorcycle buff, Kaitz jokes about being a man with a woman's disease but said he is not embarrassed and doesn't mind showing his breast surgery scar.

The one thing he couldn't tolerate was tamoxifen, a hormone treatment commonly used to help prevent breast cancer from returning in women. It can cause menopausal symptoms, so he stopped taking it.

"It killed me. I tell you what – night sweats, hot flashes, mood swings, depression. I'd be sitting in front of the TV watching a drama and the tears wouldn't stop pouring," he said.

Doctors sometimes prescribe antidepressants or other medication to control those symptoms.

Now Kaitz gets mammograms every year. Men need to know that "we're not immune," he said. "We have the same plumbing."

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When it comes to laughter yoga, faking it ‘til you make it is just fine.

At least, that's what Vishwa Prakash said at the start of the session that HuffPost's health news editor Amanda Chan and I wandered into recently.

It was one of a few guidelines Prakash offered, as well as keeping our eyes locked on our fellow attendees, some 20 men and women dressed in street clothes and standing in a circle in his textile design company's midtown Manhattan offices.

And with that, we were off.

Prakash traded with other leaders who led us through several "exercises" -- we clapped, we milked imaginary cows, we blew up imaginary balloons, threw them on the ground, and exploded into laughter as we popped them with our feet. In between each set, we walked around clapping and chanting, "Ho Ho Ha Ha Ha!"

"It's bizarre, it's plain weird. Adults do not behave this way," said Sebastien Gendry, who founded the American School of Laughter Yoga, the country's largest laughter yoga training program.

"You laugh, you clap and you breathe," he continued. (You also drive imaginary bumper cars, pretend to be lions and hug perfect strangers.) "Suddenly you find yourself really laughing and you don't know why. It's fun, and you feel good."

The goal of laughter yoga is to breathe and to laugh, not because anyone has cracked a joke, but because laughter is a playful, social, contagious thing. The "yoga" label is a bit of a misnomer. There are no downward dogs or inversions, just people coming together, usually for free, for a short session of laughter. And it has become something of a global phenomenon.

According to Laughter Yoga International, a group led by the founder of Laughter Yoga and Mumbai-based physician Dr. Madan Kataria, there are about 6,000 laughter clubs across the globe. In the past decade, more than 400 have cropped up here in the U.S., and organizers expect a few thousand will celebrate "World Laughter Day" on Sunday.

How and why people find laughter yoga varies. Many come to connect with a community, Gendry said, others come for catharsis or to feel better physically.

Jody Ross, now a certified laughter yoga leader, started attending formal laughter workshops several years back to help heal herself. She had chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and depression so severe she lost her job and lived, for a time, in a homeless shelter.

"I went to a seminar on laughter yoga, and I felt elated for hours later. I didn't have any pain," Ross said. "When you combine laughter and breathing, there's healing there."

Indeed, as research probes the intricacies of the mind-body connection, investigators have developed a particular focus on the possible health benefits of laughter. Some of the more prominent work has come from the cardiovascular arena.

Dr. Michael Miller, the director of the preventive cardiology program at the University of Maryland's Medical Center, previously investigated the effect laughter can have on the vascular system. In a study presented to the American College of Cardiology, Miller and his colleagues found that showing healthy adults a funny movie scene increased blood flow by more than 20 percent.

"I can tell you that if you have active emotion, it works," Miller said. "How that parlays into reducing the risk of heart attacks is still to be determined, and to what extent passive laughing, like a simple chuckle, makes a difference remains to be established."

Other studies have suggested that laughter helps burn calories and increases one's heart rate. In another, researchers from Japan found that laughter may help lower blood sugar levels -- a boon for diabetes patients.

But while such findings show promise, experts caution that the science is not fully there.

"The science of laughter is in its early stage," said Dr. Robert Provine, author of "Laughter: A Scientific Investigation." He explained that laughter is an ancient vocalization stemming from the panting of animals' rough-and-tumble play.

"It's difficult to separate the cognitive, from the social, from the physical aspects of laughing," Provine added. "Is simply going 'ha ha ha' going to give you the same presumed benefits of genuine laughter?"

We definitely had our moments of faking it.

"I had definitely never experienced anything like it before," said Amanda, who is notably nicer and more diplomatic than myself. "I must say, though, that the experience seems to be dependent on the sort of people there. Everyone was so into it and so enthusiastic. It made me feel more comfortable about laughing, too -- even though in any other circumstance, I would've surely felt self-conscious about just laughing for a half-hour straight."

As for me, I'd been dreading the class all week (I'm shy and a little prickly), but it wasn't as bad as I'd feared. I did genuinely lose it at the end, laughing so hard I cried as we lay on the floor, stared at the ceiling and guffawed together for minutes. And minutes. I couldn't get over how weird it was. Does that somewhat judgmental laughter count? I don't know. Amanda and I hightailed it out of there before the period when people chatted about their experiences.

Of course, one session can't give you much a taste of anything and the experts agree with Amanda -- it's important to find a club that feels right.

"It's really about community," said Marlene Chertok, a registered nurse and breast cancer survivor who has seen her St. Louis-based club grow from single to double digits in the past few years. "It's just a place where people can come in and laugh, regularly. It needs to feel safe."

And that safety can come even in the least likely places.

Rebecca Foster, who works for the Prison Mindfulness Institute teaching mediation and emotional intelligence skills in Rhode Island, teaches laughter yoga in men's and women's jails.

"The aggressive energy dissipates," Foster said. "You can't be tight and laugh at the same time. Who knows how profound a difference it will make -- it may not make any difference at all. But at the very least there's a sense that in this moment, in this one place, I can be a kid again."

And for all of the promise of laughter's health benefits, many not yet scientifically proven, that may be the method's greatest strength.

"Laughter feels good while we do it," Provine said. "Isn't that enough?"

By Briana Rognlin for Blisstree.com

Most of today's top trainers will tell you that lifting light weights to slim down isn't a grand plan, despite fears of "bulking up" from heavy lifting. But a new study says that, on the flip side, adults who are intimidated by heavy weights shouldn't despair: Lifting little weights can still produce big results in muscle mass. This is particularly good news for older adults who risk injury or joint pain from lifting heavy weights, but need the exercise to maintain muscle mass. For the rest of us? Trainers aren't so sure this is grounds to give yourself a break at the gym.

The study, led by Stuart Phillips at McMaster University in Ontario, examined a group of 21-year-old men who were all weight-lifting novices. Three times a week, the men did knee extensions on a weight machine; on one leg, they lifted 80 percent of the maximum weight they could lift to fatigue, for eight to 10 reps. On the other leg, they lifted 30 percent max to fatigue, at around 25 reps. Comparing MRIs of the men's quadriceps before and after 10 weeks of training, they found that there wasn't much difference in muscle change between the heavy and light lifters.

More from Blisstree:
Lacey Stone: Why Lifting Light Weights Won’t Make You Skinny
I Heart Powerlifting (And I’m Not Bulky Or Masculine)

Phillips thinks this is great news for “mere mortals” -- non-athletes who want to build or maintain muscle mass for health reasons, but may be put off by the prospect of lifting heavy weights. But even he admits that not everyone agrees:

As word has begun to get out, Phillips says he's "been deluged with emails from trainers" who challenge the results. "They're very resistant to these types of findings. It challenges dogma."

They're probably also resistant to the study because it was small, limited to men, and limited to a very young age group (incidentally, not the age group that’s most at risk for injury when lifting heavy weights), but the findings do challenge what most trainers tell us, most of the time: That we need to lift heavy weights to see results.

Despite Stuart's findings, trainers aren't likely to change their tune anytime soon, so long as clients' goals remain the same. As long as the majority of Americans are looking to lose weight and build muscle in a small amount of time, heavy weights are still the most efficient answer. But what the best trainers and researchers should tell you is that what you do is dependent on your goals and personal history -- unfortunately, there's no weight that fits all.

Just one in 10 people realise that a persistent cough could be a key symptom of lung cancer, according to statistics released by the Government as it launches a campaign to raise awareness about the disease.

Despite the condition killing more people than any other form of cancer in England, very few people are aware a cough lasting three weeks is a sign of a potential sufferer.

An advertising drive backed by Ricky Gervais and Lynda Bellingham will be launched tomorrow in a bid to raise awareness about the issue and improve earlier diagnosis in England.

It is hoped Be Clear on Cancer campaign will help save around 1,300 lives a year.

Health Minister Paul Burstow said: "Lung cancer is the biggest cancer killer in this country but worryingly many people don't know the signs and symptoms that could save their lives.

"The earlier lung cancer is diagnosed, the better the chance of survival.

"The message from this campaign is simple; if you have a persistent cough for three weeks or more, visit your GP."

Lung cancer affects 33,000 people every year in England with the majority of cases occurring in people over the age of 55.

When diagnosed at its earliest stage, as many as 80% of people are alive five years after diagnosis compared with only seven per cent diagnosed at a late stage.

Professor Sir Mike Richards, National Cancer Director for England, said: "It is vital that cancer patients get treated quickly so they have the best chance of surviving. We have made early diagnosis central to our Cancer Outcomes Strategy.

"Earlier diagnosis of Lung Cancer combined with the best treatments could help save an additional 1,300 lives a year."

Paula Chadwick, chief executive of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, added: "We really hope people will begin to associate a persistent cough as a symptom of lung cancer, the way they associate a lump as a symptom of breast or testicular cancer."

Foods high in omega-3s could help to protect your brain as you age, a new study suggests.

Researchers from Columbia University Medical Center found that eating a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids -- such as fish, nuts and chicken -- is linked with lower levels of of beta-amyloid protein, which is linked with Alzheimer's disease.

The study, published in the journal Neurology, included 1,219 people age 65 and older who didn't have dementia. The researchers tracked what they ate for 1.2 years -- including their intake of nutrients like omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, vitamins E, C, D and B12, and beta-carotene. At the end of the period, their blood was tested for beta-amyloid protein.

The researchers found that the higher the consumption of the omega-3 fatty acids, the lower the beta-amyloid in the blood.

Particularly, consuming 1 more gram of omega-3 fatty acids a day, on top of the average amount of omega-3s consumed in the study, is linked with a 20 to 30 percent decrease in beta-amyloid levels in the blood. One gram of omega-3 fatty acids can be obtained by eating half a salmon fillet once a week.

"While it's not easy to measure the level of beta-amyloid deposits in the brain in this type of study, it is relatively easy to measure the levels of beta-amyloid in the blood, which, to a certain degree, relates to the level in the brain," study researcher Dr. Nikolaos Scarmeas, MD, MS, said in a statement.

This certainly isn't the first study to find a link between omega-3 fatty acids and the brain. A previous study in Neurology showed that low omega-3 levels is linked with having lower brain volume and worse performance on memory tests.

"I think we can say that omega-3s are important for brain function, specifically DHA," Elaine Pelc, who is a clinical dietitian at the University of Maryland Medical Center and was not associated with that study, previously told HuffPost. "DHA is actively present in the brain, and higher intakes are associated with memory, brain function and cognition."

Want to get more omega-3s into your diet? Check out Blisstree.com's picks for vegetarian sources of omega-3 fatty acids:

Would you know how to spot skin cancer on your body?

A new survey from the American Academy of Dermatology finds that only about half of U.S. adults (53 percent) know how to look for skin cancer signs. The survey results are released in conjunction with Melanoma Monday, the AAD's day of awareness for early detection of melanoma and other skin cancers.

"Unlike other types of cancer that can't be seen by the naked eye, skin cancer shows obvious signs on the surface of the skin that can be easily detected by properly examining it," AAD president Dr. Daniel M. Siegel, MD, FAAD, said in a statement.

The survey also showed that 74 percent of people didn't know that skin cancer is the most common cancer in the U.S., and 30 percent were unaware or weren't sure about how easy it is to treat skin cancer if it's found early on.

The survey included 1,151 adults who took an online survey.

According to the AAD, 2 million people are diagnosed with skin cancer each year, with one in five people in the U.S. expected to receive a skin cancer diagnosis sometime in their life.

Recently, a study from Mayo Clinic researchers showed that skin cancer is rising particularly among younger people (ages 18 to 39), and researchers said one of the main causes is tanning, TIME reported.

Not sure how to spot skin cancer, even if you had it? The Skin Cancer Foundation explains the ABCDEs -- the five things you need to look for -- to tell if a mole is suspicious: asymmetry (meaning it's not round, and both halves of the mole are not matching); border (meaning the borders of the mole are uneven); color (the mole is different colors or shades); diameter (melanomas are typically larger than 1/4 inch in diameter); and evolving (any sort of change in the mole).

While the benefits of physical activity among children has given rise to little, if any, debate, the benefits of midday playtime has. On one end of the spectrum some say that recess poses safety hazards and cuts into much needed instructional time; on the other end of the spectrum, proponents say recess may actually help children perform better in the classroom.

A new study from the latter camp shows that time away from the classroom might be especially beneficial for Black and Latino students.

According to researchers from Mathematica Policy Research and the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities at Stanford University, teachers reported less bullying, better recess behavior and more readiness for classes among students who engaged in recess.

To evaluate the benefits of break time, the study focused in on a program called Playworks, a nonprofit which uses recess to address social and emotional development issues large Black and Latino student populations. Researchers collected onsite observations and feedback from 1,982 fourth and fifth grade students, 247 teachers, and 25 principals, as well as the 14 Playworks coaches who participated in the study.

Playworks teachers say it took 27 percent less time to transition from recess to classroom learning than it did at a group of similar schools without the program. Similarly, 28 percent of teachers reported that students were now more likely to arrive at class ready to learn because fewer conflicts carried over from recess and 14 percent of teachers reported improvements in teamwork and inclusiveness in class.

"These new findings, taken together with existing data, tell us that kids better relate with one another, resolve conflicts constructively, get plenty of physical activity on the playground, and return to class more focused and ready to learn,” said Nancy Barrand, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s special advisor for program development.

According to previous reports, low-income, urban populations like the Washington DC- and Baltimore-area schools included in this study are less likely to implement daily recess, focusing instead on standardized test results (a pitfall of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, some say).

Acupuncture and hypnosis have been promoted as drug-free ways to help smokers kick the habit, and there is some evidence that they work, according to a research review that looked at 14 international studies.

Tennessee couple Amanda and Billy Prentice tried to conceive for four years. On April 25th, a doctor told them they'd been successful and were finally going to be parents. Only five hours after finding this out, Amanda gave birth to their baby girl, according to 9News.

The news outlet reports that Amanda started having seizures a few days before she delivered. Billy rushed her to a local hospital where she was then airlifted to Vanderbilt Hospital. The new mom was unconscious for two days. When she woke up, her doctor said she had suffered complications from her pregnancy. At that time, being pregnant was news to Amanda. She said she had not experienced any usual pregnancy symptoms at all.

"I never felt [the baby] move. I wore the same clothes that I had worn for two years," Amanda told 9News.

However, the new mom must have been pregnant for several months. Her baby, Allie McKinley Rose, was born healthy and weighed 5 pounds and 5 ounces.

"We had talked about adopting, and now we've got our miracle baby," Bill Prentice told 9News.

This couple's story seems to be a remarkable case, something that would only happen on "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant,," but HuffPost blogger Jena Pincott, author of "Do Chocolate Lovers Have Sweeter Babies?: The Surprising Science of Pregnancy," says it is more common than people think for women to be pregnant without knowing it.

"Among pregnant women, 1 in 450 doesn't know her status until week 20 or later (more than halfway through the pregnancy), and 1 in 2,500 is oblivious until she actually goes into labor," Pincott wrote in a blog post.

After delving into the phenomenon (called cryptic pregnancy), Pincott discovered that denial or mental illness does not necessarily explain why pregnancies go unnoticed. Some women really don't experience pregnancy symptoms, she says. Many even get their periods while being pregnant. In short, Pincott found that cryptic pregnancy is linked to a mother's stress-levels.

In Amanda's case, the only signs of pregnancy she experienced at all were swollen feet and ankles, Billy said. Despite their shocking start, both mom and baby are doing well.

By Bill Berkrot
NEW YORK, May 7 (Reuters) - More than 100 years after researchers first explored the potential to harness the body's immune system to fight cancer, the field's leading doctors see the concept finally proving itself on a large scale in the next year or two.
Two drugs based on immunotherapy are already available and have met with mixed results. Bristol-Myers Squibb's Yervoy has been hailed as a major breakthrough for treatment of melanoma since its approval last year, while Dendreon Corp's Provenge prostate cancer vaccine has been hampered by management missteps and doctors' reluctance to adopt the difficult-to-administer therapy after two years on the market.
They are viewed as harbingers of a treatment revolution that could gain a significant share of the global market for oncology drugs, estimated by IMS Health to reach $75 billion by 2015. Scores of new immunotherapy vaccines and other immune system modifiers are being tested against a variety of cancers.
"We have entered into a new era where immune therapies can be recognized as an important component of cancer treatment," said Dr Glenn Dranoff, co-director of the Dana-Farber Cancer Vaccine Center in Boston. "There's certainly more excitement and more confidence in the field than there ever has been before."
At least a dozen therapies are set to have key late- or mid-stage trial data over the next 12 months, and some experts believe the results will be a tipping point for the field as clinical successes pile up. See Factbox:
"Several of these are going to (succeed). Once they get approved by the FDA, they will be used more and more," said Jeffrey Schlom, chief of the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Laboratory of Tumor Immunology and Biology.
Among anticipated new treatments are a prostate cancer vaccine from Denmark's Bavarian Nordic, a lung cancer vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline and one for melanoma from Amgen. Others in advanced testing of such therapies include Vical Inc and NewLink Genetics.
Investors spooked by years of past failure in the field may want to take note of the enthusiasm from the medical community. Some say Wall Street has taken Dendreon's disappointing sales as an indicator of the prospects for other research.
"Investors would do well to look away from Dendreon and to companies pouring money into the field," said Dr Jedd Wolchok, director of immunotherapy clinical trials at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He cited Merck , Roche's Genentech and AstraZeneca's MedImmune units as among those companies. "Nothing begets investor confidence like a little bit of success," he said.
A NEW BENCHMARK?
The concept of using the immune system against cancer dates back to the 1890s when Dr. William Coley, a New York surgeon, noted that some patients who got infections after cancer surgery fared better. He surmised that the immune response triggered by the infection was also working to eradicate cancer.
"Although the idea of a vaccine or cancer immunotherapy has been around really for at least 100 years, we now know a lot more about what are the requirements to generate an effective anti-cancer immune response than we ever did," Dranoff said.
The new understanding of how immunotherapies work may demand a revised definition of clinical success.
While extending life is the gold standard, most cancer drug trials have been deemed successful if tumors shrink or if a treatment can demonstrate a delay in tumor growth or in worsening of the disease, known as progression-free survival (PFS).
But Provenge and Yervoy have extended survival without necessarily impacting PFS or tumor shrinkage in many cases.
"Overall survival is the accurate indicator. Tumors may look bigger because they are filled with immune cells, so they appear worse," said Wolchok. "We've proposed a new set of response criteria to try to incorporate some of this biology."
Yervoy, or ipilimumab, became the first drug ever to extend survival in patients with advanced melanoma, long seen as a short-term death sentence. On average, it added only about four months of life in pivotal trials, although some 20 percent of patients had an impressively durable response to the drug.
"We have patients who are (alive) now nine years. That's what's really the most convincing evidence for clinically meaningful tumor destruction by the immune system," said Dranoff.
Oncologists have referred to such patients as essentially cured, although Wolchok was reluctant to do so.
"There are some people who we have treated with ipilimumab whose scans look just as abnormal now as they did five years ago, so it has turned it into a chronic disease," Wolchok said. "It changed the situation from something they were dying from into something they are living with. That really does show you that the immune system can restore an equilibrium between the person and the tumor."
NEW COMBINATIONS
Researchers had previously believed that only melanoma and kidney cancer had the right properties to respond to immune system therapy. They were delighted to be proved wrong. Clinical trials now are taking on lung, breast, liver, prostate, pancreatic, ovarian, head and neck and brain cancers.
"This is a revolution that has gotten started, and I think the next few years will tell the story," said Garo Armen, chief executive of Agenus Inc, which makes the QS-21 adjuvant, a drug used to boost the immune response to Glaxo's experimental vaccines for lung cancer and melanoma.
The basic idea remains the same - train a patient's immune system to attack the cancer. But new approaches based on more recent knowledge of the immune system's components include activating a variety of cells to go after tumors and modifying mechanisms that keep either the immune system in check or turn it loose.
There appears to be near universal agreement that to achieve optimal benefit, immunotherapies should be combined with targeted cancer drugs or other immunotherapies in a multi-pronged attack.
"Yervoy in combination with the proper vaccine could do phenomenal things," predicted Armen. "You'll be looking at cures and long-term survival."
Yervoy is being tested with Roche's new Zelboraf, which targets melanoma in patients with a specific gene mutation.
"Zelboraf had a high response rate but doesn't last that long," said Dr Patrick Hwu, chairman of the melanoma department at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. "With Yervoy we have a lower response rate but some patients are essentially cured. By combining them, it's possible we can get a high response rate that's durable."
This optimism must be tempered by the skyrocketing price for such treatments, which are likely to further tax healthcare budgets. Yervoy costs about $120,000 for a course of treatment, while Zelboraf costs about $56,000. Wolchok is working on ways to identify the patients most likely to gain the sustained life-extending benefit from Yervoy.
The science behind Yervoy is based on the discovery in the 1990s of a molecule called CTLA-4 that works as an immune system braking mechanism to keep it from attacking healthy tissue.
"Our immune cells are like little tanks that travel round the body to shoot bacteria and viruses that are hurting us, but you can't let them go unregulated," said Hwu. "When the body has cancer we want the tanks to go a little bit wild, so we want to lift those brakes and let them go after the enemy."
The inhibition of another immune-system braking mechanism called PD-1 being tested by Bristol-Myers, Merck and others is also considered a promising avenue of attacking solid tumors, doctors said.

THE VACCINE OPTION
Therapeutic vaccines work a little differently. Whereas drugs like Yervoy manipulate mechanisms of the immune system, vaccines tend to activate or boost the patient's anti-tumor immune response to more efficiently go after cancer.
"The key with these vaccines is there is minimal toxicity and increased survival. This is just what patients want - good quality of life," NCI's Schlom said. "The immune system is keeping the tumor in check. It's not a poison."
To get investors on board, cancer vaccines will likely need a champion to help erase skepticism in the field.
Some 16 percent of Oncothyreon Inc shares are being shorted by investors who are betting its Stimuvax lung cancer vaccine will fail. They are wary after independent monitors said the drug should continue to be studied in a pivotal trial that could have been halted on clear signs of success.
Michael Becker, president of MD Becker Partners consulting firm, said the message he gets from investors when it comes to immunotherapy companies is that "they are on the sidelines ... and will remain so until there is another victory in the field."
A victory with the potential to change investor perception and alter clinical practice could come from Bavarian Nordic's Prostvac for prostate cancer, which NCI's Schlom cited as one of the most promising in the field.
Originally developed by NCI, Prostvac is a virus-based vaccine that in Phase II trials showed an average 8.5 month overall survival benefit, more than double that of Provenge.
"If the results in the large study confirm the earlier studies, that would be a very significant advance," Dranoff said.

BIG SPENDERS ARE IN
Where the field was once largely left to small biotechs, the approval of Yervoy and other scientific advances have brought the industry's big players on board.
In the last year, Amgen Inc spent more than $1.5 billion to buy two companies with promising cancer immunotherapy portfolios, one of them a vaccine program.
"It is engineered to use the tumor's cellular machinery to replicate itself and ultimately cause local destruction of the tumor," said Amgen's chief medical officer, Mike Severino.
In a display of confidence in its vaccine program, Glaxo recently paid Agenus $9 million, $2.5 million of which was to be credited against future royalty payments.
Anderson's Hwu is impressed by Agenus's drug adjuvant, which adds firepower to Glaxo vaccines by activating a key component of the immune system called dendritic cells. "They tell the immune cells to get off the couch and go in there and kill some tumors," Hwu said.
Marc Engelsgjerd, a senior analyst for Wolters Kluwer inThought, believes companies would do well to test immunotherapies at an earlier stage of the disease, perhaps to prevent recurrence. Such trials take years longer to produce results, so companies tend to start trials with advanced cancer patients with limited life expectancy that yield results sooner.
The body's immune system is constantly trying to keep tumors from forming or coming back, he said. "If you can give the immune system a boost in terms of helping out with that long-term surveillance, that to me makes more sense biologically."
Engelsgjerd favors Neuvax, a breast cancer vaccine being developed by Galena Biopharma that is intended for earlier-stage use following surgery.
The immune system may take some months to ratchet up its anti-cancer armaments researchers said, so giving immunotherapy to a patient with just a few months to live may be futile.
Schlom agrees that early disappointment in the field may have been due to testing on patients with very advanced disease whose immune systems were severely compromised by chemotherapy and radiation, but he said such failures are to be expected.
"This is a pivotal time for sure, but it's not because we just got smarter in the last year," Hwu said. "It's because people have been working very hard." (Additional reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Michele Gershberg, Martin Howell and Prudence Crowther)

The breathtaking gowns in Oscar de la Renta's Spring 2013 bridal collection prove the designer is a master of his craft.

While many of the gowns showcase his signature romantic aesthetic (draping, lace, and classic silhouettes), we're smitten with the less-traditional gowns in his collection.

From a vermillion velvet sheath to a bridal pantsuit, the designer's edgier creations challenge the popular notion of "wedding dress." Why not wear a pastel, floral-patterned ballgown on your bid day?!

Here are some of the most dramatic looks from the collection.

Would you wear any of these offbeat bridal looks?

What happens when you're a leading journalist at a national newspaper -- and workplace stress leaves you too depressed to write? For Jan Wong, formerly of The Globe and Mail and currently a professor at St. Thomas University in New Brunswick, as well as a columnist at Toronto Life and The Halifax Chronicle Herald, it meant completely re-evaluating her perspective on work, family and mental health.

After writing a story for The Globe about the Dawson College shootings in 2006 that included a statement about tensions between ethnic groups in Quebec within the province's Anglophone and Francophone debate, Wong was on the receiving end of death threats, racist cartoons and even attacks on her family's restaurant in Montreal. Her struggles with The Globe in the wake of that issue resulted in a diagnosis of situational depression and the eventual firing from her job.

It is estimated that by 2020, depression will be the second leading cause of disease in the world. In Wong's new book, "Out Of The Blue: A Memoir of Workplace Depression, Recovery, Redemption and, Yes, Happiness," she details her own struggles with the illness, as well as its larger impact on society as a whole. The Huffington Post Canada talked to Wong about her book, her account of the experience with The Globe, and how people can protect themselves from a disease that affects one in five Canadians each year.

The Huffington Post Canada: What is your book about?

Jan Wong: The book is really about when an employee is clinically depressed, what happens in the workplace and how do you deal with depression with your family and your friends, what kind of treatment is available, pharmaceutical and therapy and how does it work and what else helps you get better. It's actually very positive.

HPC: How did your experience with depression start?

JW: [In addition to the racist attacks after the Dawson College article], what really plunged me into the depression was the abandonment by my newspaper ... They abandoned me journalistically, because they suddenly got scared when we got this backlash, and they basically threw me to the wolves and they said ‘We regret that we published this story.’ So I felt completely betrayed by that.

The second betrayal was when I was so sick that I went to see my doctor, and she wrote me a routine sick note and they didn’t believe me. And that was the most devastating betrayal. Because I understand that sometimes editors are opportunists and they want to duck. In this business no one’s perfect. But the real betrayal was when you have a sick employee and you basically say, 'They’re lying.' That was really too much for me.

HPC: Why did your doctor write you a sick note?

JW: Because I was incoherent, and I was completely sobbing in her office. I told her what was happening at work, I told her about the story and I told her about the newspaper.

All of that really got me so upset that I became, I guess, clinically depressed, but I didn’t even recognize that myself. My doctor gave me two weeks sick leave, and I’d never really asked why. But there’s nine symptoms of depression – if you get five of them and they persist for two weeks, then you’re officially depressed, according to the DMS-IV. I didn’t know any of that, but maybe that’s why she said two weeks.

[Editor's note: Wong was eventually diagnosed with situational depression, a single episode of the illness that affects approximately one in six people over the course of their lives. It can last anywhere from a few weeks to several months, and can be treated with both medication and therapy.]

HPC: Is there a history in your family of depression?

JW: When we were little, my mother had a brief episode where she felt suicidal, and she went to see her family doctor, and she talked to him -- and I believe it was a him -- and then she felt much better and after that there was no problem. But the reason I don’t know much about it is that my mother has passed away, and when she told me about it, I didn’t want to know. I just felt so awkward and uncomfortable that I didn’t ask her more.

In my own history, when I had my first child, I think I had post-partum for about two weeks. And at the time I didn’t understand what had happened to me either.

HPC: So this was a surprise to you.

JW: I was shocked when this happened to me, because I had the prejudice that strong people don’t get sick, but in fact of course that’s not true, because Mike Wallace had depression when he was sued by General Westmoreland over his Vietnam story, and he attempted suicide.

SEE: Jan Wong's tips to keep yourself protected from situational depression. Interview continues below:

HPC: Why don't people talk about depression in the workplace?

JW: I think employers try to suppress any talk about it afterwards because if they settle with you, they often try to push you out because they’re afraid it will be lifelong. They don’t understand that a typical depressive episode may last a few months. Certainly shorter than a pregnancy. And we accept that now it’s okay to get pregnant – in another era, they would fire you if you got pregnant. We now accept that pregnancy is a normal part of the human condition and one day, I hope through public discourse, we'll understand that emotional and mental illness is also something that is not unusual. Understand that a depression is not going to destroy you for life, just like a pregnancy is not going to destroy you as an employee, but that you will have your baby and then you’ll come back to work.

HPC: What would be an ideal situation for someone who’s dealing with that in the workplace?

JW: I really think human resources folks need some fundamental training. They need to be educated about mental illness. As soon as they see a behavioural change, they have to do something. The first thing the HR person needs to ask is whether it’s because of a situation at work or because of a situation outside of work. If it’s outside, you tell them where to get counselling. If it’s inside work, you tell them where to get treatment, but you also stop the situation at work.

Especially for those of us who work with our brains, there’s this huge fear that if you’ve had a mental illness, no one will ever hire you again. But in fact that didn’t happen – I have a job. I think that’s what people need to know, is that you can recover.

HPC: So how did you heal? What did you do?

JW: Unfortunately, it took me a long time because of this ongoing strife with my employer. I think I could have gotten better, and my doctor thinks so too, much faster if I had just been allowed to be sick in peace. I travelled a lot – those were the times I could eat, otherwise if I was at home I wasn’t eating. And I threw myself into music – I’m not a great musician by any means, but I play in different groups, and that takes you away. I stopped reading newspapers entirely, because newspapers were making me sick, just because it reminded me of the workplace. So I read tons of books – I started reading Tolstoy, things I had never had time to read ... All kinds of modern fiction too, like Still Alice and The Help, and it was just great.

HPC: So was it mostly time and not having the stress of the office?

JW: Yes – I think it was that and having the psychiatrist and taking the pharmaceuticals. I took four different kinds, trying to find the one that worked. I have a chapter on pharmaceuticals, because I want people to know that they work. They don’t all work -- I had to go through three before I found one that worked [Wellbutrin], but it worked.

Again there’s this prejudice – because they affect your mind, people are afraid to take them. I want to get rid of that stigma too. They’re just pills! And yeah, they make your mouth really dry, and sometimes it ruins your sex life, but if you’re sick, you’ve got to take the medicine. And therapy was good too – going to see my doctor [once a week for two years] was really helpful.

HPC: Is there any way that people can protect themselves?

JW: Yes, and I talk to my students about this because they’re all going to be journalists. I tell them, okay, so the newsroom is a pressure cooker, and it’s really fun and you’re going to love this job, but it will suck every single minute of your time and you must be aware that you should have families, you should have relationships, you should have friends. You cannot always put your family second or third. You should put your family first -- not 100% of the time because journalism is a very demanding job -- but make time for your family.

We get sucked into the glory of the byline, but no one will remember you in five years. You’re a big name now, but if you’re not on the air, they won’t remember who you are. Or a whole new generation will come up, they don't know who you are. It was so funny, one of my students got all excited when she Googled me and found out I’d been on Strombo a few years ago, so she starts posting it on my class Facebook group – finally I impressed them, right?

HPC: You had your long-running 'Lunch With Jan Wong' column and you were known for being very critical and telling the truth no matter what. Has that changed at all after your experience?

JW: Well, I still am the ‘tell the truth no matter what’ – that’s what this book is – because I think it’s important. But I think I’m much more sympathetic to people who have a problem. I think I’m much more willing to listen when people say things aren’t well with them. And you know, I think some of the people I interviewed for my lunch column probably had problems that I didn’t understand. Like Margaret Trudeau – I didn’t understand her behaviour, she was erratic. [Editor's note: Trudeau eventually wrote a memoir on her struggle with bipolar disorder.] And I would just write about it with complete ignorance about mental illness, because she didn’t talk in those days about it.

So I look back on that column, and I think, 'I was really tough, and I think I didn’t have enough understanding of the frailty of the human condition when I wrote that.' And of course nobody wanted to talk about it. It’s not like anybody said to me, ‘I’m depressed.’ Everybody just pretended they were fine.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This conversation has been edited from its original format for clarity and length.

TORONTO - When Kathy Donkner was diagnosed with sleep apnea, she spent several nights in a sleep lab, hooked to scores of electrodes tying her to a device that gathered data about her breathing and sleep patterns.

The procedure didn't make for the most comfortable of nights, she acknowledges. Getting up to go to the bathroom, for instance, was an ordeal that involved calling for help to unplug herself from the monitor collecting her sleep data.

"You can't just get up and go, right? You feel like a little kid asking for permission to go to the bathroom," she says with a chuckle.

So Donkner can appreciate the appeal of being tested for sleep apnea in her own home, with a device that wouldn't require electrodes and belts and cameras monitoring her every nocturnal toss and turn.

"I think a lot more people would actually go and be tested for it, if they didn't have to go through the nonsense that you have to do when you have to go to the sleep clinic," says Donkner, 48, an early childhood educator from the Toronto area.

If you're one of those people who chronically checks work e-mail -- on the weekends, at night, in the wee morning hours -- then STOP.

A new study from UC Irvine and U.S. Army researchers shows that taking a break from work email can lower stress and improve focus.

"We found that when you remove e-mail from workers' lives, they multitask less and experience less stress," study researcher Gloria Mark, an informatics professor at UC Irvine, said in a statement.

The research was presented at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Computer-Human Interaction Conference.

Researchers attached heart rate monitors to 13 people using the computer as they worked in an office setting. The monitors measured the study participants' heart rate variability -- a more varied heart rate is linked with lower stress levels, while a more constant heart rate is linked with higher stress. Software sensors also monitored how often the study participants switched between windows on their computer.

The researchers found that when provided access to checking email, the study participants were constantly in on "high alert" -- with more constant heart rates -- and changed screens 37 times an hour, on average.

However, when the study participants were cut off from their e-mail for five days, their heart rates were more varied, researchers found. They also only changed the screens 18 times an hour, on average -- which is about half a many times as when they had e-mail access.

The only downside to going without e-mail, researchers found, was that it was linked with feeling 'somewhat isolated."

Recently, British researchers found that checking smartphones for e-mails and messages is linked with higher stress levels.

The Press Association reported that the most stressed people in that study were checking their phones even when there wasn't anything to check, and thinking that they had a new message when they really didn't (called "phantom alerts").

By Kate Kelland
LONDON, May 7 (Reuters) - Scientists who scanned the brains of men convicted of murder, rape and violent assaults have found the strongest evidence yet that psychopaths have structural abnormalities in their brains.
The researchers, based at King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, said the differences in psychopaths' brains mark them out even from other violent criminals with anti-social personality disorders (ASPD), and from healthy non-offenders.
Nigel Blackwood, who led the study, said the ability to use brain scans to identify and diagnose this sub-group of violent criminals has important implications for treatment.
The study showed that psychopaths , who are characterised by a lack of empathy, had less grey matter in the areas of the brain important for understanding other peoples' emotions.
While cognitive and behavourial treatments may benefit people with anti-social personality disorders, the same approach may not work for psychopaths with brain damage, Blackwood said.
"To get a clear idea of which treatments are working, you've got to clearly define what people are like going into the treatment programmes," he said in a telephone interview.
Essi Viding a professor in the psychology and language sciences department of University College London, who was not involved in Blackwood's study, said it provided "weighty new evidence" about the importance of distinguishing psychopathic from non-psychopathic people rather than grouping them together.
The findings also have implications for the justice system, because linking psychopathy to brain function raises the prospect of arguing a defence of insanity.
Interest in what goes on inside the heads of violent criminals has been sharpened by the trial of Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian who massacred 77 people last July.
Two court-appointed psychiatric teams who examined Breivik came to opposite conclusions about his mental health. The killer himself has railed being called insane.

LESS GREY MATTER IN BRAIN'S "SOCIAL" AREAS
Blackwood's team used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of 44 violent adult male offenders in Britain who had already been diagnosed with anti-social personality disorders.
The crimes they had committed included murder, rape, attempted murder and grievous bodily harm.
Of the 44 men scanned, 17 met the diagnosis for ASPD plus psychopathy and 27 did not. The researchers also scanned the brains of 22 healthy non-offenders.
The results showed that the psychopaths' brains had significantly less grey matter in the anterior rostral prefrontal cortex and temporal poles than the brains of the non-psychopathic offenders and non-offenders.
These areas of the brain are important for understanding other people's emotions and intentions, and are activated when people think about moral behaviour, the researchers said.
Damage to these areas is linked with a lack of empathy, a poor response to fear and distress and a lack of self-conscious emotions such as guilt or embarrassment.
Lindsay Thomson, a professor of forensic psychiatry at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in this study, said Blackwood's findings add to evidence that psychopathy is a distinct neurodevelopmental brain disorder.
Research shows that most violent crimes are committed by a small group of persistent male offenders with ASPD.
In England and Wales, for example, around half of male prisoners meet diagnostic criteria for ASPD. A major review of studies covering 23,000 prisoners from 62 countries conducted in 2002 found that 47 percent had anti-social personality disorder.
Such people typically react in an aggressive way to frustration or perceived threats, but most are not psychopaths, the researchers wrote in a summary of their study, which was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry journal.
There are clear behaviour differences among people with ASPD depending on whether they also have psychopathy. Their patterns of offending are different, suggesting the need for a separate approach to treatment.
"We describe those without psychopathy as 'hot-headed' and those with psychopathy as 'cold-hearted'," Blackwood explained.
"The 'cold-hearted' psychopathic group begin offending earlier, engage in a broader range and greater density of offending behaviours, and respond less well to treatment programmes in adulthood compared to the 'hot-headed' group." (Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Rosalind Russell)

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- A new, noninvasive test to detect certain fetal abnormalities early in pregnancy is being launched and should be widely available next month.

The Harmony Prenatal Test can detect whether a fetus has an extra chromosome, instead of the normal pair. Such abnormalities, called trisomies (TREYE'soh-mees), include the one that causes Down syndrome.

Ariosa Diagnostics Inc., which makes molecular diagnostics tests, says Harmony can detect trisomies in women at least 10 weeks pregnant with a single fetus. It's done from done from a simple blood draw from the mother at a doctor's office or test center.

The San Jose, Calif., company says its test is less expensive than rivals', with a list price of $795, and it's nearly as accurate as invasive tests.

(Reuters) - Acupuncture and hypnosis have been promoted as drug-free ways to help smokers kick the habit, and there is some evidence that they work, according to a research review that looked at 14 international studies.
Researchers, whose findings appeared in the American Journal of Medicine, said that there are still plenty of questions, including exactly how effective alternative therapies might be and how they measure up against conventional methods to quit smoking.
But the alternatives should still stand as options for smokers determined to break the habit, said researchers led by Mehdi Tahiri of McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
In general, smokers who want to quit should first try the standard approaches, which include nicotine-replacement therapy, medications and behavioral counseling, Tahiri said.
"But some people are not interested in medication," he said, adding that in many cases the standard therapies had not worked. "Then I think we should definitely recommend (acupuncture and hypnosis) as choices."
Researchers found that some studies showed that smokers subjected to acupuncture were more than three times as likely to be tobacco-free six months to a year later.
Similarly, across four trials of hypnosis, smokers had a higher success rate with the therapy compared to people who had minimal help.
But there were some caveats, researchers said. The success rate was not consistent in all the tests conducted, although the broad trends pointed to the benefits of alternate treatment.
A 2008 study that ran a few sessions of laser acupuncture on 258 smokers found that 55 percent who'd received the treatment quit the habit in six months, compared with four percent who were not given the treatment.
But a 2007 study from Taiwan that looked at needle acupuncture around the ear, the area typically targeted for smoking cessation, reported a lower success rate.
Only nine percent of those who were given acupuncture had quit after six months compared with six percent who stopped smoking without the treatment.
The situation was similar across the hypnosis trials. Two studies showed a significant impact : 20 to 45 percent of hypnosis patients were smoke-free six months to a year later. The other two trials showed smaller effects.
Nonetheless, Tahiri said, there was a "trend" toward a benefit across all of the studies of acupuncture and hypnosis.
There are still definitely questions, he added, about how many sessions of acupuncture or hypnosis might be necessary, or which specific techniques are best.
Other research reviews, though, have concluded that the jury is still out on alternative therapies for quitting smoking.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/Khhv63
(Reporting from New York by Amy Norton at Reuters Health; editing by Elaine Lies and Sanjeev Miglani)