By Shereen Jegtvig NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – The types of fat people get in their diet may not be as closely related to their risk of heart disease as previously believed, a new review of past studies suggests. But researchers found people’s risk of heart disease varied little based on how much of those fats they ate. Polyunsaturated fats generally come from plant-based foods such as nuts, seeds and vegetable oils. Omega-3 fatty acids, a type of polyunsaturated fats, are found in fish.

“At this point we can say there is an association but we cannot say exactly why,” Stacey Tiberio, the study’s lead author from the Oregon Social Learning Center in Eugene, told Reuters Health. The researchers write in JAMA Pediatrics that understanding the role of parental media monitoring is crucial in the development of obesity programs and interventions. Parents and children answered questionnaires, were interviewed and received physicals when the kids were five, seven and nine years old. The researchers found that when mothers reported spending less time monitoring their kids’ media consumption, kids tended be heavier at seven years old.

The drug gentamicin can provide effective treatment for people with bacterial infections that are resistant to other antibiotics, but this medication can cause a serious side effect, too: hearing loss. Now, University of Florida researchers have discovered that a dietary supplement shows promise for protecting against drug-induced hearing loss when taken during gentamicin treatment.

You’ve been sweating away on the elliptical for months and obsessing over your diet (kale again?), and the scale is at a standstill. Meanwhile, your husband announces his desire to get in shape. He swears off beer and voilà —two weeks later, his spare tire is gone. What gives? Learn the science behind men’s seemingly random strategies, and you can optimize them for your own body.

Poor food choices, such as over-consumption of carbonated soft drinks, are an important factor driving the global obesity epidemic and have been linked directly to diabetes and heart disease. While public health agencies are working to help people to make healthier choices, monitoring the effectiveness of these efforts has been costly and difficult.

By Phil Stewart WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New Guantanamo Bay U.S. prison guidelines describe hunger striking detainees as undergoing “long term non-religious fasting,” a copy of the document obtained by Reuters shows. Two U.S. military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday the change in terminology helps differentiate between detainees with medical conditions caused by malnourishment, and political protesters who were at or above their ideal bodyweight. The change follows headline-grabbing hunger strikes by detainees last year which drew renewed attention to President Barack Obama’s frustrated efforts to shutter the facility on a U.S. military base in Cuba. The previous guidelines mentioned “hunger strikes” frequently, but the new ones totally exclude the term and only makes one passing reference to the word “hunger.” “It’s not our job to feed into their political protests.

By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) – Oxytocin, a brain chemical known as the “love hormone”, is showing promise as a potential treatment for people with the eating disorder anorexia nervosa, according to research by British and Korean scientists. In studies of anorexic patients, researchers found oxytocin altered their tendencies to become fixated on images of fattening foods and large body shapes – suggesting it could be developed as a treatment to help them overcome unhealthy obsessions with diet. Anorexia nervosa affects millions of people worldwide – including around 1 in 150 teenage girls in Britain, where it is one of the leading causes of mental health-related deaths, both due to physical complications and suicide. As well as problems with food, eating and body shape, patients with anorexia often have social difficulties, including anxiety and hypersensitivity to negative emotions.