There’s an adage that in romantic relationships, opposites attract. Now, a large, new study confirms that just like many old sayings, it’s wrong. In an analysis of about 200 studies involving millions of couples, researchers came to the conclusion that there is little behind the claim that opposites attract. If anything, the one about birds of feather flocking together is much closer to the truth. When it came to the hundreds of “traits” the study analyzed — from political leanings to smoking and drinking habits — partners were almost always more alike than different. It was only in relation to 3% of traits that people tended to pair off with someone who had different inclinations, according to the findings published recently in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. To be fair to the adage, the findings do not mean that people rarely find themselves attracted to someone who is much different from them. “We looked at cohabiting and co-parenting couples,” explained lead researcher Tanya Horwitz, a doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder. “So, this study speaks to long-term relationships.” On average, the findings show, long-term partners are similar in a host of ways — from religious and political beliefs, to educational background and certain aspects of intelligence, to lifestyle habits. The results are based on data from 199 published studies involving millions of male-female…  read on >  read on >

Global warming has been linked to higher rates of asthma, heart disease and other health concerns. Now, new research suggests that rising temperatures across the planet may place pregnant women at greater risk for severe pregnancy-related illnesses, especially in their third trimester. And this is likely to get worse in the near future, said study author Anqi Jiao, a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Irvine. “Climate change will continue to impact all facets of health with increasing severity and duration of extreme heat events,” she noted. Severe maternal illness is an umbrella term for 21 serious conditions that can include heart attacks, kidney failure, sudden cardiac arrest, heart failure, anesthesia complications, blood infections, and need for a hysterectomy (removal of the uterus), among other illnesses and complications. “These women… would have died without appropriate and timely identification and intervention, but severe pregnancy-related illnesses are thought to be preventable to a large extent,” Jiao said. What’s more, these conditions can result in longer-term treatment and recovery and place a greater financial burden on families, she added. Exactly how exposure to extreme heat causes serious pregnancy complications for expectant moms is not fully understood, but the researchers have some theories. Heat exposure may lead to dehydration and an imbalance of minerals in the blood, which can cause inflammation, increased heart rate and other symptoms, Jiao…  read on >  read on >

Most American men think they’re leading a healthy lifestyle, possibly picturing themselves as a Hollywood leading man type. But their actual health habits are those of a schlubby sidekick, a new Cleveland Clinic survey reveals. The national poll found that four out of five (81%) American men believe they are leading a healthy lifestyle. But nearly half do not get a yearly physical (44%) and do not take care of their mental health (44%), researchers found. Only half said they follow a healthy diet (51%), and about a quarter (27%) admit to being couch potatoes who watch TV more than five hours a day, on average. “What they found was that the majority of men in the survey really felt like they were living a very healthy lifestyle,” said Dr. Raevti Bole, a urologist with the Center for Men’s Health in the Glickman Urological & Kidney Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. “But when you ask some of those more specific questions and got them to think about it, they found that some of those behaviors weren’t in alignment with what they had initially thought about how healthy their lifestyles were.” Cleveland Clinic issued the survey as part of its eighth annual MENtion It educational campaign. The campaign is meant to draw attention to the fact that men often do not mention health issues or take…  read on >  read on >

“Vain” isn’t a word normally associated with football players, but many wide receivers believe they look slim and fleet-footed with a lower number on their jersey rather than a higher one. New research shows these players are onto something. In two experiments, subjects shown images of players consistently said that those wearing jerseys numbered 10 to 19 looked thinner than those in jerseys 80 to 89 — even when their body sizes were the same, according to a new report in the journal PLOS ONE. Researchers say this is because the way we perceive numbers appears to influence our perceptions of body sizes. “How we perceive the world is highly influenced by our prior knowledge,” said senior researcher Ladan Shams, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California, Los Angeles. “In our daily lives, numbers written on objects — on a bag of sugar in the supermarket or weights in the gym — usually represent the magnitude of the objects,” she said in a university news release. “The higher the number, the bigger or more massive the object generally is.” The study followed up on a 2019 ESPN report exploring why many football wide receivers prefer to wear jersey numbers between 10 and 19. A longtime NFL rule required wide receivers to wear uniform numbers between 80 and 89, but the league…  read on >  read on >