Biomedical subjects

L H Storms

Publications and source records attributed to L H Storms.

13 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1992

Impact of height and weight on life span.

The study was conducted to evaluate one aspect of the entropy theory of aging, which hypothesizes that aging is the result of increasing disorder within the body, and which predicts that increasing mass lowers life span. The first evaluation of the impact of human size on longevity or life span in 1978, which was based on data for decreased groups of athletes and famous people in the USA, suggested that shorter, lighter men live longer than their taller, heavier counterparts. In 1990, a study of 1679 decreased men and women from the general American population supported these findings. In the present study data on the height, weight, and age at death of 373 men were obtained from records at the Veterans Administration Medical Center, San Diego, CA, USA. Men of height 175.3 cm or less lived an average of 4.95 years longer than those of height over 175.3 cm, while men of height 170.2 cm or less lived 7.46 years longer than those of at least 182.9 cm. An analysis by weight difference revealed a 7.72-year greater longevity for men of weight 63.6 kg or less compared with those of 90.9 kg or more. This corroborates earlier evidence and contradicts the popular notion that taller people are healthier. While short stature due to malnutrition or illness is undesirable, our study suggests that feeding children for maximum growth and physical development may not add to and may indeed be harmful to their long-term health and longevity.

Adult↗

PubMed1982

Effects of gluten on schizophrenics.

Previous studies have suggested that a cereal- and milk-free diet may be beneficial to schizophrenics and that the gluten in regular diets is harmful to schizophrenics. In an effort to replicate these findings, with improved control vehicles, patients on a locked ward were placed on a cereal- and milk-free diet. Thirteen schizophrenics were given gluten-free peanut-flour supplementary cookies and 13 were given virtually identical cookies with gluten added. Tests and rating scales before and after the ten-day study period showed no greater improvement for those receiving the gluten-free cookies than for those receiving the gluten-added cookies. Contrary to expectations, the group receiving gluten-added cookies showed significantly greater improvement of Profile on Mood States measures of tension-anxiety and anger-hostility. Previous findings were not supported. Perhaps a longer time on the diet is required for any beneficial effects to appear.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1980

Modification of chronic schizophrenics' abstractions through enriched stimuli and social censure.

Examined the abstracting abilities of good and poor premorbid chronic schizophrenics on single and multiple proverbs, as well as the effects of censure on each group. Two groups of 16 Ss each, comparable in terms of education, IQ and age, were presented with single and multiple sets of proverbs in two sessions and were asked to give the meanings of the proverbs. Half of each group received immediate negative verbal feedback when their performance fell below criteria. Both groups showed significant improvement in the multiple proverb condition. There was also a significant Group X Censure interaction. It is suggested that good premorbids may suffer more from interference in processing stimuli, while poor premorbids suffer more from interference in response selection or from a motivational deficit.

Adult↗

PubMed1980

Psychological functioning after halothane or enflurane anesthesia.

Halothane and enflurane anesthesia were administered without surgery to young volunteer subjects who were compared with unanesthetized control subjects. All subjects were tested for intellectual function, visual-motor coordination, and personality characteristics, and they were asked to complete a symptom checklist on three occasions: before anesthesia, 2 days after anesthesia, and 2 weeks after anesthesia. Except for slight temporary effects in a few individuals, anesthesia altered neither intellectual or visual-motor measures nor personality characteristics. Although both anesthetics induced a number of symptoms persisting for 2 days after anesthesia, malaise was clearly greater following halothane than enflurane. Halothane was specifically associated with difficulty in remembering things, difficulty in concentrating, faintness or dizziness, and having to do things slowly to do them right. These symptoms were absent at the 2-week test.

Enflurane↗

PubMed1977

Changes in schizophrenics' word association commonalities durigh hospitalization.

Good premorbid (GP) schizophrenics have been found to have higher word association commonality scores than poor premorbid (PP) schizophrenics when both groups had been hospitalized over 5 years but not with shorter hospitalizations. There has been no previous study of changes in commonality in schizophrenics from beginning to end of hospitalization. The present study was a longitudinal investigation of word association commonality in GP and PP schizophrenics from admission to discharge from the hospital and at 3-month follow-up. Subjects were 16 GP and 16 PP schizophrenics. The two groups were equal in age, education, intelligence, and length of hospitalization. Commonality scores consisted of number of common responses to 50 Kent-Rosanoff stimulus words. GP and PP groups were not significantly different in commonality at admission, discharge, or follow-up. The combined groups showed a significant (p less than .01) increase in commonality from admission to discharge but no further change from discharge to follow-up. Taken separately, the GP group showed a significant increase in commonality from admission to discharge (p less than .02), while the PP difference was not statistically significant. The change in the GP group was significantly greater than in the PP group (p less than .05, one-tailed test). These results suggest that schizophrenics' word association commonalities may increase with improvement in clinical status and that GP schizophrenics show greater increases than PP schizophrenics.

Adult↗

PubMed1974