Housework affects fertility (in Finland)

Anneli Miettinen and colleagues at the Population Research Institute, Väestöliitto, Finland, have, perhaps for the first time, performed a study to examine whether housework might be linked in some way to (in)fertility. Results of their enquiries, published in the May 2015 issue of the journal Acta Sociologica : “[…] show that women’s housework hours were […]

Is playing the harmonica linked to male infertility?

In the first study of its kind, a team of medics from the Aja University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran, have investigated whether male mouth-organ players might suffer abnormally high rates of infertility. They were following the hypothesis that the hard blowing associated with harmonica playing might mimic the so-called Valsalva maneuver which, say the […]

The sitting-on-a-bed problem

Doctors are not allowed to sit on patients’ beds — at least in many British hospitals they’re not. Dr. Iona Heath explains in the BMJ: Still trying to come to terms with the widespread banning of flowers from hospital wards (BMJ 2009;339:b5406, doi:10.1136/bmj.b5406), I learnt recently from senior nursing colleagues that sitting on a patient’s […]