Health : Researcher Reveals How to Attract--and Keep--a Mate
If you’re looking for a mate, a sense of humor may be your best tactic in the hunt.
Displaying a sense of humor was judged the most effective way for men or women to attract a mate in a survey of undergraduates by David M. Buss, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Other important attraction actions? Being sympathetic to someone’s troubles, showing good manners, offering to help, keeping well-groomed and making an effort to spend time with the person.
Responses changed when Buss asked undergraduates in relationships to name the best ways to retain a mate (without specifying whether the term “mate” referred to partners who were married or not). “Being helpful, kind, nice and caring” was judged the most effective way to keep a mate, said the 375 undergraduates surveyed.
Eliciting jealousy, an uncommonly used tactic, was considered a more effective retention technique by females than males, noted Buss, whose studies were published recently in Ethology and Sociobiology and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Hysterectomy Study
Depression isn’t an inevitable consequence of hysterectomy, Canadian researchers report.
In a study recently published in Psychosomatics, researchers from Royal Victoria Hospital and McGill University, Montreal, suggest that women undergoing hysterectomy--the surgical removal of all or part of the uterus--may be more likely to feel relief about their general health rather than depression.
In the year after surgery, researchers found a general decrease in depression scores in three groups of women they compared: patients undergoing hysterectomy for noncancerous conditions; those who underwent other pelvic operations (such as ovary removal); and those who underwent gallbladder removal.
They found no major differences among the groups in terms of psychological adjustment and satisfaction with their sex lives and relationship to their partners.
But timing of the hysterectomy does appear important. Women who underwent the surgery within a month of the decision to operate were more likely to be depressed than those who waited longer.
Low-Cost Sleep Disorder Aid
When doctors suspect a sleep disorder, they often recommend that patients spend an expensive night or two in a sleep disorder laboratory.
But now there’s another alternative for some patients. A handful of manufacturers have in recent years introduced at-home sleep monitors. The devices evaluate a patient’s sleep by measuring such items as brain waves, muscle tone and eye movement, said Michael Stevenson, a psychologist and clinical director of North Valley Sleep Disorders Center, Mission Hills.
The devices’ main benefits, proponents say, include reduction of “first-night effects” (changed sleep patterns that sometimes occur in an unfamiliar environment) and lower costs (about a third that charged by sleep laboratories, partly because lab personnel aren’t needed).
Acknowledging that the devices are “not a replacement for the sleep lab,” Terry Murphy, spokesperson for Oxford Medical, a monitor manufacturer, said the machines are best for diagnosing sleep apnea (temporary cessation of breathing) and nocturnal myoclonus (involuntary muscle twitching). The devices can also serve as a follow-up for sleep apnea to determine whether treatment is effective.
Stevenson believes the monitors are best used to evaluate treatment of diagnosed sleep disorders. They also can be used as “a screening device to see if a patient needs an all-night (sleep) recording.”
