Your Health

By Janice M. Horowitz

GOOD NEWS

ANALYZE THIS Which is a better way to treat depression--psychotherapy or medication? After years of debate, a major study confirms, for now, that the answer is a combo of both. Researchers studying 700 folks with severe, chronic depression--some had been afflicted for 20 years--found that symptoms like loss of appetite, difficulty sleeping and general unhappiness were alleviated in an astonishing 85% of patients after just 12 weeks of therapy paired with daily doses of the antidepressant nefazodone. Now that's something to lift anyone's spirits.

FLASH! Tamoxifen may help prevent breast cancer, but one of the most common and intrusive side effects is hot flashes, even among women who've already gone through menopause. Relief may be in sight. A small study suggests that women who take the high-blood-pressure drug clonidine experience about one-third fewer flashes a day.

BAD NEWS

FIGHT CLUB Sure, it's cool to be angry and cynical when you're young, but such traits may damage the heart. Just as doctors have linked anger and heart disease in older adults, they now find that high hostility levels in 18-to-30-year-olds more than double the risk of calcifications in the coronary arteries--an early sign of heart disease. So if you're young and rage-prone, here's what's really cool: meditation, yoga and exercise, all known anger relievers.

FATAL ATTRACTI0N Are you one of the 2 million Americans with a pacemaker or implantable defibrillator in your chest? Then be wary of therapeutic magnets used to relieve arthritis and muscle aches. A report shows that those popular mattress pads containing magnets can interfere with--and sometimes deactivate--implantable heart-rhythm regulators. You're probably safe with smaller magnetic gear worn on the wrist or foot, as long as it's kept at least 6 in. from your shoulder. That's where the circuitry for the heart devices is housed.

--By Janice M. Horowitz

Sources--Good News: New England Journal of Medicine (5/17/00); Annals of Internal Medicine (5/16/00). Bad News: Journal of the American Medical Association (5/16/00), North American Society of Pacing and Electrophysiology meeting