Almost a whole quarter of patients that visit the doctor and are told they may have chronic high blood pressure may be being misled. Studies show that for this 23%  of patients, blood pressure goes up significantly in clinical settings, a phenomenon called “white coat hypertension,” and may contribute to some misdiagnoses. What is the upshot of all this? If you or someone you love gets diagnosed with hypertension in the doctors office, you should monitor their blood pressure at home for at least 24 hours before deciding whether or not medication may be necessary.

After guacamole, rice is the DiSH Lab’s favorite food. So, this study about rice micro RNAs (which are capable of altering gene expression, though we haven’t seen this in humans) floating around in people’s blood stream is crazy/cool/scary.

As a person who has known first-hand the pain and difficulty of publishing null results, it’s understandable that publications would trend in this way…but when scientists only publish their positive (not positive meaning good but positive meaning they found an effect), it really puts the integrity of science at risk, and it also threatens scientific knowledge as a whole! So we should try, whenever we can, to publish important null findings (it can be done!).

In a fascinating conference presentation out of UNC Chapel Hill, researchers looked at caloric intake in a nationwide sample of children and adolescents and found that overweight and obese children and teens actually consume FEWER calories than normal weight children. Hopefully this study will help people reconsider whether putting their kid on a diet is the best way to get them healthy.