(PhysOrg.com) — The Dalai Lama holds that compassion — concern for the well-being of others — leads to happiness. Now a new study has found that compassion may also have health benefits in the form of stress reduction for women.

A large prospective study of 5033 men and women in the Tromsø Study in northern Norway has reported that moderate wine consumption is independently associated with better performance on cognitive tests. The subjects (average age 58 and free of stroke) were followed over 7 years during which they were tested with a range of cognitive function tests.

Regular beer – but not light beer or other types of alcohol -appears to be associated with an increased risk of developing psoriasis, according to a report posted online today that will be published in the December print issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

American women who ate more protein-rich foods instead of red meat had a significantly lower risk of developing heart disease, according to a study reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

The first study to compare the effectiveness of the birth control pill in women with marked weight differences has found that the pill works equally well in women with obesity and thinner women. This new finding by physician-scientists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center refutes a long-held conviction among many doctors that the pill may not reliably prevent pregnancy in women who are overweight or obese.