CHECKUP : NEWS, TIPS AND TRENDS HOSPITAL ROOMMATE CAN SPEED HEART PATIENT'S RECOVERY.

The prospect of having to share a hospital room with a stranger may cause a person about to undergo surgery more anxiety than the procedure itself.

But a new study suggests that having a roommate who has already undergone the same operation can actually reduce a person's anxiety and speed recovery.

California researchers studied 84 men at the San Diego Veterans Affairs Medical Center who underwent a nonemergency coronary-bypass operation for the first time.

They found that the ``best'' scenario was being assigned a roommate who had undergone bypass surgery, as opposed to having a roommate who had or was waiting to have a different operation, or having no roommate at all.

By being placed with a person who had already faced the same operation, men had less anxiety, were in better condition after surgery and had a hospital stay that was 25 percent shorter than other patients, the researchers reported in the November issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association.

Aerobics for your amygdala: If you watched any Freddy Krueger movies around Halloween, you probably gave your amygdala quite a workout.

The amygdala is a small region in the middle of the brain that helps humans and some animals to react to facial expressions and fearful situations. In the latest issue of the journal Nature, scientists from four institutions in England report that the more scared a face looks, the more the amygdala fires up.

The researchers did brain scans of people while they looked at faces ranging from happy to frightened. The faces were computer images generated with morphing techniques.

As the faces appeared more and more frightened, more blood flowed to the left portion of the amygdala.

The results fit with previous studies on the amygdala, the scientists wrote. People with damaged amygdalas often don't recognize fearful facial expressions. Monkeys that have their amygdalas destroyed don't react to danger. And psychological studies show that happy faces and frightened faces are on opposite ends of a spectrum of emotions.

Other studies with monkeys show that their amygdala responds most to ambiguous or threatening situations, and least to situations that reduce tension, such as grooming.

In the new report, the researchers speculate that the amygdala may play a similar role in social behavior in people.

Asthma high among Latinos: Latino children have a rate of asthma that is 2.5 times higher than that of whites, and more than 1.5 times higher than African-Americans, according to a new study.

A research team led by Dr. William S. Beckett of Yale University in New Haven, Conn., arrived at the findings after questioning more than 9,200 mothers of different ethnic backgrounds about their socioeconomic status, education and environmental factors that can exacerbate asthma, such as smoking and the noticeable presence of mildew or mold in the home.

While none of these factors seem to be associated with the development of asthma in children, the strongest factor was Latino ethnicity in the mother, Beckett reported in the October issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, published by the American Lung Association.

The researchers found that the prevalence of asthma was over 18 percent among children with Latino mothers, compared with about 11 percent among children of non-Latino African-American mothers and 7 percent among children of non-Latino white mothers.

More studies are needed to determine an explanation for the results, the researchers said.

Sole salvation: Over-the-counter shoe inserts often work as well as or better than custom-made ones at relieving heel pain, a study of 240 patients found.The study, reported by Dr. Carol Frey of the University of Southern California at Los Angeles, found that people using various over-the-counter shoe inserts reported pain relief in more than 80 percent of the cases while 68 percent of those getting custom-made devices reported pain relief.

``Refraining from prescribing expensive $300 to $400 custom-made orthotics when $15 to $40 over-the-counter inserts will prevent the pain is common sense,'' said Frey at a seminar in New York sponsored by the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons.

The telltale tongue: At the turn of the century, German scientists believed that the tongue was a mirror that reflected the overall health of a person.

While that view has been overturned by advances in understanding the human body, the tongue does give some important clues about a person's health, researchers reported last month at a meeting of the American Dental Association in Orlando, Fla.

``The tongue is the favorite place where oral cancer takes root,'' said Isaac Van Der Waal, an oncologist at the Amsterdam Free University Hospital in Holland.

The tongue may also give dentists early signs of other diseases, such as infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, Van Der Waal added.Two conditions known as leukoplakia, or hairy tongue, and candidiasis, or thrush, both change the appearance of the tongue and are early signs of HIV infection, he said.