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Doctors who need to drop pounds themselves may be less likely to bring up the topic of weight loss with their obese patients, a new study suggests.

The study, published in the journal Obesity, covered 498 primary-care physicians. Of them, 47% were normal-weight, 38% were overweight and 15% were obese, based on their body mass index.

Heart patients may be nervous or anxious about having sex, but most of them can do so safely — and they shouldn’t be afraid to bring up the topic with their doctor.

So says the American Heart Association in its first scientific statement on sexual activity and cardiovascular disease, published online by Circulation.

Even a small gap in Medicaid coverage can have consequences for diabetics, new research suggests.

The study looked at 3,384 diabetes patients who received medical care at 50 clinics in Oregon from 2005-2007. The care was mostly free, but some recommended diagnostic tests and other services — including cholesterol screening, HbA1c testing to determine blood-sugar control and the flu shot — required a small co-pay.

New programs are underway to help nurses cope with compassion fatigue, an occupational hazard for caregivers that also puts patients at risk of substandard care, today’s Informed Patient column reports.

Though the intense emotional demands on nurses are as old as the profession itself, researchers have only in recent years begun to study the effects of compassion fatigue, a form of burnout compounded by secondary traumatic stress.

Double Duty?: Research published in the journal Cancer finds that among a group of middle-aged men, statin use was associated with a lower risk of dying from prostate cancer, Reuters Health reports. The study, which covered 760 men, most of them white, can’t prove that statin use caused the lower risk of death, Reuters says.

WSJ ‘Personal Journal’ Senior Editor Melinda Beck explains that one’s teeth and gums hold a lot of details about the body’s overall health. Also, don’t be fooled by a bright set of pearly whites. Tom Gannam/AP Images for Crest and Oral-B

Original post: How’s Your Health? Ask Your Teeth/a>

Do you swear you can remember your older sister opening all your Christmas presents when you were two? And does your family insist you couldn’t possibly recall something that happened at such a young age?

Sleep disorders are common among police officers, and are associated with job-performance, health and safety problems.

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association covering 4,957 police officers in the U.S. and Canada found that 40.4% screened positive for some kind of sleep disorder, most commonly obstructive sleep apnea.

A smaller percentage of officers screened positive for insomnia and shift work sleep disorder. (We’ve written before about the hazards of shift work.)