By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Oct. 18 (HealthDay News) -- People with lots of Facebook friends tend to have areas of the brain that are larger than those of online social network users with fewer friends, British researchers say.

"We were interested in understanding whether social networks and our participation in them is reflected in brain structure and function," lead researcher Dr. Geraint Rees, a Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Research Fellow at University College London, said during a Tuesday press conference.

"What we've shown is an association between the number of friends on Facebook and certain areas of the brain and the structure of those areas," Rees said.

But, "a correlation doesn't imply causation," he added.

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Oct. 17 (HealthDay News) -- The public health price tag on excessive drinking in the United States comes to almost $2 a drink, a new government report shows.

"Excess alcohol consumption is a serious public health problem in this country," CDC Director Dr. Thomas R. Frieden said during a noon press conference Monday. "It's also very costly."

The economic toll of problem drinking affects everybody through lost productivity, increased health care costs and the costs of alcohol-related crime, Frieden said. In 2006, those costs totaled $223.5 billion or about $1.90 a drink, the report found.

"Fully two-thirds of these costs were related to binge drinking," Frieden said.

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 12 (HealthDay News) -- Exercise can prevent migraines just as well as drugs or relaxation techniques, a new study from Sweden suggests.

"Our conclusion is that exercise can act as an alternative to relaxations and [the migraine drug] topiramate when it comes to preventing migraines, and is particularly appropriate for patients who are unwilling or unable to take preventative medicines," study lead author Emma Varkey, a physiotherapist and doctoral student at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, said in a university news release.

In the study, Varkey and colleagues evaluated 91 migraine patients over the course of three months.

One-third of the patients were asked to exercise for 40 minutes three times each week. Another third of the participants performed relaxation techniques and the final third were prescribed topiramate.