REPORT: VIAGRA to 'boost baby growth' in womb... -

REPORT: VIAGRA to 'boost baby growth' in womb... - 



Pregnant women could be given the anti-impotence drug Viagra to boost the growth of underweight babies.
A trial is underway to see if the little blue pill can boost survival in babies that are not growing properly in the womb.
More than 120 women carrying extremely low-growth babies will be given regular doses of sildenafil citrate, a generic version of Viagra, during their pregnancy.

The results will then be compared with those from a similar group of women given an identical looking dummy tablet.
The trial has been set up after laboratory studies suggested Viagra, which was launched in the UK in 1998 as the world's first pill for erectile dysfunction, could help babies thrive in the womb by boosting the blood supply to the placenta.
Around 600 babies a year in the UK are stillborn because of a pregnancy disorder called pre-eclampsia.

The arteries feeding the placenta do not widen enough to deliver all the blood the baby needs. 
But during tests foetal deaths dropped sharply in pregnant mice given Viagra. The drug helps by relaxing muscles in the artery walls and allowing more nutrient-rich blood to pump through.
Now scientists in New Zealand and Australia are recruiting pregnant women for the first human trial of Viagra for foetal growth.


Read more: -

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2364151/Pregnant-women-given-VIAGRA-boost-baby-growth.html

STUDY: Mosquitoes prefer beer drinkers... -

STUDY: Mosquitoes prefer beer drinkers... - 



Roughly 20 percent of people are more frequent meal tickets for mosquitoes than the rest of the population, and Smithsonian Magazine set out to investigate: Why?
Beer drinkers beware. Mosquitoes love the brew.
A Smithsonian Magazine blogger wrote: “Just a single 12-ounce bottle of beer can make you more attractive to the insects, one study found. But even though researchers had suspected this was because drinking increases the amount of ethanol excreted in sweat, or because it increases body temperature, neither of these factors were found to correlate with mosquito landings, making their affinity for drinkers something of a mystery.”
Scientists also say a slew of other factors — from blood type, metabolism and pregnancy status to the levels of exercise you do and carbon dioxide you emit — play roles.
Mosquitoes, for instance, can smell lactic acid and other substances in sweat, and go for the higher temperature bodies, Smithsonian Magazine reported.
The pests also like Type O blood twice as much as Type A. And they’re attracted to high levels of carbon dioxide and can smell the gas from 164 feet away.
That means those with larger frames and bigger bodies are more at risk for bites. That goes double for pregnant women: Mosquitoes bite women who are expecting about twice as many times as the general population, the magazine found.
Two other findings: Genetics play a role, as do clothing selections. Mosquitoes do use eyesight to scan out there victims, and dressing in black, dark blue and red — colors contrary to nature — are draws, Smithsonian reported.


Read more: -

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/16/bad-buzz-mosquitoes-love-beer-drinkers-study/

Japanese look to change their fate through Palm plastic surgery -

Japanese look to change their fate through Palm plastic surgery  - 



Japanese intent on changing their fate have begun having plastic surgeries to alter their palms.
The new trend relies on the ancient art of palm reading - also known as palmistry -, the belief that you can tell a person’s future based on the lines on their palms.
Plastic surgeons have reported an increase in patients asking for operations to extend or add lines associated with luck or marriage.
According to a report on the Daily Beast, the surgeries cost around $1,100 and are performed with an electric scalpel.
Takaaki Matsuoka, a plastic surgeon at the Shonan Beauty Clinic’s Shinjuku branch in Tokyo, said: “If you try to create a palm line with a laser, it heals, and it won’t leave a clear mark. You have to use the electric scalpel and make a shaky incision on purpose, because palm lines are never completely straight.”
Around 40 palm plastic surgeries have been performed at the Shonan Beauty Clinic alone in the last two years.
The surgery is popular with men and women usually takes 10 to 15 minutes, includes anywhere between 5 and 10 lines on the palm, and takes about a month to heal.


Read more: - 

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health-fitness/japanese-look-to-change-their-fate-by-palm-plastic-surgery/story-fneuz9ev-1226679888787

Police bust sex home-delivery service in Japan... - specialising in women weighing up to 150 kilograms (330 lbs) -

Police bust sex home-delivery service in Japan... - specialising in women weighing up to 150 kilograms (330 lbs) - 



Japanese police have arrested the alleged ringleader of a sex home-delivery service specialising in women weighing up to 150 kilograms (330 lbs), a spokesman said.
Keiko Saito, 41, and one of her employees are suspected of conspiring to run a prostitution business under the name "Makkusu Bodi" (Max Body), which boasted that it catered for men who like "explosive boobs and bums", police said.
Saito is alleged to have had about 30 overweight women working for her, including one who tipped the scales at more than 150 kilograms, Jiji Press reported.
Police say punters in Tokyo could telephone to request a visit in their home or hotel room, a service called "deri-heru" (delivery health) that is widespread in Japan, where it is illegal to sell penetrative sex.
Saito, who is believed to have earned about 400 million yen ($4 million) over three years, had previously worked as a prostitute, Jiji said. She began her business because she believed larger women were popular with customers, the agency added.


Read more: - 

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/07/16/japan-police-bust-sex-home-delivery-service/

Robots to revolutionize farming, ease labor woes... -

Robots to revolutionize farming, ease labor woes... - 



On a windy morning in California's Salinas Valley, a tractor pulled a wheeled, metal contraption over rows of budding iceberg lettuce plants. Engineers from Silicon Valley tinkered with the software on a laptop to ensure the machine was eliminating the right leafy buds.

The engineers were testing the Lettuce Bot, a machine that can "thin" a field of lettuce in the time it takes about 20 workers to do the job by hand.

The thinner is part of a new generation of machines that target the last frontier of agricultural mechanization - fruits and vegetables destined for the fresh market, not processing, which have thus far resisted mechanization because they're sensitive to bruising.

Researchers are now designing robots for these most delicate crops by integrating advanced sensors, powerful computing, electronics, computer vision, robotic hardware and algorithms, as well as networking and high precision GPS localization technologies. Most ag robots won't be commercially available for at least a few years.

In this region known as America's Salad Bowl, where for a century fruits and vegetables have been planted, thinned and harvested by an army of migrant workers, the machines could prove revolutionary.

Farmers say farm robots could provide relief from recent labor shortages, lessen the unknowns of immigration reform, even reduce costs, increase quality and yield a more consistent product.

"There aren't enough workers to take the available jobs, so the robots can come and alleviate some of that problem," said Ron Yokota, a farming operations manager at Tanimura & Antle, the Salinas-based fresh produce company that owns the field where the Lettuce Bot was being tested.

Many sectors in U.S. agriculture have relied on machines for decades and even the harvesting of fruits and vegetables meant for processing has slowly been mechanized. But nationwide, the vast majority of fresh-market fruit is still harvested by hand.

Research into fresh produce mechanization was dormant for years because of an over-abundance of workers and pressures from farmworker labor unions.

In recent years, as the labor supply has tightened and competition from abroad has increased, growers have sought out machines to reduce labor costs and supplement the nation's unstable agricultural workforce. The federal government, venture capital companies and commodity boards have stepped up with funding.

Read more -

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_FOOD_AND_FARM_ROBOTS_ON_THE_FARM?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-07-15-04-32-51

Smart Diaper Can Monitor Baby's Health -

Smart Diaper Can Monitor Baby's Health - 



A couple with two children has enlisted a team of scientists and engineers to develop a high tech diaper that can monitor a baby's health by revealing signs of urinary tract infections, dehydration and developing kidney problems. The new startup company, which is called Smart Diapers, utilizes a QR code on a baby's diaper to collect data which is then sent to the parents' smart phone, allowing them to send the information directly to their pediatrician for a diagnosis. 
On their indiegogo site, the developers say, "Our goal is not to create another quantified self gadget but to create a product that is unobtrusive in you daily life and only speaks up when there is a reason to see a pediatrician or specialist." 
The company is currently raising funds to conduct a study with the University of California San Francisco Benoiff Children's Hospital to monitor babies in the pediatric ICU. 

Read more -

http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/07/15/Smart-Diaper-Can-Monitor-Baby-s-Health

PRE-CRIME: Brain scans may identify prison inmates likely to reoffend... -

PRE-CRIME: Brain scans may identify prison inmates likely to reoffend... - 

It began with a casual question that neuroscientist Kent Kiehl posed to a postdoctoral fellow in his laboratory who had been conducting brain scans on New Mexico prison inmates.

"I asked, 'Does ACC activity predict the risk of reoffending?'" Kiehl recalls, using the scientific shorthand for the anterior cingulate cortex, a brain structure associated with error processing.

The postdoctoral fellow, Eyal Aharoni, decided to find out. When he compared 96 inmates whose brains had been monitored while they performed a test that measures impulsiveness, he discovered a stark contrast: Those with low ACC activity were about twice as likely to commit crimes within four years of being released as those with high ACC activity.

"We cannot say with certainty that all who are in the high-risk category will reoffend — just that most will," Kiehl says. "It has very big implications for how we think about treatment and rehabilitation."

The study is the latest paper from Kiehl's lab reporting on experiments performed in a powerful functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner mounted in a semi-trailer. Kiehl and his team at the nonprofit Mind Research Network have used the scanner to study the brains of nearly 3,000 convicted criminals at facilities in New Mexico and Wisconsin since 2007.

Each inmate who volunteers for testing is paid a small hourly stipend and receives a copy of the brain scan, Kiehl says. But the scan is just part of a lengthy process in which Kiehl's assistants interview the inmates, review their prison files and assign scores on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, a standard test for measuring psychopathy.

The MRI trailer is parked in a secure area of the prison compound, but no guards are present during the testing, Kiehl says. "Our staff are trained in prison security protocols," he says.

The trove of data they have gathered has revealed telltale abnormalities in the structure and functioning of psychopaths' brains. On the whole, they have less gray matter in the paralimbic system — believed to help regulate emotion — which may help account for their characteristic glibness, pathological lying, lack of empathy and tendency to act impulsively.

Kiehl often briefs judges and legal groups on his findings and has consulted in more than 100 criminal cases where, for example, psychopathy might be raised as a mitigating factor to account for a defendant's impaired self-control.

The mere suggestion that it might be possible to predict future criminal behavior may conjure up such futuristic films as "Minority Report," but Kiehl cautioned that the new study merely averages test results from a large group and cannot at this point predict whether any particular individual will reoffend.

But with further refinement, he says, brain imaging might one day be considered in civil commitment proceedings, where convicted sexual offenders can be held indefinitely if it is believed they have a propensity to reoffend.

Read more -
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-prisoner-brains-20130715,0,5130358.story

Japan Clinic Launches 'Snail Facial'... - crawling across faces as part of a new beauty treatment -

Japan Clinic Launches 'Snail Facial'... - crawling across faces as part of a new beauty treatment - 



Live snails, hailed as an elixir for youthful and beautiful skin, take centre stage in an unusual new "snail facial" launching tomorrow at a spa in central Tokyo.
The treatment involves a therapist placing snails directly onto the faces of reclining clients and allowing the molluscs to move at random, leaving trails of mucus slime in their wake.
The secreted snail mucus is key to the facial, as it reportedly contains a beauty-boosting cocktail of proteins, antioxidants and hyaluronic acid, which help skin retain moisture, reduce inflammation and remove dead skin.
"This salon is the only place in Japan where you can try a live snail facial," said Yoko Minami, sales manager at Clinical Salon, the flagship outlet of Ci:z.Labo, a nationwide spa operator and affiliate of Japan's biggest medical cosmetics company.
"Snail slime can help the recovery of skin cells on the face, so we expect the snail facial to help heal damaged skin."

The spa, in the Ebisu district of Tokyo, is currently home to five resident snails, kept in a small clear container where they are fed an organic vegetables, including carrots, Japanese "komatsuna" greens, spinach and Swiss chard.
Spa staff said that the snails were bought from an organic snail breeder in Japan and are also fed organically to ensure that they are clean and healthy before being placed on customers' faces.
The live snails are the central part of a 60-minute treatment called the Celebrity Escargot Course, costing £161 (Y24,150), which starts with faces being washed before the molluscs are gently placed on the cheeks and forehead and allowed to move around as they please.
This is followed by a series of massages, masks and electrical pulse machines using creams infused with snail mucus to ensure that the live secretions fully penetrate the skin.
"We have one beauty product called Lift Keep Cream which contains snail slime," said Ms Kinami. "We started selling it in May last year and it has been very popular."

Read more -

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/10177660/Japan-clinic-launches-snail-facial.html

10 Reasons Why Sharknado Is Coming To The Global Economy -

10 Reasons Why Sharknado Is Coming To The Global Economy - 



Have you ever seen a disaster movie that is so bad that it is actually good?  Well, that is exactly what Syfy's new television movie entitled "Sharknado" is.  In the movie, wild weather patterns actually cause man-eating sharks to come flying out of the sky.  It sounds absolutely ridiculous, and it is.  You can view the trailer for the movie right here.  Unfortunately, we are witnessing something just as ridiculous in the real world right now. 

In the United States, the mainstream media is breathlessly proclaiming that the U.S. economy is in great shape because job growth is "accelerating" (even though we actually lost 240,000 full-time jobs last month) and because the U.S. stock market set new all-time highs this week.  The mainstream media seems to be absolutely oblivious to all of the financial storm clouds that are gathering on the horizon.  The conditions for a "perfect storm" are rapidly developing, and by the time this is all over we may be wishing that flying sharks were all that we had to deal with.  

The following are 10 reasons why the global economy is about to experience its own version of "Sharknado"...

#1 The financial situation in Portugal continues to deteriorate thanks to an emerging political crisis.  It all began last week when Portuguese finance minister Vitor Gaspar resigned...

"Mr. Gaspar's resignation on July 1 has opened a Pandora's box," says Nicholas Spiro, managing director of Spiro Sovereign Strategy. "Portuguese politicians from the President down are treating the exit of Mr. Gaspar, the architect of the fiscal and structural reforms demanded by the troika, as a green light for a public debate about the bail-out programme. Yet the manner in which this debate is taking place, with the President undermining the prime minister and the opposition leader seeking to renegotiate the terms of the programme, is spooking markets."
The general population is becoming increasingly restless as the nation plunges down the exact same path that Greece has gone.  Nobody seems to have any solutions as the economic problems continue to escalate.  According to Reuters, the president of Portugal has added fuel to the fire by calling for early elections next year...

Portugal's president threw the bailed-out euro zone country into disarray on Thursday after rejecting a plan to heal a government rift, igniting what critics called a "time bomb" by calling for early elections next year.
Due to all of this instability in Portugal, the yield on Portuguese bonds shot up to 7.51% this week.  That is a very bad sign.

#2 The economic depression in Greece continues to deepen, and it is being reported that Greece will not even come close to hitting the austerity targets that it was supposed to hit this year...

A leaked report from the European Commission confirms that Greece will miss its austerity targets yet again by a wide margin. It alleges that Greece lacks the “willingness and capacity” to collect taxes. In fact, Athens is missing targets because the economy is still in freefall and that is because of austerity overkill. The Greek think-tank IOBE expects GDP to fall 5pc this year. It has told journalists privately that the final figure may be -7pc.
Another 7 percent contraction for the Greek economy?

It has already been contracting steadily for years.

At this point, it would be hard to overstate how bad economic conditions inside Greece are.  The following is from a recent article by Simon Black...

My friend Illias took a drag of his cigarette as he contemplated my question.

"Our government tells us that this will be a better year. No one really believes them. But all we can do is be optimistic. Too many people are committing suicide."

His statement probably best sums up the situation in Greece right now. It's as if the hopelessness has gone stale, and the only thing they have to replace it with is desperate, misguided, faux-optimism. And anger.

There are roughly 11 million people in this country. 3.4 million of them are employed, of which roughly one third work for the government.

1.34 million people are 'officially' unemployed. To put this in context, it would be as if there were 36 million officially unemployed in the US.

More startling, if you add the number of 'inactive' workers (i.e. those who gave up looking), the total number of unemployed is roughly 57% of the entire Greek work force.
#3 The economic crisis in the third largest country in the eurozone, Italy, has taken another turn for the worse.  The unemployment rate in Italy is up to 12.2 percent, which is the highest in 35 years.  An average of 134 retail outlets are shutting down in Italy every single day, and the debt of the country has been downgraded again to just above junk status...

Italy’s slow crisis is again flaring up. Its debt trajectory has punched through the danger line over the past two years. The country’s €2.1 trillion (£1.8 trillion) debt – 129pc of GDP – may already be beyond the point of no return for a country without its own currency.

Standard & Poor’s did not say this outright when it downgraded the country to near-junk BBB on Tuesday. But if you read between the lines, it is close to saying the game is up for Italy.
#4 There are rumors that some of the biggest banks in the world are in very serious trouble.  For example, Jim Willie (a financial writer who usually puts out really solid information) is insisting that Deutsche Bank is on the verge of collapse...

The best information coming to my desk indicates that three major Western banks are under constant threat of failure overnight, every night, forcing extraordinary measures to avoid failure.

They are Deutsche Bank in Germany, Barclays in London, and Citibank in New York. Judging from the ongoing defense from prosecution and cooperation (flipped) with Interpol and distraction of resources, the most likely bank to die next is Deutsche Bank. They are caught with accounting fraud and outright financial fraud over collateral shell games, pertaining to USTreasury Bonds, other sovereign bonds in Southern Europe, and OTC derivatives linked to FOREX currency contracts. D-Bank is a dead man walking.
Time will tell if he is right.  But without a doubt the global financial system is extremely vulnerable right now.

Most Americans assume that the problems that caused the financial crash of 2008 were fixed, but that is most definitely NOT the case.  In fact, our financial system is far more shaky today than it was just before the last financial crisis.  When one major bank goes down, we could start to see others fall like dominoes.

#5 Just before the financial crisis of 2008, the price of oil spiked dramatically.  Well, it is starting to happen again.  The price of oil hit $106 a barrel on Friday.  If the price of oil continues to rise at this pace, it is going to mean big trouble for economies all over the planet.

And as I wrote about recently, every time the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has risen above $3.80 during the past three years, a stock market decline has always followed.

The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States reached $3.55 on Friday.  This is a number to keep a close eye on.

#6 Mortgage rates are absolutely skyrocketing right now...

The average U.S. rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage rose this week to 4.51%, a two-year high. Rates have been rising on expectations that the Federal Reserve will slow its bond purchases this year.

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the average on the 30-year loan jumped from 4.29% the previous week. Just two months ago, it was 3.35% — barely above the record low of 3.31%.
This threatens to throw the U.S. real estate market into a slowdown worse than anything we have seen since the last recession.

#7 This upcoming corporate earnings season is shaping up to be an extremely disappointing one.  In fact, the percentage of companies issuing negative earnings guidance for this quarter is at a level that we have never seen before.

So is this a sign that economic activity is starting to slow down significantly?

#8 U.S. stocks are massively overextended right now.  In fact, according to Graham Summers, this is the most overextended stocks have been in the past 20 years...

Today, the S&P 500 is sitting a full 30% above its 200-weekly moving average. We have NEVER been this overextended above this line at any point in the last 20 years.
#9 Rapidly rising interest rates are causing the bond market to begin to come apart at the seams.  There is concern that the 30 year bull market for bonds is now over and investors are starting to pull their money out of the market at a staggering rate.  In fact, 80 billion dollars was pulled out of bond funds during June alone.

#10 Rapidly rising interest rates could cause an implosion of the derivatives market at any moment.  As I am so fond of reminding everyone, there are approximately 441 trillion dollars worth of interest rate derivatives out there.

If interest rates continue to soar, we could potentially see a financial disaster that is absolutely unprecedented, and the too big to fail banks would be the most vulnerable.

As USA Today recently reported, there are just five major banks that absolutely dominate derivatives trading in the United States...

Five of the biggest U.S. banks — JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley — account for more than 90% of derivatives contracts. Regulators estimate that nearly half of derivatives are traded outside the United States.
Could you imagine the financial devastation that we would see if several of those banks started to collapse at the same time?

When you hear the mainstream media begin to talk about a "derivatives crisis" involving major banks, that will be a sign that disaster is upon us.

Most Americans don't realize that Wall Street has been transformed into the largest casino in the history of the world.  Most Americans don't realize that the major banks are literally walking a financial tightrope each and every day.

All it is going to take is one false step and we will be looking at a financial crisis even worse than what happened back in 2008.

So enjoy this little bubble of false prosperity while you can.

It is not going to last for too much longer.

Read more - 

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/10-reasons-why-the-global-economy-is-about-to-experience-its-own-version-of-sharknado

10 Things Baby Boomers Won't Tell You -

10 Things Baby Boomers Won't Tell You - 



The aging 'me' generation is still putting itself first...

1. “Paws off, Junior. This cash is mine.”

Children of boomer parents shouldn’t expect a big inheritance, even if their parents are rich. Only about half of high-net-worth baby boomers — those with more than $3 million in investible assets — say they consider leaving money to their kids a priority, according to a 2012 U.S. Trust Survey. In contrast, nearly three-quarters of people older than boomers say it’s important to them.

Even boomers — typically defined by demographers as those born between 1946 and 1964 — who do plan to leave an inheritance may do so with strings attached. Indeed, nearly seven in 10 high-net-worth boomers surveyed by U.S. Trust said they were not fully confident that their children could handle an inheritance.

“More often than not, clients leave inheritances in trusts,” says John Olivieri, a partner at New York law firm White & Case who works with a lot of boomer clients. With a trust, a third party manages the money and doles it out at intervals that the parent has specified. “Some parents have concerns about how their kids would invest and spend the money,” Olivieri says.

2. “Make room, kids. We’ll be living with you when we’re old…”

Boomers are expected to live longer than any previous generation. At the same time, many haven’t saved nearly enough for retirement. More than 44% of early boomers (whom the Employee Benefit Research Institute defines as those born between 1948 and 1954) and 43% of late boomers (born between 1955 and 1964) may not be able to afford basic living expenses in retirement, according to a 2012 analysis by EBRI. The result? Kids could be supporting mom and dad well into their 80s and 90s.

One of the biggest drains on boomer retirement savings will be health-care expenses. Medicare pays for only about 60% of the cost of health services the typical retiree will face, estimates EBRI. A couple that is 65 today might need nearly $300,000 to cover health costs. “People who haven’t saved enough for health-care costs may deplete their assets,” says Michael Markiewicz, a partner at New York-based Fogel Neale Partners. “A lot of them may have to live with their kids or depend on them for money and care.”

If parents do move in, their kids should expect to spend an extra $6,000 to $10,000 annually on food, clothing and other basics, says Andy Cohen, CEO of Caring.com, a website that provides resources for caregivers. Add thousands more for big-ticket items like wheelchair ramps or home health-care aids. Expensive as that sounds, it’s still often less than what it would cost to move a parent into an assisted living community, about $42,600 per year, on average, according to 2012 data from the MetLife Mature Market Institute.

3. “…and we blame you for that.”

Nearly one in six people ages 45 to 64 say that paying for their kid’s college tuition got in the way of saving for their own retirement, compared with just one in 20 who say that buying a home did, according to a 2012 study from Capital One ShareBuilder.

That’s not surprising, given that the typical middle-income family will spend more than $230,000 to raise a child from birth to age 18, up 23% (in today’s dollars) since 1960, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. When you add paying for college to the mix — for tuition, fees and room and board as of the 2012-2013 school year, you’d pay an average of $17,860 per year for a four-year in-state public school, $30,911 per year for a four-year public out-of-state school or $39,518 per year for a private four-year school, according to the College Board — you could easily spend upwards of $100,000 on the basic’s for your child’s education. This means that retirement savings can really take a hit. “A lot of parents prioritized saving for their kids’ college over saving for retirement,” says Dan Greenshields, the president of CapitalOne ShareBuilder.

The reason? “Parents often equate paying for college with helping their child become successful in life,” says Deborah Fox, the founder of Fox College Funding, a San Diego-based college-funding consulting firm. That’s something they feel they have a duty to do, whether or not they can afford it, she adds.

4. “We can’t face reality.”

What boomers think retirement will be like and what it actually is like are two very different things. A case in point: The forever-young generation just can’t deal with the idea of growing old. Only 13% of pre-retirees (people over 50 who have not yet retired) think their health will be significantly worse in retirement than it is now, while 39% of retirees report that it actually is worse, according to 2011 research by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health.

Boomers are a little fuzzy on the financial realities as well. While only 22% of pre-retirees think their financial situation will be worse in retirement, roughly one-third of retirees say that it is worse. Along those same lines, only 14% of pre-retirees predict that life overall will be worse when they retire, but a quarter of retirees report that it actually is worse. “There’s a real disconnect because your life pre-retirement is much different than your life post-retirement,” says Hal Hershfield, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business who conducts research on judgment, decision-making and social psychology with an emphasis on how thinking about time can alter decisions and emotions.

5. “ ‘Til death do us part’ doesn’t apply to us.”

Boomers are untying the knot at a record pace. The divorce rate for people over 50 has doubled in the past 20 years, says the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University, compared with a slight decrease in divorce overall. More than 600,000 individuals over 50 divorced in 2009, and if the rate continues to grow at the current pace, that number will hit more than 800,000 by 2030.

What’s fueling this trend? Empty nesters find they are a lot less compatible when the kids aren’t around is one phenomenon, says Toronto-based psychologist Tami Kulbatski. Another might be that boomers are more likely to have married young (boomers were far more likely to be married when they were between the ages of 18 and 30, than were members of Generation X, according to research from the Pew Research Center for People & the Press). Now, a lot of boomers are in their second, third or even fourth marriage, and these marriages are more likely to end in divorce, says Krista Kay Payne, a researcher at the center.

Divorce will likely take a chunk out of the average boomer’s already inadequate retirement funds. Lawyers’ fees alone can range from a couple of thousand to tens of thousands of dollars or more, says attorney Jeff Landers, author of “Divorce: Think Financially, Not Emotionally: What Women Need to Know About Securing Their Financial Future Before, During and After Divorce.” Add to that things like alimony and having to split up assets, and boomers’ financial picture gets even murkier.

6. “We’re unhappy …”

Boomers are the least happy of all age groups, according to a 2008 study published in the American Sociological Review journal. “The generation as a group was so large, and their expectations were so great,” Yang Yang, the author of the study, told the American Sociological Association, “not everyone in the group could get what he or she wanted due to competition for opportunities.“

Another report from the Pew Research Center came to a similar conclusion: On a scale of one to 10, boomers, on average, rate their lives a 6.2, compared with a 6.7 for older adults and 6.5 for younger adults. That may not look like much of a difference, but this pattern has held steady for the past two decades. In other words, the boomers — even when they were younger — have been consistently less happy than other generations for the past 20 years.

7. “… and we eat our feelings.”

Nearly 40% of people ages 60 and up and nearly 37% of people 40 to 59 are now considered obese, according to a 2012 report from the Centers for Disease Control, compared with less than one in three for people age 20 to 39. What’s more, baby boomers are fatter than their parents’ generation, according to a study released this year by JAMA Internal Medicine, with nearly 40% of boomers reportedly obese, versus 29% of the previous generation.

Obesity can lead to serious health problems, including diabetes and heart disease. A 65-year-old person who has been obese since age 45 personally incurs roughly $50,000 more in Medicare costs over the course of his or her lifetime than a “normal weight” 65-year-old does, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Medicare and Medicaid end up paying for roughly half of the cost of obesity, which accounts for $190 billion in medical spending annually, according to a 2012 study published in the Journal of Health Economics.

8. “And we’re addicts.”

Maybe it’s because so many grew up in the ’60s, but whatever the excuse, boomers are drinking and drugging their way into old age at a rate much higher than their parents’ generation. The number of people 50 and over who were admitted to substance abuse treatment programs increased 136% between 1992 and 2010, according to the latest data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Alcohol is the most common reason that boomers seek treatment, but the proportion of admissions of people over 50 for heroin abuse nearly doubled and for cocaine use more than tripled over that period. “Because of the magnitude of these changes and their potential impact, it is increasingly important to understand and plan for the health care needs, including the substance use prevention and treatment needs, of this population,” the administration writes.

Treatment doesn’t come cheap. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the mean cost per admission for outpatient substance abuse treatment is more than $1,400 without methadone (a synthetic opioid used to treat heroin and morphine addictions) or $7,415 with it; prices can run into the tens of thousands for inpatient treatment. What’s more, Medicare will only pay about 65% of an outpatient treatment program, and it will pay for inpatient treatment only if a doctor deems it “medically necessary” and the care is in a hospital. (Medicare doesn’t fund treatment at those designer “rehab spas.” Sorry, boomers.)
9. “We will bury you in debt.”

We’re a nation in record debt — an estimated $16 trillion — and the sheer number of boomers is expected to significantly add to that in the coming years, as more begin to receive Social Security and Medicare benefits. (Social Security and Medicare spending represented 38% of federal expenditures in fiscal year 2012, and “both programs will experience cost growth substantially in excess of GDP growth through the mid-2030s,” according to the Social Security Administration.)

But in many ways, boomers have been less willing than other demographic groups to support policy changes that could trim the debt. Fully 68% of boomers oppose eliminating the tax deduction for interest paid on home mortgages, compared with just 56% of all adults, according to the Pew Research Center. Furthermore, 80% of boomers (vs. 72% of all adults) oppose taxing employer health insurance benefits and 63% of boomers (vs. 58% of all adults) oppose increasing the age one qualifies for full Social Security benefits, the study shows.

Many boomers are more opposed to these plans because “they would feel the impact more than other groups,” says Kim Parker, the associate director of the Pew Research Center’s Social and Demographic Trends Project. But without some sort of deficit reduction, future generations will be left with the dire economic consequences a massive deficit can cause, she says.

10. “We’re obsessed with (not) aging.”

Sagging skin, crows’ feet, a dull complexion — these used to be the inevitable signs of aging. But if the boomers have anything to say about it, that’s going to change. Revenue for so-called cosmeceutical companies — which manufacture cosmetics with pharmaceutical capabilities, some of the most popular being wrinkle-reducing moisturizers and creams that even skin tone — is expected to hit $5 billion this year and is expected to grow 7.5% each year through 2018, according to data from market research firm IbisWorld; people over 50 account for more of cosmeceutical companies’ consumers than any other age group.

And it’s not just lotions and serums that they’re into. People 51 and up had 24% of all surgical cosmetic procedures, like face-lifts and tummy tucks, and 30% of all cosmetic “minimally invasive” procedures like cellulite treatments, Botox injections and laser hair removals, in 2012.

It also appears that boomer men are one of the fastest-growing segments of the population going under the knife. While overall cosmetic procedures in men increased just 9% in 2012 compared with 2011, face lifts, which are typically performed on the over-50 set, increased 21%, according to data from the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. And this will become more popular, says Jack Fisher, the president of the society, as many boomers want to look and feel young.

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