Porn changes kids' brain cells, Latest Health News - The New Paper
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Porn changes kids' brain cells

Internet pornography changes children's brain cells, said American neurosurgeon Donald Hilton.

At a world congress last week in Rome on the sexual dangers children face, Dr Hilton warned against the devastating effects of violent pornographic web clips on young brains.

Dr Hilton, from the University of Texas Health Science Centre in San Antonio, said: "Our brain cells change with learning.

"Addictive learning sculpts the brain in a damaging way, and we can become set in certain behaviours and tastes.

"When (it comes to) porn, that is an especially powerful printing process. The brain doesn't forget that.

"One thing our brain wants is novelty, change. Boys, and increasingly girls, are struggling with porn.

"There is a lot of scientific evidence that sex can, and in particular Internet porn, be addictive." - AFP


Obesity-related cancers up in US

The rates of 12 obesity-related cancers have gone up by 7 per cent from 2005 to 2014, said health officials.

According to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 630,000 people in the US were diagnosed with a cancer linked with being overweight or obese in 2014, accounting for about 40 per cent of all cancers diagnosed that year.

About half of Americans are not aware of this link, said CDC principal deputy director, Dr Anne Schuchat.

She said the science linking cancer to obesity is evolving, and it is not yet clear whether losing weight will help individuals once cancer has taken root. 
- REUTERS

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