ICYMI: Who Faces More Sexism, Female Politicians Or Lab Rats?

Health stories you may have missed.

ICYMI Health features what we're reading this week.

This week, HuffPosters wrote about two very different groups facing gender bias in the workplace: female politicians and lab rats. 

Research shows female politicians face an uphill battle to get elected. They have to be more qualified than their male candidates to win votes, and even then, many people can't picture women in leadership roles. On the science side, we learned that female animals are excluded from research for a distressing reason: researchers wrongly think female rats' estrous cycles are too complicated to study, so they just don't bother.

Setting gender-bias updates aside for a moment, we also read with interest about exciting innovations on the horizon, including an apple that never browns and the promise of uterine transplants for some infertile women. 

Read on and tell us in the comments: What did you read and love this week?

 

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Michael Duva via Getty Images

Neal Carter thinks his invention -- an apple that doesn't bruise or start to brown until it molds or rots -- will change the world. 

'An apple’s not convenient enough,' Carter, 58, with reddish hair graying at the temples, told me. 'That’s the truth. The whole apple is too much of a commitment in today’s world.'

 

The founder of Bulletproof Coffee thinks he's found the diet to end all diets. 

I don’t want to do more work than is necessary to do great things. I don’t see why anyone should do more work than is necessary to do great things.

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THOMAS BARWICK

Not only are women underrepresented in human clinical trials, but female animals are excluded from animals trials, which leads to second-class health care for women.

'If you go to publish a study just on females, you always get asked, 'Why didn’t you include males?' she said. 'If you go to publish a study on males, most people wouldn’t bat an eye.'

 

For women who lack a healthy uterus, a uterine transplant could one day help them become pregnant and give birth.  

'I crave that experience,' she said. 'I want the morning sickness, the backaches, the feet swelling. I want to feel the baby move. That is something I’ve wanted for as long as I can remember.'

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Bill Clark/CQ ROll Call via Getty Images

In a recent study, people who struggled to make an association between females and leadership-themed words were more likely to vote for male candidates -- even if the candidates were equally qualified. 

Even if voters explicitly say that they are happy to have a female president, the research shows that their unconscious biases still can influence their candidate preferences.

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Marga Frontera via Getty Images

Changes in our emotions help us adapt to changes in our environment. 

When a stock trader experiences an unexpected financial gain, it would undoubtedly improve her mood. This positive mood, in turn, would likely inspire her to take more risks, thereby adapting to a market environment that's on the rise. 

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Charlotte Observer via Getty Images

The Food and Drug Administration is getting closer to regulating electronic cigarettes, and the regulatory barriers are expected to be high.

The major crux of the debate is the fact that, because vaping has only been around for a short time, we don’t know the long-term effects.

Also on HuffPost:

Natural Ways To Quit Smoking
Mindfulness (01 of05)
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Mindfulness training helped participants in a 2011 Drug and Alcohol Dependence study to stay off cigarettes. That study included 88 people who smoked 20 cigarettes daily, on average, who were split up into two groups: One received four weeks of mindfulness training, while the other group went through four weeks of an American Lung Association stop-smoking program. The researchers found that more of those who went through the mindfulness training smoked fewer cigarettes -- and stayed off them -- than those who went through the other stop-smoking program. The mindfulness training included realizing when you're facing a craving, accepting it, thinking about what's happening and then taking note of the sensation (whether it's tightness or pressure), Psychology Today reported. (credit:Alamy)
Weight Lifting (02 of05)
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Jogging and bicycling aren't the only exercises that could help you kick the smoking habit -- Shape magazine reported that weightlifting could help, too.The research, published in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research, showed that doing two hour-long weightlifting sessions for 12 weeks plus undergoing treatment to quit smoking was linked with greater success in quitting smoking, compared with just undergoing the stop-smoking treatment. (credit:ShutterStock)
Eat Produce(03 of05)
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Eating lots of fruits and veggies could help smokers maintain a tobacco-free lifestyle, according to research from the University of Buffalo.The study, published in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research, included 1,000 smokers ages 25 and older. The researchers had the participants answer surveys about their smoking habits and their fruit and vegetable intake. Then, they followed up with them 14 months later and asked them if they used tobacco over the past month.The researchers found that there was a relationship between the amount of fruits and vegetables the study participants ate, and the likelihood that they quit -- and stayed off -- tobacco. In fact, people who ate the most produce in the study were three times more likely to report that they'd been tobacco free in the previous month.The researchers also found a link between increased produce consumption and taking longer in the day to have the first cigarette, smoking fewer cigarettes, and decreased dependence on nicotine (based on test results). (credit:Alamy)
Acupuncture And Hypnosis(04 of05)
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A review of studies suggests there is evidence that acupuncture and hypnosis can work to help quit smoking, Reuters reported. Researchers, who published their findings in the American Journal of Medicine, said that other options -- like medications and counseling -- should be tried first, but that hypnosis and acupuncture could help if those options don't work, or if people don't want to go on medications, according to Reuters. (credit:Alamy)
Text Messages (05 of05)
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Who knew your phone could be used to help you quit smoking? A recent study published in the journal The Lancet showed that smokers who enrolled in a program called "txt2stop" -- where they received encouraging text messages to quit smoking -- were twice as likely to kick the habit after six months, compared with smokers who didn't get any encouraging messages. In the study, conducted by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, one group was able to text words like "lapse" and "crave" to a phone number, and received an encouraging text message in return, CNET reported. The other group of people, however, only got one text message every two weeks, and that message just thanked them for being part of the study. (credit:ShutterStock)

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