Health News - ABC News Radio

• Rihanna, Chris Brown Collaboration Sparks Outrage
  

  Chris Polk/FilmMagic(LOS ANGELES) -- Rihanna debuted her sexually charged “Birthday Cake” remix Monday, and the man who bloodied and bruised her three years ago, Chris Brown, appears on the new version, rapping about how he wants to “f***” her and “give it to her in the worst way.” Listeners can also hear Rihanna’s vocals featured on the new version of Chris Brown’s “Turn Up the Music,” which was released Monday.
  
  While some fans have expressed acceptance and even excitement about the collaboration, others are outraged, announcing their loss of respect for the pop princess for what seems like welcoming her former abuser back into her life.
  
  Without having treated Rihanna or knowing the full details of the continuing saga of Rihanna and Chris Brown, experts weighed in on the rekindled music relationship. While some said the revived pair is inappropriate and dangerous, others suggest that Rihanna may have healed from the experience and now feels empowered to separate business and personal relationships.
  
  “It is always a little worrisome to see an abused woman readmit her abuser into her life,” said Alan Hilfer, chief psychologist at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn. “This is, however, quite common and we often see women willing to forgive men for some of the awful things that they have done. As psychologists, we are always working to get people to change their behaviors and hope we can be successful.  We advocate the ability to forgive, but not necessarily forget.”
  
  The cycle of domestic abuse can be a confusing one for all those involved or witnessing it, said Dr. Sudeepta Varma, clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at New York University’s Langone School of Medicine and a member of the American Psychiatric Association. While common sense tells most people to permanently stay away from something so damaging, victims can fall back into their abuser’s web of charm, promises of change and grand gestures of apology.
  
  “The highs the abusers provide their victims are like no other, and the memory and potency of the positive experiences draws the victim back in for more,” said Varma. “The victim is often someone who is psychologically vulnerable to this type of charm, deceit and grandiose behavior. Underneath the debonair exterior of the abuser lies a person with gross lack of empathy, disregard for rules and norms of society. [These are] many qualities we see in people with personality disorders.”
  
  Rihanna seemed to allude to the situation with her former flame Tuesday while accepting best international female artist at the Brit Awards. “At times when I feel misunderstood, my fans always remind me that it’s O.K. to be myself,” she said during her speech.
  
  Varma said society doesn’t expect women who are beautiful, talented, wealthy, and who have many options surrounding her to fall prey to such behavior, but, “domestic violence is an equalizer.”
  
  It is more about psychological dependence, low-self esteem, and believing that this person, who is good to you sometimes, is really your best and only option out there, Varma continued.
  
  “You are willing to overlook the bad, because the good feels so good,” said Varma. “It sends a confusing message to concerned parties and continued contact with a former abuser sends a message that you have accepted, tolerated and maybe even condoned this type of behavior.”
  
  Nevertheless, Martin Binks, clinical director & CEO of Binks Behavioral Health, said women who are victims of abuse do not have to remain victims of their abuser forever.
  
  “Why must we insist on disempowering victims by questioning their judgment without all the facts?” said Binks. “People may be forgetting that perhaps she has recovered and is a strong independent woman who is empowered enough to make this decision thoughtfully and without there being some pathological explanation. Only she and her therapist are qualified to have an opinion on this topic, in my opinion,” he said.
  
  Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

  
  
  
• Kardashians’ 'Diet' Drugs Under Attack
  

  Don Arnold/WireImage(NEW YORK) -- Kim and Khloe Kardashian may have gotten themselves into legal hot water with their promotion of the diet drug QuickTrim.
  
  According to the New York Post, the New York City law firm Bursor & Fisher has filed a class-action against QuickTrim’s manufacturers, Windmill Health Products in New Jersey, for the product’s promotion and marketing claims, which include the Kardashian sisters as celebrity users of QuickTrim.
  
  In an email sent to Quick Trim customers, the Post reported, the company noted, “The active ingredient in QuickTrim weight loss products is a large dose of caffeine...The FDA has determined that caffeine is not safe or effective for weight loss.”
  
  QuickTrim was hitched to Kim and Khloe’s star in 2009 when the duo became the product’s celebrity endorsers. In January 2010, Kim claimed that she used QuickTrim and dropped 15 pounds. Khloe professed a similar weight loss a few months later. Since then, the product has earned Windmill Health Products $45 million windfall in revenue.
  
  The products are sold nationwide at such chains as Walmart, CVS and Walgreens. The company’s website claims that QuickTrim products, which range from pills to powdery drinks, can help burn calories, cleanse the bodies, curb appetite and boost energy. The website also warns that, “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.”
  
  Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

  
  
  
• Tom Brady's Mentor, Tom Martinez, Dies at 66
  

  Rob Carr/Getty Images(BOSTON) -- Tom Martinez, the man credited for grooming New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady for his NFL career, died of a heart attack while undergoing dialysis Tuesday on his 66th birthday.
  
  The retired football coach had been awaiting a kidney transplant for two years, but he had not succeeded in finding a donor. Three months ago, Martinez's doctors told him he had mere months left to live.
  
  "I've been told I'm out of here, and I don't accept that," Martinez told ABC News in January. "I'm going to fight to the end."
  
  Martinez's wife, Olivia, had dropped him off at the Satellitte Dialysis Center in Redwood City, Calif., for a routine appointment. Shortly after, she was called back to the center and was told by staff members that her husband had had a heart attack.
  
  Martinez told ABC News in January that if there was ever a key to success on the field, it's this: Don't quit.
  
  "I tell the kids I don't care who it is, I don't care where we go, I don't care where we play, we don't whine about officials' calls, we don't whine about weather conditions," said Martinez. "You play hard and you play right to the end."
  
  Brady adopted that no-quit attitude to help his longtime mentor Martinez connect with a donor.
  
  Brady spread the word through a banner he circulated online over the past month through MatchingDonor.com, a nonprofit organization that helps interested living organ donors find those who need transplants.
  
  "We don't like to promote one person or another," Dr. Jeremiah Lowney, medical director at MatchingDonor.com, told ABC News in January. "If Tom Martinez is helping people get to this site, then that's great."
  
  Martinez started coaching Brady when he was a 13-year-old at a quarterback football camp Martinez ran at the College of San Mateo in California, and the relationship lasted through Brady's NFL career.
  
  "He's one of the fiercest competitors I have ever known," said Martinez. "He wants to do things 100 percent."
  
  But Brady and Martinez's relationship was better than a great throw.
  
  "He obviously is the summation of everything you attempt to teach," Martinez said.
  
  Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

  
  
  
• Erin Brockovich: Research into Upstate NY Tourette's Case Preliminary
  

  ABC News(NEW YORK) -- Environmental activist Erin Brockovich has corrected misinformation regarding her investigation into the medical mystery in an upstate New York town where a group of teenagers has displayed symptoms similar to Tourette syndrome, saying that her research is still preliminary.
  
  Nearly two dozen people, including one 36-year-old, in the upstate New York village of LeRoy are now experiencing uncontrollable tics, seizures and outbursts that might have been caused by a chemical spill in the town more than 40 years ago.
  
  In a statement released Tuesday, Brockovich said she is still investigating a plume from a 1970 train derailment in LeRoy, which dumped cyanide and trichloroethylene (TCE) -- a chlorinated hydrocarbon used to de-grease metal parts -- within three miles of the village's high school.
  
  The Environmental Protection Agency says that TCE can affect the central nervous system, and cause dizziness, headache, sleepiness, nausea, confusion, blurred vision and facial numbness.  It is suspected of being linked to the symptoms among LeRoy's local teens.
  
  Brockovich associate Bob Bowcock reportedly said on Feb. 11 that samples taken from the wells of private residences had not migrated west and south -- toward LeRoy High School -- as some had feared.  Although at the time Browcock said that the investigation would continue for the next several months, Brockovich on Tuesday said that the tests he referred to were preliminary.
  
  "Contrary to an erroneous news report, I want to make clear that my investigation into possible sources of environmental contamination in LeRoy, New York that may or may not be linked to the serious illnesses suffered by various members of the community is not complete," Brockovich said in a statement.  "In fact, it appears the number of people in the area displaying alarming health issues that can be caused by TCE is growing."
  
  "It took the EPA 40 years to investigate the contamination from the train derailment and it will take us more than 40 days to get to the root of the problem in LeRoy.  I want to further stress that we have not ruled out the TCE plume from the train derailment as a source of contamination at LeRoy High School," she added.
  
  Brockovich, 51, added that her team has many more areas of LeRoy to test, including the local quarry, six fracking wells at the high school and the Methyl tert-butyl ether (MtBE) contamination in local wells, while stressing that thoroughness is key in her investigation.

  Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

  
  
  
• Wardrobe Woes: Hidden Health Hazards of Tight Clothing
  

  iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Men and women who shoehorn themselves into skin-tight jeans, battle to button their trousers or knot their neckties too tightly might unknowingly suffer nerve damage, digestive disturbances and even potentially deadly blood clots.
  
  They're victims of fashion's hidden health hazards.  Even some favorite accessories, like waist-cinching belts, can compress delicate nerves in the abdomen or constrain breathing and deprive the heart and brain of needed oxygen.
  
  "Who hasn't tried to squeeze into a too-small pair of shoes, or wriggle into too-tight jeans?" said Dr. Orly Avitzur, a neurologist in Tarrytown, N.Y., who started warning about too-constricting skinny jeans on her Consumer Reports blog back in 2009.  "Sometimes we realize right away that our choice of wardrobe or fashion is the culprit; other times, it only dawns on us when we begin to really suffer."
  
  When patients seek medical help for pain radiating into the thigh, or feelings of numbness or tingling, it's unlikely they suspect that the cut of their jeans might be the problem.  But sharp-eyed physicians like Dr. Malvinder S. Parmar, medical director of Timmins & District Hospital in Ontario, Canada, might recognize the hallmarks of meralgia paresthetica, the compression of a nerve running from the pelvis into the outer thigh.
  
  In 2003, Parmar published a description of "tingly thighs" in three "mildly obese" women who wore low-rise jeans throughout the previous few months.  Their discomforts resolved after four to six weeks "avoiding hiphuggers and wearing loose-fitting dresses," according to Parmar's 2003 correspondence in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
  
  Some clothing-related maladies go by mundane-sounding names that hardly hint at their potential to sicken.  For example, a middle-aged or older man whose belly hangs below the waist of his pants may suffer from "tight pants syndrome," a term coined in a 1993 article by Dr. Octavio Bessa, an internist in Stamford, Conn.
  
  Bessa described a collection of gastrointestinal symptoms including abdominal pain, heartburn and reflux a few hours after meals that he would see in 20 to 25 men every year.  The common thread: All wore ill-fitting pants with waistbands several inches smaller than their bellies, Bessa reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
  
  Three years later, two diagnostic imaging specialists from Wales described a "sporting variant" of tight-pants syndrome that they linked to tight Neoprene bike shorts worn to prevent muscular injury.
  
  Wearing tight neckties and shirts with constricting collars can also impede blood flow through neck veins and arteries and may affect vision.  In a 2003 study of 40 men, half with glaucoma, three minutes with a tightened tie raised eye pressure among the majority of those with and without the disease.  Elevated eye pressure is a key element of diagnosing and monitoring glaucoma, a leading cause of blindness.

  Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio