The Ministry of Health and Welfare plans to conduct psychological tests on all nationals from as early as July next year to detect mental ailments believed to be affecting millions of people in the country. The government also decided to ease regulations on those suffering or having suffered from lighter psychological ailments in order to encourage people to see their doctors.According to the ministry, the tests will be conducted twice before children go to school, twice during their elementary

Mexican doctors say they have successfully removed a 33-pound (15-kilogram) benign tumor from the body of a 2-year-old child.Dr. Gustavo Hernandez says the tumor was heavier than the child who at the time of the June 14 surgery weighed 26 pounds (12 kilograms).Hernandez said Tuesday the child from the northern state of Durango was born with a lump that eventually covered the right side of his body from his armpit to his hip.Hernandez says it took doctors at the La Raza Medical Center in Mexico C

SEATTLE ― One afternoon not long ago, a friend and I were talking at her dining-room table, and I’ll admit it, we were feeling a bit self-righteous.We’d gone bowling with her parents, and we both noticed her mom could barely roll the lightest ball down the alley. She struggled with a lot of other tasks, too. We didn’t think of her as an elderly person. But there she was, looking feeble.“Well,” my friend said, shaking her head, “she doesn’t really exercise.” I nodded knowingly.The way my friend a

Many people worry they have had a stroke when they suddenly experience facial palsy. Unlike a stroke, which is caused by blocked or ruptured blood vessels in the brain, facial palsy (also known as Bell’s palsy) occurs when the nerves of the face muscles become paralyzed. Most cases have benign progress and resolve spontaneously without any treatment.Facial palsy usually takes approximately three to four days to develop and can take up to several weeks or months to recover, but most people recove

The health hazard of diesel engines has long been speculated, but has not yet been an official agenda on scientists’ tables. However, a recent World Health Organization’s decision to name diesel fume a grade-1 cancer-causing substance has shed light on the fuel. According to the WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer, diesel fumes could potentially be as big a public health threat as secondhand smoke, increasing the chances of lung cancer and bladder cancer. “We have studied bus and tax

U.S. researchers found that sleep-deprived people have a bigger possibility of choosing unhealthy food for their meals, which could lead to obesity.Lead author Stephanie Greer, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, and his team conducted a study on 23 healthy adults to see how poor sleep affects food choices.In the study, researchers divided participants into two groups, with one restricted to have only four hours sleep and the other allowed to have nine hours of sleep fo

We can get bruises from bumping into objects without knowing, getting hit by objects or falling over. Black bruises are formed when the blood vessels beneath the skin are damaged. When the blood pigment is absorbed the bruise becomes blue.Bruises and swelling are more obvious in areas with particularly thin skin. Women tend to bruise more easily than men because women have thinner layers of skin, their tissues are more delicate and they are more likely to get thrombocytopenia ― a lack of platele