Health
Reading this page could add years to your life!.
News about "Disease" is now on this page.
. . See Health news from 04 & before.
"New-Diseases" is now on this page.
Diseases" is now on this page.
June 18, 03; but I'll keep this story atop: British scientists are working on a new pill that combines six compounds --aspirin, a cholesterol-lowering drug, three blood pressure medications and folic acid-- in one tablet called the Polypill which they say could cut the risk of heart disease by more than 80%. "Because the ingredients are, or are about to be, off patent, this could be an extremely cheap and simple pill." [you can do the aspirin/folic acid yourself...]
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Dec 30, 08: Older now? What's wrong with your ears? Actually, part of the problem may be your brain. In fact, it may lie in your brain's dimmer switch for controlling the input from your ears. That bit of brain circuitry appears to falter with age, and scientists are getting some clues about why.
. . If you have trouble understanding conversation in a noisy room, you're experiencing what's sometimes called the cocktail party problem. That can be one of the first signs of an age-related hearing loss -a more general problem that can creep in during middle age, and affects one-third of adults ages 65 to 75.
. . Scientists have long known that the brain not only receives signals from the ears, but can also talk back to them. And when there's too much noise, this dimmer-switch brain circuitry tells the ears to reduce their flow of signals to the brain. This helps the sensitive auditory system handle loud sounds that otherwise would overwhelm it and become distorted.
. . The brain has an added trick for focusing on a particular person's speech rather than competing conversations, Frisina said. Since you're probably facing the person you want to hear, his words arrive at both your ears at the same time and at the same volume. The brain can use that, along with the dimmer switch, to home in on that person's speech.
. . Dimmer switch effectiveness declines with age. The drop-off showed up in middle-aged people (ages 38 to 52) and was even worse in people past age 62.
. . Another crucial element lies within the inner ear, where sound is converted to nerve signals. That's accomplished by cells that use delicate hairs to detect sound waves. These hair cells can be damaged by aging and by long hours in loud environments. Loss of those cells makes it harder to understand speech in noisy rooms. For example, it can hinder one's hearing of high sound frequencies, like those of certain consonants. Losing those consonant sounds can make words hard to understand in noisy situations. "What you're hearing is more of a mumbling sensation than actual clear speech."
. . People who have trouble understanding their fellow party-goers can take some steps to help themselves. Oyler suggests facing the speaker directly to get facial cues that might fill in some blanks.
Dec 30, 08: A gene that affects how the kidneys process salt may help determine a person's risk of high blood pressure, a discovery that could lead to better ways to treat the condition, researchers said.
Dec 26, 08: Allergan Inc, maker of Botox, said that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved its eyelash-thickening drug Latisse.
Dec 14, 08: Researchers have identified six new gene mutations linked to obesity and said they point to ways the brain and nervous system control eating and metabolism.
Dec 3, 08: A new dry wipe can clean up chemical agents such as mustard gas, giving soldiers a more convenient way to deal with toxic materials on the battlefield, U.S. researchers said.
Dec 3, 08: There is little doubt that depression is bad for the heart. Much as fatty diets, cigarette smoking, inactivity and obesity are linked with an increased risk of heart disease, recent evidence suggests that mental health has a similarly powerful impact. The question has always been, why?
. . Now, researchers provide the first data that may explain the association. Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the findings suggest that depression contributes to heart disease indirectly by fostering unhealthy behaviors like smoking rather than directly. Certain biological factors linked with depression, such as inflammation and the levels of brain chemicals like serotonin, may play some role in heart health, researchers say, but the new study found that the factors that most increased heart disease risk in depressed people were the ones you might expect: lack of exercise and smoking.
Dec 1, 08: Diets and creams which claim their antioxidant properties could cheat the advances of time may be worthless, researchers suggest. Antioxidants 'cannot slow ageing'.
Nov 27, 08: Early but intriguing research on mice suggests a new mechanism of aging, and possibly a way to stall it. Drugs designed to target one aspect of aging also seem to help repair DNA damage and regulate gene activity, preventing them from going haywire with the stresses of time.
. . "In principle, we now could have a way of reversing the effects of aging", said David Sinclair, a Harvard U gerontologist and co-founder of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, a company best-known for its development of an experimental drug called resveratrol.
. . Resveratrol and similar compounds activate an enzyme called SIRT1. The enzyme rejuvenates mitochondria, the machines that power our cells. Mitochondrial breakdown has been associated with many age-related diseases, including heart disease, diabetes and dementia. Several labs in addition to Sirtris are researching compounds that target mitochondria.
. . The new findings suggest that SIRT1 fixes DNA in addition to mitochondria. Sinclair's team found that unless SIRT1 enzymes gathered at sites where DNA had started to unravel, other DNA repair proteins failed to arrive. This allowed damage to progress, eventually causing dormant genes to come alive, a process called deregulation.
. . Some researchers think gene deregulation is a cause of aging: As cells get older, they produce less SIRT1, ostensibly becoming less able to repair faulty DNA and suppress the dormant genes. But in mice either given resveratrol or genetically engineered to produce extra SIRT1 on their own, repairs went smoothly and quickly.
Nov 24, 08: Cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, heart disease: All have stubbornly resisted billions of dollars of research conducted by the world's finest minds. But they all may finally be defied by a single new class of drugs, a virtual cure for the diseases of aging.
. . In labs across the country, researchers are developing several new drugs that target the cellular engines called mitochondria. The first, resveratrol, is already in clinical trials for diabetes. It could be on the market in four years and used off-label as an all-purpose longevity enhancer. Other drugs promise to be more potent and refined. They might even be cheap.
. . As fewer people in the West die of infectious diseases, these new mitochondrial drugs could prevent a wide range of age-related illnesses, though they likely won't extend the lifespans of healthy individuals.
. . The new drugs work by stimulating enzymes that regulate the function of mitochondria. Hundreds of these structures are found in every cell in the body, ceaselessly converting glucose into usable energy. But over time, mitochondria degenerate. They lose strength and efficiency, releasing highly reactive oxygen molecules that bind easily with other molecules and wreak cellular havoc.
. . A growing number of scientists suspect that the breakdown of mitochondria is among the most important causes of cell-level changes that eventually cause the body's tissues to degenerate with age. The damage accumulates gradually until hitting some critical mass of malfunction, at which point diseases arrive rapidly. That may be why so many diseases first occur during middle age, and become steadily more common afterwards.
. . In the last year, mitochondrial malfunction was associated with heart disease, just as it's also been associated with Alzheimer's disease and diabetes. Researchers verified that the cellular changes produced by caloric restriction a longevity-enhancing dietary intervention are enjoyed by mice taking resveratrol, the first and best-known mitochondrial drug. Resveratrol, which also occurs naturally in red wine, didn't extend the maximum lifespan of the mice, but it did protect them from the ravages of aging.
. . Sirtris Pharmaceuticals claims to have several compounds in its pipeline that are stronger than resveratrol.
Nov 21, 08: Boys born to women exposed to hairspray in the workplace may have a higher risk of being born with a genital defect.
Nov 21, 08: Obese people have the right to two seats for the price of one on flights within Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled.
Nov 13, 08: Higher taxes on alcohol can make a night out more expensive but could save lives, according to a study. Each time the state of Alaska raised its alcoholic beverage tax, fewer deaths were recorded.
Nov 10, 08: The physical effort involved in breastfeeding may leave babies with stronger lungs, research suggests.
Nov 7, 08: A bit of greenery near people's homes can cut the "health gap" between rich and poor, researchers suggest.
Nov 6, 08: A council has become the first in London to rule that smokers will no longer be able to foster children.
Dec 5, 08: New research shows that in a social network, happiness spreads among people up to three degrees removed from one another. That means when you feel happy, a friend of a friend of a friend has a slightly higher likelihood of feeling happy too.
. . The lesson is that taking control of your own happiness can positively affect others, says James Fowler, co-author of the study. "We get this chain reaction in happiness that I think increases the stakes in terms of us trying to shape our own moods to make sure we have a positive impact on people we know and love," he said.
. . Sadness also spreads in a network, but not as quickly, the researchers found. Each happy friend increases your own chance of being happy by 9%, whereas each unhappy friend decreases it by 7%. This reflects the total effect of all social contacts.
. . When framing the question differently, the study found that you are 15% more likely to be happy if a direct connection is happy, 10% if the friend of a friend is happy, and 6% if it's a friend of a friend of a friend.
. . "We've known for some time that social relationships are the best predictor of human happiness, and this paper shows that the effect is much more powerful than anyone realized", Gilbert said. "It is sometimes said that you can't be happier than your least happy child. It is truly amazing to discover that when you replace the word 'child' with 'best friend's neighbor's uncle', the sentence is still true."
. . If you are the hub of a large network of people --that is, if you have a lot of connected friends or a wide social circle-- you are more likely to become happy, the study found.
. . But the reverse is not true. "You might only have one friend or two friends or something like that, and if you become happy, you're not going to try to get more friends. You're probably going to stick with what worked in the first place," Fowler said.
. . Facebook has more than 120 million active users. This study, which has not yet been published, looked at who smiles in their profile pictures who doesn't, and whether their connections also smile or not. "We find smiling profiles cluster in much the same way as happiness is clustering in the Framingham Heart Study."
. . It's not just happiness that spreads in a social network. Fowler and Christakis have also looked at trends in cigarette smoking and obesity using the parts of the heart study network. They found that when someone quits, a friend's likelihood of quitting smoking was 36 percent. Moreover, clusters of people who may not know one another gave up smoking around the same time, the authors showed.
. . Social ties also affect obesity. A person's likelihood of becoming obese increased by 57% if he or she had a friend who became obese in a given time period. And, like happiness, both smoking behavior and obesity seem to spread within three degrees of separation in a social network.
. . Beyond three, things get fuzzier. "Eventually you get out far enough in the social network that you're competing with all these other cascades of happiness and unhappiness that are sort of duking it out," he said. "Happiness on average wins, but once you get far enough away from someone in a social network, it's not possible to detect their effect anymore."
Nov 3, 08: Wash your hands, folks, especially you ladies. A new study found that women have a greater variety of bacteria on their hands than men do. And everybody has more types of bacteria than the researchers expected to find. "One thing that really is astonishing is the variability between individuals, and also between hands on the same individual."
. . The researchers aren't sure why women harbored a greater variety of bacteria than men, but Fierer suggested it may have to so with the acidity of the skin. Knight said men generally have more acidic skin than women. Other possibilities are differences in sweat and oil gland production between men and women, the frequency of moisturizer or cosmetics applications, skin thickness or hormone production, he said. Women also may have more bacteria living under the surface of the skin where they are not accessible to washing, Knight added.
Nov 3, 08: Pregnant women who consume caffeine --even about a cup of coffee daily-- are at higher risk of giving birth to an underweight baby, researchers said.
Oct 31, 08: Turning your clock back on DST may be good for your heart. Swedish researchers look at 20 years of records and discover that the number of heart attacks dip on the Monday after clocks are set back.
Oct 31, 08: A new stomach stapling technique involves sending a device through the mouth and esophagus into the stomach to seal off part of the stomach with titanium staples, avoiding surgery and some side effect.
Oct 28, 08: Vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin essential for the absorption of calcium and phosphorus in the body, and it helps make strong bones. Lack of the vitamin leads to a failure of bones to mineralize, called rickets, a condition characterized by poor growth and malformed bones. The upper one-third of the country is called the rickets belt.
. . To get a 1,000 IU daily, you would need to drink about 10 cups of vitamin D fortified milk, eat 30 sardines or consume 55 egg yolks.
Oct 27, 08: The brains of people who commit suicide are chemically different to those who die from other causes, a Canadian study has suggested. Researchers analysed brain tissue from 20 dead people and, in those who killed themselves, they found a higher rate of a process that affects behavior. They said it appeared environmental factors played a part in the changes.
. . They analysed tissue from 10 people who had a serious depressive disorder and had committed suicide and 10 who had died suddenly from other causes, such as a heart attack. They found that the DNA in the suicide group was being chemically modified by a process normally involved in regulating cell development, called methylation.
. . It is methylation which shuts down the unwanted genes in a cell --so the necessary genes are expressed to make a cell a skin cell rather than, for example, a heart cell.
. . The rate of methylation in the suicide brains was almost 10 times that of the other group, and the gene that was being shut down was a chemical message receptor that plays a major role in regulating behavior.
. . Dr Poulter said: "The whole idea that the genome is so malleable in the brain is surprising, because brain cells don't divide. "You get dealt your neurons at the start of life, so the idea that there are still epigenetic mechanisms going on is pretty unusual."
Oct 26, 08: A purple tomato genetically engineered to contain nutrients more commonly seen in dark berries helped prevent cancer in mice, British researchers said.
Oct 23, 08: Wolfing down meals may be enough to nearly double the risk of being overweight, Japanese research suggests.
Oct 23, 08: US scientists say they have erased memories from mice, raising hopes the technique could help humans overcome traumatic events.
Oct 23, 08: Women who are depressed during pregnancy have twice the risk of their babies coming early, according to US researchers.
Oct 22, 08: According to Eric Stice at UT-Austin, eating causes the body to release dopamine, which then raises blood pressure so we can digest. But overeating causes us to lose dopamine receptors, and we eat even more to compensate. Also, some people dont have as many receptors as others.
Oct 21, 08: Swapping fried and salty foods for fruit and veg could cut a third of the heart attack risk around the world, work suggests.
Oct 21, 08: The odds of a woman dying from the anesthesia she may be given during childbirth have fallen to about one in a million, according to a study.
Oct 14, 08: "We found that antibacterial mouth rinses, as well as those containing chemicals that neutralize odors, are actually very good at controlling bad breath." However, the researchers pointed out that products containing chlorhexidine, a substance that kills bacteria, resulted in noticeable but temporary staining of the tongue and teeth.
Oct 12, 08: Genes that may increase by seven-fold the risk of early baldness amongst men have been uncovered by researchers.
Oct 13, 08: The nation's leading pediatricians group says children from newborns to teens should get double the usually recommended amount of vitamin D.
. . The new advice is based on mounting research about potential benefits from vitamin D besides keeping bones strong, including suggestions that it might reduce risks for cancer, diabetes and heart disease. But the evidence isn't conclusive and there's no consensus on how much of the vitamin would be needed for disease prevention.
. . The new advice replaces a 2003 academy recommendation for 200 units daily. That's the amount the government recommends for children and adults up to age 50; 400 units is recommended for adults aged 51 to 70 and 600 units for those aged 71 and up. Vitamin D is sold in drops for young children, capsules and tablets.
. . Lab work in human tissue has shown that vitamin D helps increase levels of a protein that kills bacteria. He said many experts believe that between 800 and 1,000 units daily would be more effective at helping fight disease.
. . Several members of an academy committee that helped write the guidelines have current or former ties to makers of infant formula or vitamin supplements.
Oct 11, 08: A study of 1,044 mother-child pairs found that 3-year-olds born to mothers who gained too much weight during pregnancy had increased odds of becoming overweight. Somehow, it seemed, these women metabolically programmed their kids to get fat.
. . Last month, a group of scientists from the Yale Child Study Center reported on functional brain MRI scans on women who'd just given birth. Compared with those who delivered vaginally, mothers who consented to Cesarean sections had brains that were less sensitive to recordings of babies' cries, which the researchers ominously claim can harm "infant physiology, development, maternal mood, and motherinfant relationships in general."
Oct 8, 08: The brain can produce antidepressants with the right signal, a finding that suggests that meditating, or going to your "happy place", truly works, scientists reported.
Oct 7, 08: A prenatal blood test can be used to determine if an unborn baby has Down's syndrome without the small risk to the fetus posed by invasive testing methods such as amniocentesis, U.S. researchers said.
Oct 7, 08: Girls who take stimulants to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are less likely than others with the condition to start smoking or to abuse alcohol or drugs, U.S. researchers said.
Oct 4, 08: Overeating makes the brain go haywire, prompting a cascade of damage that may cause diabetes, heart disease and other ills, U.S. researchers reported. Eating too much appears to activate a usually dormant immune system pathway in the brain, sending out immune cells to attack and destroy invaders that are not there.
. . Green groups have welcomed the creation of a new energy and climate department in Gordon Brown's government reshuffle. Previously, the UK's energy policy and climate strategy has been divided between two separate government teams. "The new department puts climate change where it belongs, with its own seat at the cabinet table." The CBI described climate change and energy security as "vital national interests", adding that both required urgent action.
Sept 23, 08: Specifically, only 6.7 grams of chocolate per day (or 0.23 ounces) represents the ideal amount, according to results from the Moli-sani Project, one of the largest health studies ever conducted in Europe. For comparison, a standard-sized Hershey's kiss is about 4.5 grams (though they are not made of dark chocolate)
Sept 23, 08: A Harvard team examined approximately 9,000 deaths over the last 25 years and found that 55% of those deaths could have been avoided had those participants engaged in regular physical activity, avoided smoking and becoming overweight, and ate a healthy diet. Junk food not only kills you but manages also to spit on your grave.
. . This includes 44% of cancer deaths and 72% of cardiovascular deaths that could have been avoided. The study was one of the first, and by far the largest, to look at how a combination of lifestyle factors might influence mortality --and not just, for example, quitting smoking.
. . About half of all Americans will develop some kind of cancer; and on average about 25% of those with cancer die from it. While the survival odds are good and are getting better, treatment can be debilitating and expensive.
Sept 2, 08: Millions of poor children in the US may be getting fat before age 10 because their mothers are stressed out and the youngsters seek escape in unhealthy comfort food, researchers said.
Aug 28, 08: Major inequalities in health and life expectancy persist worldwide, according to an independent World Health Organization commission which called for all countries to offer universal health care.
. . Huge discrepancies also exist within countries, including Scotland where a boy born in the poor Glasgow suburb of Calton can expect to live to 54, 28 years less than one born in affluent Lenzie, just across town, it said. "A woman in Botswana can expect to live 43 years, in Japan 86 years."
Aug 20, 08: An epilepsy drug being tested for use in treating addiction can help obese rats shed weight, government researchers said.
July 30, 08: Sedentary mice that took a drug for four weeks burned more calories and had less fat than untreated mice. And when tested on a treadmill, they could run about 44% farther and 23% longer than untreated mice. "We have exercise in a pill."
. . Just how well those results might translate to people is an open question. But someday, researchers say, such a drug might help treat obesity, diabetes and people with medical conditions that keep them from exercising.
. . The no-exercise drug is in advanced human testing to see if it can prevent a complication of heart bypass surgery. Evans noted the drugs might prove irresistible for professional athletes who seek an illegal edge. He said his team has developed detection tests.
. . Resveratrol, a substance being studied for anti-aging effects, has also been reported to enable mice to run farther before exhaustion without exercise training. But the drugs in the new study appear to act more specifically on a process in muscles that boosts endurance.
. . The no-exercise drug is called AICAR. Previous experiments suggest that it might protect against gaining weight on a high-fat diet, which might make it useful for treating obesity, Evans said. But it would have to be taken for a long time, he said, so its safety in people would have to be assured.
Aug 4, 08: Eating tuna and other fatty fish may help prevent memory loss in addition to reducing the risk of stroke, Finnish researchers said.
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. . July 28, 08: A diet rich in oily fish, which contains omega 3 fatty acids, may be why middle-aged men in Japan have fewer problems with clogged arteries than white men and men of Japanese descent in the US.
July 18, 08: The South tips the scales again as the nation's fattest region, according to a new government survey. More than 30% of adults in each of the states tipped the scales enough to ensure that the South remains the nation's fattest region. Colorado was the least obese, with about 19% fitting that category.
. . Mississippi has had the highest obesity rate every year since 2004. But Alabama, Tennessee, West Virginia and Louisiana have also clustered near the top of the list, often so close that the difference between their rates and Mississippi's may not be statistically significant.
July 14, 08: Contrary to the moans of many dieters, being hungry may make you happy. Or, at least, it can be a serious motivator whose evolutionary intent was to help you find dinner instead of becoming dinner.
. . When our bodies notice we need more calories, levels of a hormone called ghrelin increase. Ghrelin is known to spur hunger, but new research suggests this may be a side effect of its primary job as a stress-buster.
. . Researchers manipulated ghrelin levels in mice through a variety of methods, including prolonged calorie restriction, ghrelin injection and a genetic modification rendering the mice numb to ghrelin's effect. Mice who had limited ghrelin activity seemed depressed. If pushed into deep water they made no effort to swim.
. . In contrast, mice with high levels of ghrelin swam energetically in deep water, looking for escape. They eagerly explored new environments. And they were much more social.
. . The researchers think that hunger-induced happiness is an adaptive measure. Getting food, especially in the wild, requires concentration, clear-headed perception and often cooperation. If hunger made us walk around in a funk, we'd likely become someone else's dinner. Instead, ghrelin motivates and focuses us on getting some F-O-O-D! Stat!
. . Hunger is not the only stressor that causes ghrelin to rise. Social anxiety can stimulate it as well.
. . "You don't really see an [antidepressant] effect until you have lost, say, 10 to 15% of your body weight." Once you are getting regular boosts from ghrelin, it could become addictive --which may explain why anorexics have such a difficult time recovering.
July 8, 08: Calorie restriction, as it is called, is as close to a real Fountain of Youth as any known technique comes. Even scientists who are cautious about anti-aging hype say it works, both by cutting risks for some diseases and by allowing all body cells, somehow, to hang in there longer. "There is plenty of evidence that calorie restriction can reduce your risks for many common diseases including cancer, diabetes and heart disease."
. . Here's a rough rule of thumb that many experts generally agree on now: Eat 15 percent less starting at age 25 and you might add 4.5 years to your life. One important caveat: Ravussin's estimate is based mostly on studies of other animals and only preliminary research in humans. In a nutshell, it is thought to lower metabolic rate and cause the body to generate fewer damaging "free radicals." One hypothesis is that it decreases a thyroid hormone, triiodothyronine (T3), which then slows metabolism and tissue aging.
July 3, 08: Mice given resveratrol --the first of an eagerly-anticipated class of longevity drugs-- enjoyed dramatically improved health, even when they started taking the drug late in life. "The mice had tremendous health benefits from taking resveratrol", said de Cabo. "If any of those parameters translate to humans, it will be tremendous."
. . Resveratrol didn't extend the lives of normal mice, but it did protect them from the ravages of time. The rodents had stronger hearts, clearer eyes, more limber muscles and firmer bones. Closer analysis revealed the same cell-level changes produced by caloric restriction, an extreme form of dieting that consistently lengthens the lives of lab animals but is impractical, if not dangerous, for people.
. . Sinclair discovered several years ago that resveratrol activates the SIRT1 enzyme, one of an enzyme family known as sirtuins. Caloric restriction also activates sirtuins, which regulate cell function and rejuvenate mitochondria.
. . Regardless of mouse weight and diet, resveratrol worked wonders. At two years of age, or the mouse equivalent of senescence, the mice were more coordinated than their non-dosed counterparts. Their bones were thicker and stronger, their eyes free of cataracts, their hearts beating strong.
. . Mitochondrial degeneration has been implicated in a variety of diseases, leading some researchers to believe that heart disease, cancer and dementia --all the so-called diseases of aging-- have a common root. Resveratrol has also proved non-toxic in mice, and human use has not revealed any glaring side effects.
. . In June, they were purchased for $720 million by Glaxo Smith Kline. "You've got to take aging research seriously if a company is willing to put down three-quarters of a billion dollars on it", said Sinclair.
July 3, 08: Watermelons contain an ingredient called citrulline that can trigger production of a compound that helps relax the body's blood vessels, similar to what happens when a man takes Viagra, said scientists in Texas.
. . Found in the flesh and rind of watermelons, citrulline reacts with the body's enzymes when consumed in large quantities and is changed into arginine, an amino acid that benefits the heart and the circulatory and immune systems.
. . "Arginine boosts nitric oxide, which relaxes blood vessels, the same basic effect that Viagra has, to treat erectile dysfunction and maybe even prevent it", said Bhimu Patil, a researcher. "Watermelon may not be as organ-specific as Viagra, but it's a great way to relax blood vessels without any drug side effects." Anyone taking Viagra shouldn't expect the same result from watermelon.
. . More citrulline -about 60%- is found in watermelon rind than in the flesh, Patil said, but that can vary. But scientists may be able to find ways to boost the concentrations in the flesh, he said. Citrulline is found in all colors of watermelon and is highest in the yellow-fleshed types. One would need to eat about six cups of watermelon to get enough citrulline to boost the body's arginine level.
. . Watermelon is a diuretic and was a homeopathic treatment for kidney patients before dialysis became widespread. Another issue is the amount of sugar that much watermelon would spill into the bloodstream -a jolt that could cause cramping.
. . Citrulline is present in other curcubits, like cucumbers and cantaloupe, at very low levels, and in the milk protein casein. The highest concentrations of citrulline are found in walnut seedlings.
Jun 3, 08: Children in the U.S. are now getting more of their calories from fruit juice and sugar-sweetened beverages than they were 20 years ago, according to a new analysis of national data.
Jun 2, 08: "It's not a matter of if, but when", said gerontologist David Sinclair of a drug that promises a long and healthy life --not quite a fountain of youth, but perhaps a fountain of fitness. Best of all, predicted Sinclair, you'll be able to afford it.
. . Speaking at a World Science Festival discussion on the science of longevity, Sinclair predicted that the drugs "could have as big an impact as antibiotics in the 20th century, and it's just around the corner."
. . Five years ago, Sinclair, a Harvard U professor and co-founder of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, discovered the molecule resveratrol. It targets a gene activated by calorically restricted diets, which have extended the lifespans of laboratory animals from yeast to monkeys.
. . Despite the paucity of human testing, some people already practice caloric restriction. Most, however, are discouraged by the spartan dietary discipline required of adherents. Questions also remain about long-term side effects. Instead, scientists are shooting for pharmaceutical shortcuts that do the same thing --namely, reinvigorating our mitochondria, fixing a lifetime of cellular wear-and-tear.
May 14, 08: For the first time, it appears that more than half of all insured Americans are taking prescription medicines regularly for chronic health problems, a study shows. The most widely used drugs are those to lower high blood pressure and cholesterol -problems often linked to heart disease, obesity and diabetes.
Apr 24, 08: Rising obesity rates and a large percentage of children born with low birthweights are dragging down the overall health of American children in their first decade of life, according to a report.
Apr 17, 08: Teams of university scientists backed by U.S. government funds hope to grow new skin, ears, muscles and other body tissue for troops injured in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Defense Department said.
Apr 16, 08: It looks like scientists have figured out why calorie-restricted diets increase lifespans, and they're going to put that magic in pill form.
. . It turns out that starving yourself causes your ribosomes (your cell's protein factories) to mutate, which is what leads to the positive effects. And now some smartypants Biologists at the U of Washington have figured out how to induce the life-extending mutation in ribosomes with a drug that doubles the lifespan of yeast cells.
. . Ribosomes are made up of two parts -the large and small subunits- and the researchers tried to isolate the life-span-related mutation to one of those parts. "What we noticed right away was that the long-lived strains always had mutations in the large ribosomal subunit and never in the small subunit", said the study's lead author, Kristan Steffen.
. . The researchers also tested a drug called diazaborine, which specifically interferes with synthesis of the ribosomes' large subunits, but not small subunits, and found that treating cells with the drug made them live about 50% longer than untreated cells. Using a series of genetic tests, the scientists then showed that depletion of the ribosomes' large subunits was likely to be increasing life span by a mechanism related to dietary restriction the TOR signaling pathway.
Apr 7, 08: Teenagers with a bedroom television tend to have poorer diet and exercise habits and lower grades in school than those without one, U.S. researchers said.
Apr 3, 08: The claim that you need eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day has been debunked. Again. Drs. Dan Negoianu and Stanley Goldfarb at the U of Pennsylvania reviewed published clinical studies on the topic and found no data to suggest people need to stick to the "8 x 8" rule. "Indeed, it is unclear where this recommendation came from", they write.
Apr 3, 08: A report says 90,000 U.S. infants are maltreated a year. About one of every 43 U.S. infants is physically abused or neglected annually, and those babies are especially at risk in the first week of their lives, U.S. health officials said.
Apr 9, 08: A new study found that marriage clearly promotes healthier blood-pressure levels, but only for married people who scored high for marriage quality, as reflected by their lower levels of stress, less depression, and higher satisfaction with life. Unhappy married people had poorer blood-pressure levels than the single people included in this study. Interestingly, the benefits of a supportive network didn't protect either single people or unhappily married people from blood-pressure problems, which suggests that there is something special about the marriage relationship.
Apr 2, 08: Scientists are hard at work on making teeth regrow the crystals that make up dentin and enamel, allowing them to phase out fillings and drillings completely. The goal is to spot tooth decay early and then get the teeth to grow healthy tooth-matter over the bad spots. No fuss, no muss. They say that the tech will be ready for primetime in just a few years.
Apr 1, 08: You can skip the mouth-to-mouth breathing and just press on the chest to save a life. In a major change, the American Heart Association said that hands-only CPR -rapid, deep presses on the victim's chest until help arrives- works just as well as standard CPR for sudden cardiac arrest in adults.
. . Hands-only CPR calls for uninterrupted chest presses -100 a minute- until paramedics take over or an automated external defibrillator is available to restore a normal heart rhythm.
Mar 25, 08: U.S. researchers have identified all 1,116 unique proteins found in human saliva glands, a discovery they said could usher in a wave of convenient, spit-based diagnostic tests.
Mar 7, 08: A study shows non-drinkers who begin taking the occasional tipple live longer and are less likely to develop heart disease.
Feb 26, 08: the homely bullfrog may harbor a valuable anti-ageing substance for humans, South Korean researchers say. They isolated a peptide with antioxidant properties from bullfrog skin. Because of the properties, the material is useful in removing free radicals --molecules that hasten the ageing process of human cells.
. . "Because it is water-soluble, the substance may be consumed in much more diverse ways than the oil-soluble tocopherol. You may put it in soft drinks, for example", he said. The newly found material is also 10% more efficient than tocopherol in curbing oxidization, he added.
Feb 15, 08: Genes that helped early humans adapt to cold climates may be driving metabolism-related diseases such as obesity or diabetes in many countries, U.S. researchers said. They found a strong correlation between climate and genetic adaptations that influence the risk of metabolic syndrome, a group of related disorders such as obesity, high cholesterol, heart disease and diabetes.
. . Anthropologists have long made the case that certain traits such as differences in skin pigmentation reflect early human migration from equatorial Africa to cooler climates --for instance, the link between paler skin and an ability to synthesize vitamin D from sunlight. "They had to develop genetic variants that made them more efficient in terms of energy metabolism and that made them more able to cope with cold climates by increasing their rate of thermogenesis --the ability to generate and maintain heat", she said.
. . The research team picked 82 genes associated with energy metabolism and looked to see if there were any correlations with climate. They studied variations in 1,034 people from 54 populations. They saw several clusters of different genetic variations related to metabolic syndrome in colder climates.
. . One gene, the leptin receptor, is increasingly common in areas with colder winters. Leptin is important to appetite and weight gain --something people need no help with in modern times.
Diet and lifestyle play a far smaller role than genetic factors in determining whether a child becomes overweight, according to a British study of twins.
Feb 5, 08: Applying logic that only a bean counter could love, a Dutch study concludes that fat people put less of a strain, not more, on the health-care system because they die sooner.
Jan 31, 08: Women who take folic acid supplements for at least a year before becoming pregnant can greatly reduce their risk of delivering a baby prematurely, researchers said.
Jan 30, 08: A person's preference for being a "lark" or a "night-owl" is largely determined by genes, a study suggests.
Jan 30, 08: Electrical stimulation of areas deep within the brain could lead to improved memory, research suggests.
Jan 22, 08: In the future, your countertop could disinfect itself. Researchers at Rice U and City College of New York have come up with a way to embed silver nanoparticles in vegetable oil-based paint. Early tests show that the material exhibits "efficient antibacterial activity" toward E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus.
. . Silver's antibacterial properties have been known since the age of the Roman Empire, but making nano-sized particles (nano particles measure less than 100 billionths of a meter long) and then fixing them in paints and coatings has typically been expensive and time consuming.
Jan 22, 08: Extensive studies conducted by universities in the US and Sweden show that a certain dose of radio frequency before bedtime causes insomnia. While there is plenty of number crunching yet to come to determine the exact relationships between exposure to 884MHz RF and loss of sleep, the key message from one of the scientists was this: "If you feel you have trouble sleeping, you should think about not talking on a mobile phone right before you go to bed."
. . The people were exposed to the RF radiation at random times. Another control group was observed, but did not receive the RF blasts. The end result was a finding that the cell-phone radiation caused not just insomnia, but headaches and difficulty concentrating. "The ones who were exposed reported headaches, it took longer for them to fall asleep and they did not sleep as well through the night."
Jan 22, 08: Two new studies paint a conflicting health picture for women coffee drinkers, with one suggesting caffeine may lower the risk of ovarian cancer and the other showing it doubles the chances of miscarriage.
Jan 20, 08: Pregnant women who drink two or more cups of coffee a day have twice the risk of having a miscarriage as those who avoid caffeine, U.S. researchers said.
Jan 17, 08: Diets high in protein may be the best way to keep hunger in check, U.S. researchers said in a study that offers insight into how diets work. They found that protein does the best job at keeping a hunger hormone in check, while carbohydrates and fats may well deserve their current nasty reputation.
. . They looked at the effectiveness of different nutrients at suppressing ghrelin, a hormone secreted by the stomach that stimulates appetite. They also found that eating carbohydrates resulted in a strong ghrelin suppression at first, but ghrelin levels rebounded with a vengeance, rising to an even higher level. Basically, the carbohydrates eventually made people even hungrier than before they had eaten.
. . And the study likely means that nightly bowl of ice cream is out. "That is a bad idea no matter what", he said.
Jan 17, 08: U.S. scientists have developed a way to breed corn that can boost the vitamin A it gives people who eat it --a potentially important advance for regions of the world burdened by vitamin A deficiencies.
Jan 16, 08: A group of Italian scientists explained that low doses of tetrahydrocannabinol --the psychoactive chemical in marijuana-- tend to be calming while large amounts have the opposite effect. What they wanted to know is: which parts of the brain cause those moods.
. . By injecting small amounts of the marijuana-derived drug into different parts of a rat's brain and then watching for behavioral cues, they learned that THC works wonders in the prefrontal cortex and ventral hippocampus, but causes anxious behavior when dribbled into the basolateral amygdala.
. . German biochemists had an even better story to tell: Beat Lutz and his colleagues at Johannes Gutenberg-University studied an enzyme that is partially responsible for anxiety. Make a drug that can slow it down and you may be able to prevent paranoia. They proved their point in two ways: Knockout mice, animals lacking the genetic recipe for that protein, were resistant to nervous behavior. Also, unusually nervous lab mice were calmed by an experimental chemical that inactivates the same molecule.
. . What does all of this mean? Scientists still don't have paranoia all figured out, but they are getting there quickly.
Jan 16, 08: Enhancing a natural pain-filtering mechanism in the spine helped relieve chronic pain in mice without the unwanted side effects of current pain relievers, Swiss researchers said. They honed in on a specific molecule that helps prevent chronic pain signals from reaching the brain, without blocking normal pain messages that alert people to danger. And they said their experiments in mice may point the way to better drugs in humans.
. . "We know that normally the spinal cord acts as filter for pain signals. It prevents most of the pain signals from reaching the brain, where pain becomes conscious", said Zeilhofer.
. . A class of drugs called benzodiazepines, which include diazepam --Valium-- bolsters the action of this GABA molecule in the central nervous system. The drugs are used to treat things like anxiety and insomnia, but when injected near the spine, these drugs also relieve pain.
Jan 11, 08: A British team has found a new genetic link with high cholesterol and said the finding could lead to better screening and new drugs for the condition, which raises the risk of heart disease.
. . The researchers showed that people with the common DNA sequence were likely to have higher levels of the so-called bad cholesterol responsible for increased risk of heart disease. "People knew this genetic marker was associated with a higher risk of heart disease, and the new findings show why --it is associated with high cholesterol."
. . The next step, which Munroe said would not take long, is nailing down the precise gene. This knowledge could help better predict heart disease risk and give pharmaceutical companies other targets for lucrative drugs to lower cholesterol.
. . Statins, anti-cholesterol drugs which lower the risk of heart attack and stroke, are the world's top-selling drugs, pulling in billions of dollars for their makers. "This genetic marker (for bad cholesterol) wasn't known but the pharmaceutical industry will clearly be interested in it", Munroe said.
Jan 8, 08: New results show that Merck's experimental anti-obesity drug, which acts as sort of an inverse marijuana by blocking the brain receptor that pot stimulates, significantly reduced appetites and led to weight loss in human study subjects. The drug, called taranabant, is now in the final stage of the three-phase FDA-approval process.
. . The first such drug, a cousin of taranabant known as rimonabant, received a major setback in 2007 when an FDA advisory panel voted against approving it. Rimonabant was apparently too antithetical to marijuana, causing depression in some patients instead of the euphoria often associated with cannabis. Scientists have long known that THC, the main ingredient in pot, stimulates the appetite, a phenomenon colloquially known as "the munchies."
. . The latest study of taranabant studied 500 volunteers, & showed that the drug helps people lose weight, even at small doses. At the highest dose --six milligrams-- study participants lost almost one pound per week during the 12-week study. The researchers found that people who took the drug ate 20% fewer calories than those who took a placebo. The drug also increased resting energy expenditure, or metabolism, by 5%.
. . About 30% of people who received taranabant reported psychiatric-related adverse events including depression and anxiety, compared with 18% in the placebo group.
. . A recent report from Marketdata forecast the weight-loss product market in the US would reach $61 billion in 2008.
Jan 8, 08: For the first time, scientists have proof in human subjects that a derivative of an ingredient in red wine combats some symptoms of aging. Sirtris Pharmaceuticals announced the results.
. . Resveratol, naturally found in red wine, stimulates a gene known as SIRT1, which has been linked with extended lifespans in rodents. The new study is the first time similar effects have been replicated in humans. It stimulates the same gene with results similar to calorie-restriction but without the diet.
. . Sirtris' proprietary formulation of the drug significantly reduced blood sugar in 67 diabetic patients as compared with a placebo group. The results are an important milestone in bringing resveratrol-related drugs to market. Sirtris can now say it does know what SRT501 does, at least for a small number of patients over a short period of time: It works. Patients in the trial were given 2,500 or 5,000 milligrams of the drug in liquid form. Both groups had positive outcomes with no side effects.
. . The company is also working with other molecules --potential drugs-- that are unrelated to resveratrol but also stimulate the SIRT1 gene. Some of the molecules could be up to 1,000 times more potent than resveratrol, he added.
Jan 8, 08: To get an extra 14 years of life, don't smoke, eat lots of fruits and vegetables, exercise regularly and drink alcohol in moderation. That's the finding of a study that tracked about 20,000 people in the UK.
. . Kay-Tee Khaw of the U of Cambridge and colleagues calculated that people who adopted these four healthy habits lived an average of 14 years longer than those who didn't. "We didn't ask these people to do anything exceptional", Khaw said. "We measured normal behaviors that were entirely feasible within people's normal, everyday lives."
Jan 2, 08: A happy heart just might be a healthier one as well, new research suggests. In a study of nearly 3,000 healthy British adults, lead by Dr. Andrew Steptoe of University College London, found that those who reported upbeat moods had lower levels of cortisol -- a "stress" hormone that, when chronically elevated, may contribute to high blood pressure, abdominal obesity and dampened immune function, among other problems.
. . In the study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, women who reported more positive emotions had lower blood levels of two proteins that indicate widespread inflammation in the body. Chronic inflammation is believed to contribute to a range of ills over time, including heart disease and cancer.
. . Researchers have long noted that happier people tend to be in better health than those who are persistently stressed, hostile or pessimistic. But the reasons are still being studied. One possibility is that happier people lead more healthful lifestyles, but not all studies have found this to be the case, explained Steptoe.
Popular culture is loaded with myths and half-truths. Most are harmless. But when doctors start believing medical myths, perhaps it's time to worry. Seven medical "myths":
. . Despite frequent mentions in the popular press of the need to drink eight glasses of water, they found no scientific basis for the claim.
. . * Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight
. . The majority of eye experts believe it is unlikely to do any permanent damage, but it may make you squint, blink more and have trouble focusing, the researchers said.
. . * Shaving makes hair grow back faster or coarser
. . It has no effect on the thickness or rate of hair regrowth, studies say. But stubble lacks the finer taper of unshaven hair, giving the impression of coarseness.
. . * Eating turkey makes you drowsy
. . It does contain an amino acid called tryptophan that is involved in sleep and mood control. But turkey has no more of the acid than chicken or minced beef. Eating lots of food and drink at Christmas are probably the real cause of sleepiness.
. . * We use only 10% of our brains.
. . This myth arose as early as 1907 but imaging shows no area of the brain is silent or completely inactive.
. . * Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death
. . This idea may stem from ghoulish novels. The researchers said the skin dries out and retracts after death, giving the appearance of longer hair or nails.
. . * Mobile phones are dangerous in hospitals
. . Despite widespread concerns, studies have found minimal interference with medical equipment.
Dec 19, 07: Local authorities have arrested at least 100 Ugandans for failing to build toilets in their homes in the midst of a cholera epidemic that has killed 8 people and infected 164, state media reported. "We cannot watch as people die (of cholera)." Cholera epidemics spread by poor sanitation are common.
Dec 18, 07: A new class of drugs aimed at age-related physical and mental deterioration could change not only the nature of life, but of death. The drugs target mitochondria, the cellular power generators that provide our bodies with chemical energy. Over time, mitochondria accumulate damage, causing cells and eventually tissues to malfunction and break down. Some scientists believe that such seemingly disparate diseases as cancer, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes and heart disease --all of which become more common with age-- share a mitochondrial root. Fix the mitochondria, and you might fix aging itself.
. . Preliminary research suggests that mitochondria-rejuvenating drugs are capable, at least in lab animals, of halting these diseases and extending longevity. The research also suggests that, once they've reached the end of their traditional lifespans, these animals tend to die quickly and inexplicably, without any indication of disease or systemic breakdown.
. . a word of caution: this is preliminary research. As gerontology rogue-pioneer Aubrey DeGrey told me, and most any other researcher would agree, "The jury is still very much out about whether these drugs will be effective on the general spectrum of aging diseases."
Dec 11, 07: Most Australians believe obese airline passengers should pay for two seats so they don't take up space from the people sitting next to them, according to a survey.
. . Spanish children think Santa Claus is "too fat" and should go on a diet, and that he should ditch his sleigh for a 4X4 or a motorcycle.
Dec 11, 07: Mormons have less heart disease --something doctors have long chalked up to their religion's ban on smoking. New research suggests that another of their "clean living" habits also may be helping their hearts: fasting for one day each month.
. . A study in Utah found that people who skipped meals once a month were about 40% less likely to be diagnosed with clogged arteries than those who did not regularly fast. People do not have to "get religion" to benefit: non-Mormons who regularly took breaks from food also were less likely to have clogged arteries, scientists found.
. . They concede that their study is far from proof that periodic fasting is good for anyone, but said the benefit they observed poses a theory that deserves further testing.
Dec 7, 07: Just three servings a month of raw broccoli or cabbage can reduce the risk of bladder cancer by as much as 40%, researchers reported. Other studies show that dark-colored berries can reduce the risk of cancer too --adding more evidence to a growing body of research that shows fruits and vegetables, especially richly colored varieties, can reduce the risk of cancer. These foods are rich in compounds called isothiocyanates, which are known to lower cancer risk. "Cooking can reduce 60 to 90% of ITCs, (isothiocyanates)." Black raspberries, sometimes called blackberries or blackcaps, are also rich in cancer-fighting compounds.
. . The effects were most striking in nonsmokers. Compared to smokers who ate fewer than three servings of raw cruciferous vegetables, nonsmokers who ate at least three servings a month were almost 73% less likely to be in the bladder cancer group, they found. Among both smokers and nonsmokers, those who ate this minimal amount of raw veggies had a 40% lower risk. But the team did not find the same effect for cooked vegetables.
. . In a third study, a team at The Ohio State U fed black raspberries to patients with Barrett's esophagus, a condition that can lead to esophageal cancer.
. . Kresty said 58% of patients had marked declines of 8-isoprostane levels, suggesting less damage, and 37% had higher levels of GSTpi, which can help interfere with cancer causing damage and which is usually low in patients with Barrett's.
Dec 4, 07: Tricking muscle tissue to burn rather than store fat has succeeded in increasing the average life span of mice and staved off some age-related diseases, U.S. researchers said. Mice bred to make too much of a protein known as uncoupling protein 1 released food energy as heat instead of storing it as fat. "What we're uncoupling is the process of burning energy from storing energy", said Dr. Clay Semenkovich of Washington U.
. . Mice that overproduced this uncoupling protein in their muscle tissue weighed less and had less fat tissue, even though they ate the same amount as normal mice in the study. "They lived about three months longer on average, which translates into six or seven years in human life." Mice in the study had a lower incidence of vascular disease, hypertension and lymphoma, a type of cancer.
. . Semenkovich said these same uncoupling proteins occur in humans, and genetic variations in the proteins have been linked with people weighing more or less.
Dec 4, 07: A teaspoon of honey, rather than cough syrup or some other medicine, proves most effective in helping to suppress a child's cough, one study finds.
Dec 3, 07: The FDA faces a damning report on science expertise: Lives are at risk because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is woefully behind in the latest scientific advances and is underfunded for its vast responsibilities, an expert panel will tell the FDA.
Dec 3, 07: The natural "high" produced by exercise could one day be available in a pill that targets a gene in our brains. The Yale U experts say that experiments on mice could show why regular exercise can help people suffering from depression. While the link between exercise and improved mood is well known, the reasons behind it are not fully understood.
. . The latest research focuses on an area of the brain called the hippocampus, which is already established as a target for antidepressant drugs.
. . The team developed a test to see which genes in this region were made more active during exercise, and highlighted one called VGF. This gene is linked to a "growth factor" chemical involved in the development of nerve cells. This fitted with their theory that, for depression to lift, changes in the actual structure and links between brain cells are needed, not just changes in the chemicals surrounding the cells.
. . The next step was to make a version of that chemical, and to test it on mice, where it showed an effect on their behaviour that roughly equated to antidepressant effects in humans.
Nov 30, 07: Scientists have reversed the effects of ageing on the skin of mice by blocking the action of a specific protein. In two-year old mice, Californian researchers found that they could rejuvenate skin to look more youthful. Further analysis showed the skin had the same genetic profile as the skin of newborn mice.
. . The team said the research would most likely lead to treatments to improve healing in older human patients. They stressed it was unlikely to be a potential "fountain of youth" but could help older people heal as quickly from injury as they did when they were younger.
Nov 29, 07: South Dakota State U researchers are looking for ways to increase the amount of the trace mineral selenium in flour. Flour that is high in selenium could create a market for farmers along the Missouri River, where the selenium content is high.
. . Incorporated into proteins, selenium serves as an antioxidant and has been shown to protect against cancer. Careful milling can keep most of the wheat's selenium in the flour, Krishnan said. Wheat loses many of its nutrients when the bran is taken out of the kernel. But selenium is more evenly distributed between the bran and the inside of the kernel that is processed into flour.
. . Data from SDSU show that typical wheat nationwide has 0.05 to 0.5 parts per of selenium, while in South Dakota, the average is 0.5 to 1.95 parts per million.
. . Krishnan said he hopes that someday, South Dakota's farmers can sell wheat with 2 or 3 parts per million of selenium. Such wheat would be in demand in other countries, Krishnan said, adding that South Korea could be a top market.
Nov 21, 07: An antidepressant may help worms live longer by tricking the brain into thinking the body is starving, U.S. researchers reported. The drug, called mianserin, extended the life span of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans by about 30%, the researchers reported. They hope to find out if the same mechanism can help people live longer. Three other compounds, including another antidepressant, have similar effects.
. . Many studies have shown that slightly starving certain animals --reducing how much they eat by about 30%-- can cause them to live longer. It is not entirely clear if this occurs in humans, but researchers are keen to duplicate the beneficial effects of calorie restriction without the misery of going hungry.
Nov 16, 07: Plants genetically engineered to make fish oils could offer a new approach to improving diet, say experts.
NyQuil: Twelve times the recommended dose leads to distorted perceptions of sight and sound and produces feelings of detachment -dissociation- from the environment and oneself. For people whose bodies are unusually slow at metabolizing the drug, even low doses of DXM trigger full-blown "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" psychedelic trips.
. . Doxylamine succinate:Officially, this ingredient is on the label as an antihistamine. But it is equally useful as a sleep aid.
Acetaminophen:One of the many wonder-pharmaceuticals that can be derived from coal tar, acetaminophen was used for nearly a century as a painkiller and fever reducer before anyone figured out how it worked. We now know that as the drug breaks down in the body, it turns into a cannabinoid: yes, the same type of compound in marijuana.
Nov 6, 07: Australian scientists have found how to switch hunger on and off using a molecule that targets the brain --a discovery which could stop weight loss in terminally ill patients or produce weight loss in the morbidly obese.
. . The molecule, known as MIC-1, is produced by common cancers and targets receptors in the brain that switch off appetite. But Australian researchers found that by using antibodies against MIC-1 they were able to switch appetite back on. When normal and obese mice were treated with MIC-1, they ate less and lost a lot of weight, suggesting that MIC-1 may also be used to treat severe obesity
. . The researchers said it was hoped that in the near future, the MIC-1 findings will prevent a sizeable proportion of advanced cancer patients from "literally wasting away."
Nov 5, 07: A very common gene can help explain why breast-fed babies tend to grow up to be more intelligent than those raised exclusively on bottled milk.
. . Breast-fed babies who shared the genetic variant outscored bottle-fed peers in intelligence tests, researchers said. The variant to the FADS2 gene, involved in processing fatty acids, is found in about 90% of people, they added. The study looked at 3,200 children in Britain and New Zealand.
. . Breast-feeding has many advantages for children, including reducing infections, respiratory illnesses and diarrhea, earlier research has shown. A new study added healthier blood cholesterol levels to that list.
. . Although scientists have been looking at potential links between breast-feeding and intelligence for decades, the direct relationship has not always been clear. The researchers studied the FADS2 gene involved in processing omega 3 fatty acids found in foods such as salmon, nuts and avocados and turning them into nutrients for the brain.
. . In both countries, breast-fed children had a higher IQ by about 6 to 7 points, but only if they had a variant that made the gene more efficiently process fatty acids. For those with the less common --and less efficient-- variant, breast-feeding made no difference when it came to intelligence, the researchers said. The team also tested the mothers' DNA and concluded that the FADS2 gene did not somehow alter the quality of breast milk.
Nov 5, 07: Insufficient sleep can negatively affect preteens' metabolism as well as their exercise and eating habits, causing them to get fat, researchers reported.
Oct 29, 07: Giving the body's natural appetite suppressant to morbidly obese volunteers de-activated their brain's response to tasty food --and the new brain activity lasted for as long as the hormone was delivered, U.S. researchers reported.
. . They said their imaging tests show some of the brain circuits activated by leptin, a hormone that helps control appetite, and may lead to new and better treatments for obesity, the researchers wrote in their report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
. . "While they were off leptin they got really hungry when they saw pictures of high-calorie food, and that was associated with high activation in a part of the brain that is related to food craving." With leptin, the executive centers involved in self-control were more activated.
. . The discovery of leptin in the 1990s created a furor, because when injected into rodents it caused them to eat less and lose weight. But the same rarely occurs in humans. So experts are trying to find out how it works in people and find ways to better harness its effects.
. . London and colleagues examined three members of a family with a rare genetic defect that causes their bodies to produce no leptin. Such people become extremely obese. Earlier studies had shown that when injected with leptin, these people lose up to 50% of their body weight --unlike most people, who usually continue to over-eat even when injected with leptin.
. . They found the area of the cerebral cortex involved in self-control actually grew after repeated leptin administrations. But they wondered what else was going on.
. . They set up an experiment using functional magnetic resonance imaging, a type of brain scan that can see the brain's activity in real time. They recorded the brain activity before and after giving leptin, a study that continued for two years. Different areas of the brain lit up with and without leptin.
Oct 29, 07: Organic produce is better for you than ordinary food, a major European Union-funded study says. It found a general trend showing organic food contained more antioxidants and less fatty acids. They found levels of antioxidants in milk from organic cattle were between 50% and 80% higher than normal milk. Organic wheat, tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage, onions and lettuce had between 20% and 40% more nutrients.
Oct 24, 07: A few nights without sleep can not only make people tired and emotional, but may actually put the brain into a primitive "fight or flight" state, researchers said. Brain images of otherwise healthy men and women showed two full days without sleep seemed to rewire their brains, re-directing activity from the calming and rational prefrontal cortex to the "fear center" --the amygdala.
. . "They seemed to swing like a pendulum between the broad spectrum of emotions", Walker said. "They would go from being remarkably upset at one time to where they found the same thing funny. They were almost giddy --punch drunk."
. . The findings may shed light on psychiatric diseases. "This is the first set of experiments that demonstrate that even healthy people's brains mimic certain pathological psychiatric patterns when deprived of sleep."
Oct 24, 07: An experimental infrared camera may be able to detect breathing problems in people with sleep apnea, taking at least some of the discomfort out of diagnosis of this chronic sleeping disorder, U.S. researchers said.
Oct 22, 07: Without sleep, the emotional centers of our brains dramatically overreact to bad experiences, research now reveals. "When we're sleep deprived, it's really as if the brain is reverting to more primitive behavior, regressing in terms of the control humans normally have over their emotions."
. . "While we predicted that the emotional centers of the brain would overreact after sleep deprivation, we didn't predict they'd overreact as much as they did", Walker said. "They became more than 60% more reactive to negative emotional stimuli. That's a whopping increasethe emotional parts of the brain just seem to run amok."
. . The researchers pinpointed this hyperactive response to a shutdown of the prefrontal lobe, a brain region that normally keeps emotions under control. This structure is relatively new in human evolution, "and so it may not yet have adapted ways to cope with certain biological extremes", Walker speculated. "Human beings are one of the few species that really deprive themselves of sleep. It's a real oddity in nature."
. . "Traditionally, people mostly thought the psychiatric disorders were contributing to the sleep abnormalities, but of course it could be the other way around. If we can find out which parts of sleep are most key to emotional stability, we already have a good range of drugs that can push and pull at these kinds of sleep and maybe help treat certain kinds of psychiatric conditions."
Oct 22, 07: Most people know eating broccoli is good for you but it also can help skin cells fend off damage from harmful ultraviolet radiation, U.S. researchers said.
Oct 22, 07: "Recent discussion on making it simpler for women to administer abortion-inducing drugs at home. Lancet reported that one-third of pregnancies in Europe ends in abortion. There have been calls in Britain for the upper time limit on abortions to be shortened from 24 weeks to 21 weeks but a recent parliamentary bill on the matter was defeated.
Oct 17, 07: A single gene may be crucial for the final stages of sperm cell formation and could help explain why some men are infertile, U.S. researchers said.
Oct 16, 07: UK-based scientists say they have identified the brain circuits that control how much we eat. The Nature study could aid development of new obesity drugs. Using brain scans, the teams showed the appetite-regulating hormone peptide YY (PYY) produces a more complex pattern of activity in the brain than thought. It targets not only the primitive areas controlling basic hunger urges, but also the pleasure and reward centres.
. . PYY is released from the gut into the bloodstream after eating and signals to the brain that food has been eaten. A nasal spray containing the hormone is currently being trialled to see if it can be used to tackle obesity. Studies on animals suggest it regulates appetite by acting in primitive parts of the brain such as the hypothalamus and brainstem. The latest study showed that the same was true in humans. But the hormone was also found to act in the cortico-limbic regions that determine the pleasure sensations associated with eating food.
. . PYY infusion reduced subsequent average calorific intake by 25%. 23% of the adult UK population is classified as obese. "Further research is now needed to investigate whether underweight and overweight people have abnormalities in these circuits."
Oct 16, 07: When aging hampers memory, some people's brains compensate to stay sharp. Now scientists want to know how those brains make do -in hopes of developing treatments to help everyone else keep up.
. . This is not Alzheimer's disease, but the wear-and-tear of so-called normal aging. New research is making clear that memory and other brain functions decline to varying degrees even in otherwise healthy people as they age. If you're 65 today, odds are you'll live to 83. But improving health care means people in their 50s today may live another 40 years.
. . There are intriguing clues, gleaned from discoveries that some seniors' brains literally work around aging's damage, forging new pathways when old ones disintegrate.
. . High on the list: Simple physical exercise. It seems to do the brain as much good as the body. Other options aren't as well-studied, but range from brain-training games to medications that may keep brain networks better connected. In fact, an old blood-pressure pill named guanfacine improves memory in old rats and monkeys by doing just that -but it hasn't yet been tested in older people with memory problems.
. . Consider: A healthy brain is a bushy one. Branch-like tentacles extend from the ends of the brain's cells, enabling them to communicate with each other. The more you learn, the more those connections form.
. . Alzheimer's kills neurons, so the cells disappear along with connections their neighbors need. With normal aging, the cells don't die but their bushes can shrivel to skinny twigs. Cells that are less connected have a harder time sending messages. You may know someone's name, but not be able to recall it. Moreover, Alzheimer's seems to first target a different spot in the hippocampus, the brain's memory center.
. . There are two capacities for fighting back:
. . _Some brains withstand a lot of assault before showing symptoms, something called "cognitive reserve." Indeed, striking autopsy studies have found between 20% and 40% of elders who displayed no confusion actually had brains riddled with Alzheimer's trademark plaques. Presumably, they had such bushy brains that even when some neurons died, enough were left to function.
. . _Compensation is how the brain adapts when old pathways quit functioning, to reroute itself and use alternates. Brain scans show younger people tend to use different neural networks than older people when performing the same task.
. . Then there's the "use-it-or-lose-it" theory, that people with higher education, more challenging occupations and enriched social lives build more cognitive reserve than couch potatoes.
. . Scientists cited animal studies suggesting low-dose estrogen and drugs that might mimic or ramp up brain signaling are promising possibilities.
Oct 15, 07: Patients who undergo weight-loss stomach surgery have a higher death rate than is true for the general population, including more suicides, perhaps linked to depression, researchers said.
Oct 12, 07: If that craving for chocolate sometimes feels like it is coming from deep in your gut, that's because maybe it is. A small study links the type of bacteria living in people's digestive system to a desire for chocolate. Everyone has a vast community of microbes in their guts. But people who crave daily chocolate show signs of having different colonies of bacteria than people who are immune to chocolate's allure.
. . That may be the case for other foods, too. The idea could eventually lead to treating some types of obesity by changing the composition of the trillions of bacteria occupying the intestines and stomach, said Sunil Kochhar, co-author of the study.
. . The study was delayed because it took a year for the researchers to find 11 men who don't eat chocolate. Still to be determined is if the bacteria cause the craving, or if early in life people's diets changed the bacteria, which then reinforced food choices.
Oct 4, 07: A rare plant which researchers believe could help combat obesity has flowered at the Eden Project in Cornwall. It is thought to be the first time that the succulent Hoodia plant, which was grown by horticulturalists at Eden's nursery, has flowered in the UK.
. . The Hoodia has been eaten for centuries by San bushmen of the Kalahari to suppress their appetite while hunting. Research is being undertaken into the possibility of the plant being used in the production of anti-obesity drugs.
Sept 11, 07: The U.S. is losing ground to other countries in height and longevity. 1) In 20 years, we've fallen from 11th to 42nd in longevity. We trail most European countries, Japan, Guam, and Jordan. 2) We used to be the world's tallest people but now rank ninth and 15th in male and female height, respectively. On average, we're two inches shorter than the Dutch.
Sept 11, 07: Resistance is futile. The more we try to fight off a craving for chocolate, the more our desire for it grows, a British researcher said. But chocoholics can take heart that such sweets are not addictive despite the fact many people consider themselves as having no control over their urge. "Food behavior can look like addictive behavior in extreme situations but chocolate does not fit these criteria."
. . Many people point to certain compounds found in chocolate --such as phenylethylamine-- that produce a buzz when they reach the brain as evidence chocolate is addictive, Rogers said. But many of these compounds also exist in higher concentrations in other foods with less appeal, such as avocados or cheese, and do not cause addiction despite what many chocoholics believe, he said.
. . Instead, a social attitude that chocolate is "naughty but nice" may actually drive people to see chocolate as a forbidden pleasure and desire it even more.
. . Other studies have suggested that dark chocolate contains more of the beneficial compounds linked with heart health, though experts note that the high sugar and fat content of most chocolate candy might cancel out some of the benefits.
. . But even health benefits do not make dark chocolate as popular as milk chocolate and chocolate covered confectionary. And the fact these favored choices contain lower amounts of the so-called psychoactive compounds found in dark chocolate provides more evidence chocolate is not addictive, he said.
Sept 11, 07: Entitled "A Silver Lining? The Connection between Gas Prices and Obesity," the study found that an additional $1 per gallon in real gasoline prices would reduce U.S. obesity by 15% after five years.
. . The report, written by Charles Courtemanche for his doctoral dissertation in health economics, found that the 13% rise in obesity between 1979 and 2004 can be attributed to falling pump prices. Higher gasoline prices can reduce obesity by leading people to walk or cycle instead of drive and eat leaner at home instead of rich food at restaurants.
. . Obesity, defined as having a body mass index greater than 30, has been considered to factor in as many as 112,000 deaths annually. U.S. health costs related to obesity are estimated at $117 billion per year as studies sponsored by the U.S. government have linked it with high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and stroke.
Aug 10, 07:Doctors recommend a good dose of salmon or tuna in the diet because of its benefits to the heart. But is it good for the environment? Surging demand for salmon in particular has been spurred in part by numerous studies touting the health benefits of omega-3 fatty acids, which are present in some kinds of fish.
. . Conservationists point out that while global fish stocks were getting hammered long before sushi became chic, health trends could add pressure to already vulnerable fisheries. When it comes to omega-3 fatty acids, not all fish are equal. Fatty fish such as trout, salmon, mackerel and Alaska pollock are rich in this crucial group of nutrients.
. . In a well-managed situation, such demand can lead to conservation: it's in no one's interest to deplete something of value. "In the long run, the more valuable wild salmon are the better they are likely to be protected", said Gunnar Knapp, a professor of economics.
. . WWF's Clay said fish being caught for fishmeal to feed the aquaculture industry include species such as anchovies, which are rich in omega-3s but which have questions over their sustainability. "One out of every three fish that is caught right now is used to make feed for other fish", he said.
. . Fish don't actually produce omega-3 fatty acids, they capture it from the food chain. And there are plenty of substitutes out there such as walnuts, flaxseed and canola oil, which can provide the same omega-3-related benefits as fish.
Aug 10, 07: Caffeine may help older women ward off mental decline, research suggests.
Aug 10, 07: The hormone that tells us we are full also regulates our desire for certain foods, researchers said, in a finding that sheds light on why people gain weight and could lead to new treatments for obesity.
July 25, 07: People who notice their friend packing on pounds might want to steer clear if they value their sleek physiques. A new study finds that when the scale reads "obese" for one individual, the odds that their friends will become obese increase by more than 50%. The likely explanation: A person's idea of what is an appropriate body size is affected by the size of his or her friends.
. . Conversely, the researchers found that thinness is also contagious. "There's been an intensive effort to find genes that are responsible for obesity and physical processes that are responsible for obesity, and what our paper suggests is that you really should spend time looking at the social side of life as well."
. . Among siblings, if one becomes obese the likelihood of their sister or brother becoming obese increases by 40%. Among spouses there is a 37% increased risk.
. . Gender also affected the degree of "obesity contagion." In same-sex friendships, individuals had a 71% increased risk of obesity if a friend became obese. If a guy's brother is obese, he's 44% more likely to also become obese. Among sisters, the risk was 67%.
. . In the past 25 years, obesity among U.S. adults has shot from 15 to 32%.
July 24, 07: Paraguayan farmers are hoping to cash in on a low-calorie sweetener being made by the Coca-Cola Co. from a native plant long prized by indigenous people in the poor South American country.
. . Stevia, a shrub whose extracts are up to 300-times sweeter than sugar but without the calories, has been the sweetener of choice among Paraguay's Guarani Indians for centuries.
. . Coca-Cola announced in May it would team up with U.S.-based agricultural company Cargill Inc. to produce a stevia-based sweetener, and Paraguay's farmers hope demand for stevia will increase even though it is not approved as a food additive in the US or the European Union.
. . Most non-diet soft drinks in the US are sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, a cheap alternative to cane sugar. Both are frequently blamed for adding inches to waistlines. Lower-calorie sodas are made with artificial sweeteners like saccharin, aspartame and sucralose --the last two more commonly known as NutraSweet and Splenda.
. . Stevia must win regulatory approval in the US and the European Union, where it can be used as a dietary supplement but not as an additive in food and beverages.
. . Although native to Paraguay, China is the world's biggest producer of the herb. But farmers say weather conditions in Paraguay enable it to have nearly five harvests a year, compared to two in China.
July 19, 07: Good, old-fashioned diet and exercise might keep you young by reducing the action of insulin in the brain, researchers reported. They created mutant mice that over-ate, got fat and even had symptoms of diabetes, and yet lived 18% longer than normal lab mice. The secret: they lacked a certain key gene that affects insulin, the hormone that regulates glucose. The genetic engineering mimicked the effects of eating less and exercizing. "This study provides a new explanation of why it's good to exercise and not eat too much", said Dr. Morris White. "Diet, exercise and lower weight keep your peripheral tissues sensitive to insulin", White said.
. . They looked at insulin because both fasting and exercise make cells more insulin-sensitive, meaning they respond more efficiently to the effects of insulin. They looked at the entire insulin pathway --a series of actions in the cell that control the body's use of insulin.
. . The subjects were also more active than normal mice, and after eating, their brains had higher levels of a compound called superoxide dismutase, an antioxidant that protects cells from damage.
. . One obvious question is whether drugs can mimic the effects of having less Irs2, perhaps by interfering with its action. The researchers note that people who live to be 100 or more often have reduced insulin levels and their cells show better insulin sensitivity.
. . The findings also raise questions about how desirable it is to use insulin to treat type 2 diabetes. New diabetes drugs that increase insulin sensitivity may help, too, White said. But, he added: "The easiest way to keep insulin levels low in the brain is old-fashioned diet and exercise."
July 18, 07: For the average person, popping vitamin C pills is unlikely to ward off the common cold or shorten its length or severity. However, for people exposed to short bouts of extreme physical exercise or cold temperatures, vitamin C may markedly reduce their risk of catching a cold.
. . An exception appears to be when individuals are exposed to short periods of extreme physical stress. In six trials involving a total of 642 marathon runners, skiers, and soldiers taking part in sub-arctic exercises, vitamin C supplements reduced the risk of the common cold by 50%.
. . Vitamin C, for the average person, also failed as a "therapeutic" for the common cold. Trials of high-dose vitamin C taken after the onset of cold symptoms showed "no consistent" effect on either the length of a cold or the severity of symptoms.
July 18, 07: A new tax on cigarettes, that would be used to fund children's health insurance, is opposed by the Bush administration, which fears insurance costs will pass to the government.
July 17, 07: A diet extra heavy in fruit and vegetables was no better than one with the standard recommended amounts in preventing the recurrence of breast cancer, a study found.
July 10, 07: Fat from the tummy or bottom could be used to grow new breasts in a treatment which could be carried out in an hour --or a lunch break. Scientists say they can create a fat mixture with concentrated stem cells, which, when injected into the breast, apparently encourages tissue to grow. The therapy could help cancer patients who have had mastectomies. And if licensed, it may rival silicone for those seeking bigger breasts.
. . Using fat from the patient's own body to rebuild other areas is not a novel idea, but such reconstructions often fail as the fat is simply reabsorbed. However, using fat-derived stem cells appears to overcome this problem, according to the company.
. . Scientists say they are not sure quite how it works, but suspect that the stem cells emit signals that encourage blood vessels to grow and nurture new tissue. The largest trial so far has involved 19 women in Japan. All of them had had at least partial mastectomies and all responded well to the treatment, with no major side-effects.
July 8, 07: Organic fruit and vegetables may be better for your heart than conventionally grown crops, US research suggests.
July 3, 07: A nibble a day of dark chocolate helped lower blood pressure without packing on the pounds, German researchers said. Prior studies have shown foods rich in cocoa like dark chocolate offer heart benefits, but researchers have worried the added sugar, fat and calories would cancel out any good the chocolate might do.
. . Now it seems just a 30-calorie (0.126 kilojoule) bite of dark chocolate --equivalent to 6.8 grams or a quarter ounce-- can lower blood pressure without weight gain or other negative side effects.
. . Dark chocolate contains polyphenols --a group of chemical substances that are believed to carry health benefits.
. . After 18 weeks, the dark chocolate group experienced a 3 point drop in systolic blood pressure --the top reading-- and a 2 point drop in diastolic blood pressure --the bottom reading-- without changes in body weight, cholesterol or blood sugar.
. . More than 65 million U.S. adults --about one in three-- have high blood pressure, above levels of 140/90. Another 59 million have prehypertension -- blood pressure of 120/80 or above.
July 1, 07: Studies show that Star Trek's tricorder is closer to becoming reality, because of new medical-imaging technology and a new state of matter. "When we were conceptualizing (our experiment), we saw the ultimate device should be noninvasive, giving you the molecular details of the disease going on inside the body", said Howard Chang of Stanford U's Comprehensive Cancer Center. "I think a tricorder is a useful idea.... It shows the gap between what we have now and what we hope technology will achieve in the end."
. . Scientists have been trying to construct a tricorder-like device for years, but no one has managed to pack all the functions of a true tricorder --point, pull a trigger and diagnose-- into one handheld unit. The two latest discoveries offer incremental advances in diagnostic medicine --pointing toward more portable and less invasive medical technologies.
. . Several lab-on-a-chip technologies have brought diagnosis to handhelds, but they still require a tissue sample. Chang's group has developed a way to observe gene activity without so much as a cheek swab. Another advance could lead to portable imaging technology as powerful as machines that today occupy entire rooms.
. . Chang and his co-authors have linked visible patterns in computed tomography, or CT, scans of liver-cancer patients with cancer-gene activity. "(We're) trying to put a patient in a CAT scan and image the human genome in their tumor."
. . For example, the scientists could determine whether the gene that spurs the growth of blood vessels, called VEGF, was turned on or off, by statistically analyzing a CT image. Experimental treatments such as vaccines and gene therapies attack tumors by shutting down this gene's ability to feed cancer tumors with new blood vessels.
. . Instead of taking an invasive biopsy that could put sick patients at risk, a noninvasive CT scan could determine the activity of VEGF and many other genes.
In the other research, scientists have developed a compact, precision-magnetic microscope based on a new state of matter. The technology, the researchers said, is as effective as current imaging devices such as MEGs for the brain and MCGs for the heart, which require a hospital visit because the devices are large and expensive.
. . It's made possible by a state of matter discovered just 12 years ago called the Bose-Einstein condensate. Physicists at UC Berkeley have developed the device by harnessing a special property of Bose-Einstein condensates: Because they are cooled close to absolute zero, they are as free of vibrations and thermal noise as a quantum system can be, and are thus like a quiet, acoustically pristine concert hall. Tiny magnetic fields that might be unobservable in other systems are easily picked up.
. . Unlike the superconductors that power current magnetic imaging, Stamper-Kurn's device is cooled not by gigantic refrigerators but by lasers --making the prospect for miniaturization bright.
Jun 29, 07: Children whose mothers get enough omega-3 fatty acid during pregnancy may have sharper problem-solving skills in infancy, a small study suggests. Researchers found that 9-month-olds whose mothers had eaten DHA-fortified bars during pregnancy performed better on a test of problem-solving abilities than infants whose mothers had not added DHA to their diets.
. . DHA, or docosahexaenoic acid, is one of the major omega-3 fatty acids found in oily fish like salmon, sardines and tuna. Because of the fat's vital role in brain development, experts recommend that pregnant women get 300 milligrams (mg) of DHA each day. However, research shows that few U.S. women meet this goal.
Jun 9, 07: The invendoscope SC-40 is a colonoscope that uses an inverted sleeve technology which makes it "grow just below the deflection, when advancing, and to shrink, when retreating." Result? Less force on the colon wall.
Jun 9, 07: Large doses of vitamin D may reduce the risk of cancer, according to a four-year U.S. study involving nearly 1,200 women over the age of 55 in rural Nebraska.
Claim: Handles of shopping carts are laden with germs.
Status: True.
The handles of shopping carts are grasped by a great many people day in and day out. And, of that horde of shoppers, some will undoubtedly be carrying some nasty bugs on their unwashed hands.
. . Shopping carts fly under our germ awareness radar. The very folks that fuss with disposable toilet seat covers often won't think twice about manhandling a grocery cart around a store for half an hour, even though the surface they're hanging onto so fiercely for that interval has likely been coughed on, sneezed on, and grasped by shoppers who'd just finished handling packages of raw chicken and meat
. . As for the fold-out child's seat found in most carts, even though it is routinely graced by the diapered bottoms of infants, it remains the cart's transport region of choice for fruits and vegetables, items that are often eaten uncooked or unwashed.
. . Swabs taken from the handles and child seats of 36 grocery carts in San Francisco, Chicago, Tucson, and Tampa showed these common surfaces to rank third on the list of nastiest public items to touch, with only playground equipment and the armrests on public transportation producing more disgusting results. In terms of playing host to germs and bacteria, the carts are far worse that public bathrooms, which at least are cleaned more often.
May 28, 07: New Zealand scientists are breeding a herd of cows that produce lower-fat milk after the chance discovery of a natural gene mutation in one animal. Milk from the cows is also high in health-boosting omega-3 fatty acids and makes butter that spreads as easily as margarine even when chilled, biotechnology company Vialactia said
. . Scientists discovered a cow, later named Marge by researchers, carrying the mutant gene in a dairy herd they were testing in 2001.
. . Vialactia, a subsidiary of the Fonterra Cooperative Group, one of the world's largest milk companies, bought the cow for 300 New Zealand dollars ($218) and moved it to a research site. While she looked like any other Friesian cow, testing revealed that Marge's milk contained about 1% fat, compared with about 3.5% for whole milk. Offspring from the cow also produce low-fat milk, showing the genetic trait is dominant.
. . The company expects the first commercial herd of cows supplying natural low-fat milk and spreadable butter for the market by 2011.
May 24, 07: The Food and Drug Administration should be given the power to regulate tobacco products and cigarette taxes should be hiked as part of a government campaign to reduce smoking, an expert panel recommended.
. . Aggressive steps are needed to reverse waning momentum in U.S. tobacco control efforts and declining public attention to the country's largest public health problem, the 14-member panel from the Institute of Medicine said.
. . They should be able to limit the type and number of stores that can sell tobacco products and gradually cut the allowable nicotine content to reduce the addictive power of cigarettes, it added.
. . The government should also substantially increase the federal excise tax on cigarettes, and states with lower tax rates should raise them to ensure nationwide parity to thwart interstate cigarette smuggling, the panel urged.
. . The Institute of Medicine provides advice on health issues to U.S. policymakers. The report was requested by the American Legacy Foundation, a tobacco control advocacy group created in 1999 under a settlement between various state attorneys general and the tobacco industry.
May 23, 07: We've heard wild stories recently about researchers using magnetic stimulation of the brain to make a sleep-on-demand machine, and now here's a magnetic brain stimulator that psychiatrists might use to treat clinical depression. It's supposed to send an electromagnetic pulse 3cm into your brain, and somehow stimulate the prefrontal cortex, that part of the brain responsible for making you a civilized human being.
. . At the same time, it gets that blood flowing more freely, making you feel good. Hey, who wouldn't want a magnetic strap-on to chase the blues away? The FDA is testing it.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have created a sleep machine that'll let you get eight hours' worth of sleep in less than half the time. Here's how it works:
. . A transcranial magnetic stimulation device is strapped to your noggin' and sends harmless magnetic waves to your brain. In return, the device triggers brainwaves associated with R.E.M. sleep, thereby letting your power naps feel like full-length sleeping sessions.
May 15, 07: A new test dubbed "Pink or Blue" promises to tell parents the sex of their fetus just six weeks into pregnancy, but critics question its reliability and say it could pose an array of ethical issues.
. . The company does not ship to countries including China and India, where there is sometimes a marked preference for boys over girls. Some experts suggested the test could lead some parents to abort if they were unhappy with the result.
. . The test works by analyzing fetal DNA that leaks into the mother's bloodstream. Some experts expressed doubts about the technique. Parents willing to wait longer can get a head-to-toe ultrasound at 20 weeks that is almost 100% accurate. The mother provides a spot of blood on a special card. That is sent back to the company's laboratories, and within four to six days, the gender of the fetus is revealed.
. . Because the test is marketed as "informational" rather than medical, it is not regulated by health authorities in Britain or abroad.
May 7, 07: Hong Kong scientists have invented a device to help diabetics measure their blood sugar painlessly for the first time --without pricking their fingers.
. . The size of a mobile phone, the instrument emits a weaker form of infrared, or near-infrared, which penetrates the skin on the finger and homes in on the bloodstream. Out of the many components in the blood, the beam is able to identify bits of glucose through the frequency, or wavelengths, they transmit and the amount of blood sugar present would be displayed on the instrument in 10 seconds.
. . It won a gold medal at the Geneva Invention Expo in April and will be commercially available in about a year.
Carpet typically contains 100,000 dust mites per square yard.
May 4, 07: The mystery of how eating less boosts longevity is closer to being solved. Studies have shown that severe calorie restriction markedly extends lifespan in mice and many other species --but the reasons for this remained elusive.
. . Now US research on nematode worms has uncovered a gene linked to this unusual effect. In the future, the find could lead to drugs that mimic the consequences of calorie restriction but negate the need for severe fasting regimes.
. . The team found worms that had their pha-4 genes removed showed no enhanced longevity while on the restricted diet. But they discovered that the opposite experiment --over-expressing levels of pha-4 in the worms-- increased longevity when on the restricted diet.
. . Mammals, including humans, possessed genes that were highly similar to the pha-4 gene, explained Dr Dillin. These genes play a key role in development, and then in later life in the regulation of glucagon, a hormone that has a major role in maintaining glucose levels in blood --especially during fasting. In fact, scientists believe the life-increasing effect of dietary restriction may be linked to boosting chances of survival through times of food scarcity. "Pha-4 may be the primordial gene to help an animal overcome stressful conditions to live a long time through dietary restriction conditions."
. . Should the longevity link also apply to humans, it could open the door to the development of drugs that mimic the effects of calorie restriction while allowing people to maintain their normal diet, the scientists said.
Apr 27, 07: Overweight workers cost their bosses more in injury claims than their lean colleagues, suggests a study that found the heaviest employees had twice the rate of workers' compensation claims as their fit co-workers.
. . Obesity experts said they hope the study will convince employers to invest in programs to help fight obesity. One employment attorney warned companies that treating fat workers differently could lead to discrimination complaints.
. . Duke University researchers also found that the fattest workers had 13 times more lost workdays due to work-related injuries, and their medical claims for those injuries were seven times higher than their fit co-workers. They were more likely to have claims involving injuries to the back, wrist, arm, neck, shoulder, hip, knee and foot than other employees.
Apr 18, 07: A major change in the national diet is under way: Heart-damaging trans-fat is rapidly disappearing from grocery aisles and restaurant food, too. But are its replacements really healthier?
. . It's a tricky time for consumers, because the answer depends on the food and some are losing trans fat only to have another artery clogger take its place, that old nemesis saturated fat. "Right now the public has to be very careful ... if something says 'trans fat-free', what else is in it?" warns Dr. Robert Eckel, past president of the American Heart Association.
. . Trans fat has become the new fall guy for bad nutrition. Chain restaurants are struggling to get it off the menu after New York City and Philadelphia required restaurants to phase it out by next year. Bills to restrict or ban trans fat in restaurants or school cafeterias have been introduced in at least 20 states.
. . The irony: Americans eat about five times more saturated fat than trans fat. And while gram-for-gram, trans fat is considered somewhat more harmful than its cousin, too much of either greatly increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and other ailments.
. . Trans fat is created when companies add hydrogen to liquid cooking oils to harden them for baking or for a longer shelf-life, turning them into "partially hydrogenated oils." There is no single substitute. So food chemists and chefs are taste-testing their way through different cooking oils and fats -both naturally occurring ones and chemically modified ones- to find replacements that don't alter each food's taste or texture.
. . What are the options? There are some heart-healthier oils, called monounsaturated and polyunsaturated oils such as olive, canola or soybean oils. Unlike trans and sat fats, these liquid oils don't raise levels of so-called bad cholesterol, or LDL cholesterol. Substituting animal fats, such as butter or lard, or tropical oils such as palm or coconut oil may keep the taste, but they are super-high in saturated fat.
Apr 16, 07: A large study of 500,000 American retirees has found that just one extra serving of fruit or vegetables a day may reduce the risk of developing head and neck cancer. Numerous studies have demonstrated that diet plays a role in cancer. Cancer experts now believe that up to two-thirds of all cancers come from lifestyle factors such as smoking, diet and lack of exercise.
. . Researchers at the National Cancer Institute queried men and women aged 50 and older about their diets, then followed participants for five years to record all diagnoses of head and neck cancer, which is the sixth-leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Tobacco and alcohol use increase the risk of head and neck cancers, which affect the mouth, nose, sinuses and throat.
. . The study found eating six servings of fruit and vegetables per day per 1,000 calories cut the risk of head and neck cancer by 29% compared to eating one and a half servings. The typical adult consumes around 2,000 calories a day.
. . "Increasing consumption by just one serving of fruit or vegetables per 1,000 calories per day was associated with a 6% reduction in head and neck cancer risk.
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. . A second study of food consumption in more than 183,000 residents of California and Hawaii found that a diet high in flavonols might help reduce pancreatic cancer risk, especially in smokers.
. . Flavonols are common in plant-based foods but are found in highest concentrations in onions, apples, berries, kale and broccoli. The study found that people who ate the largest amounts of flavonols had a 23% reduced risk of developing pancreatic cancer compared to those who ate the least.
Apr 13, 07: Scientists say they have identified the clearest genetic link to obesity yet. They found people with two copies of a "fat" version of a gene had a 70% higher risk of obesity than those with none, and weighed 3kg more.
. . They studied data from about 40,000 people. The findings suggest that although improving lifestyle is key to reducing obesity, some people may find it harder to lose weight because of their genes. Half of white Europeans carry one copy of the variant and one in six has two copies, experts estimate.
. . People with type two diabetes were more likely to have a particular variant of the FTO gene, which was also shown to be linked to increased body weight. The variant making people fatter differed from the other version of the FTO gene by a single mutation in the DNA sequence.
. . People carrying one copy of the "fat" FTO variant had a 30% increased risk of being obese compared to a person with no copies of that version. Those carrying two copies of the variant had a 70% increased risk of being obese, and were on average 3kg heavier than a similar person with no copies. This could explain why two people can seem to eat the same things and do the same amount of exercise yet one may struggle to lose weight more than the other.
Apr 11, 07: Genetic testing failed to find any gene mutations that predict a higher risk of heart disease, a study said. Scientists at Yale worked up the genetic profiles of nearly 1,500 people to examine 85 genes that smaller, earlier studies suggested might confer susceptibility to heart problems. Only one genetic variation showed even a modest association to heart problems in the study.
. . Cocoa-rich products such as dark chocolate may help lower high blood pressure, but tea won't do much, according to a new survey of the medical literature by German researchers. The benefits are believed to come from compounds known as polyphenols (or flavonoids).
. . "Based on our analysis, regular consumption of polyphenol-rich cocoa products like dark chocolate may be considered a part of a blood pressure-lowering diet, provided there is no total gain in calorie intake", Taubert said. The average reduction was 4 to 5 millimeters of mercury (mm/Hg) in systolic pressure and 2 to 3 millimeters in diastolic pressure --enough to reduce the risk of stroke by 20% and of coronary heart disease by 10%.
Apr 10, 07: Fat may override the beneficial anti-cancer effects of vitamin C in the stomach, research suggests.
Mar 30, 07: Exclusively breastfeeding until a baby is six-months old can significantly reduce the risk of mother-to-child HIV transmission, an African study says. The researchers compared solely breastfed babies with those also given formula or solid foods. They say breastfeeding carries a low transmission risk, but protects against potentially fatal conditions such as diarrhea and pneumonia. They say it is the best option for most women in the developing world.
. . In the developed world, the risk of mother-to-child HIV transmission has been cut from 25% to under 2% because of the use of antiretroviral therapies, exclusive formula feeding and good healthcare support.
Mar 27, 07: An estrogen study in mice suggests that hormone replacement therapy may benefit women if started right at the time of menopause, researchers reported.
. . While the researchers stress that more studies need to be done in women, they said their findings offer hope to women who want to safely relieve the symptoms of menopause. "When you treat animals immediately with estradiol (a form of estrogen) therapy, it protects the brain against injury due to stroke and this correlates with an ability of estradiol to suppress the inflammatory response. It is a very potent anti-inflammatory agent", said Dr. Phyllis Wise of the U of Washington in Seattle, who led the study.
. . A big study called the Women's Health Initiative found in 2002 that hormone replacement therapy raised the risk of blood clots, heart attacks and breast cancer. Women stopped taking HRT in droves. But controversy arose immediately, because the women in the study were years past menopause, with an average age of 63. Experts wondered if the results would be different among women who began using HRT as soon as they entered menopause, and using formulations of estrogen that more closely resembled human estrogen.
. . Studies are ongoing among women who still choose to take HRT, but researchers such as Wise want to break down the actual biological mechanisms involved. Estrogen reduces inflammation, which is involved in heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's disease and other conditions.
. . Wise's team caused menopause in mice, and gave half of them estradiol right away and some got estradiol later. Then they induced strokes in both groups of mice. The mice given estradiol right away had much less stroke damage than mice given estradiol 10 weeks later --the equivalent of 5 to 10 years in a human.
. . Wise believes that menopause changes cells, so that they can no longer use estrogen in the same way that cells in younger women can. This in turn explains why young women have lower rates of stroke and heart attack than men or older women.
Mar 26, 07: Root beer could be the safest soft drink for your teeth, new research suggests, but many other popular diet and sugared sodas are nearly as corrosive to dental enamel as battery acid.
. . Prolonged exposure to soft drinks can lead to significant enamel loss, even though many people consider soft drinks to be harmless or just worry about their sugar content and the potential for putting on pounds, the study says.
. . The erosive potential of colas is 10 times that of fruit juices, mostly due to the citric acid and/or phosphoric acid in the beverages. Non-colas are less acidic than colas overall, the study found, but they erode the teeth more effectively than colas.
. . Slices of enamel from freshly extracted teeth were weighed before and after being immersed in the soft drinks for 48 hours. The result was that the teeth immersed in Coke, Pepsi, RC Cola, Squirt, Surge, 7 Up and Diet 7 Up lost more than 5% of their weight, according to the report by Poonam Jain of the Southern Illinois U School of Dental Medicine and her colleagues. (Other sodas brought about losses in the enamel weight in the range of 1.6% to 5%).
. . AGD spokesman Kenton Ross said that RC Cola was found to be the most acidic soft drink studied, with a pH of 2.387 (the pH scale ranges from 0 to 14 for most liquids, with 0 being the most acidic and 14 being the least acidicor most alkaline). Cherry Coke was found to be the next most acidic (pH of 2.522), and Coke was the third most acidic soda tested (pH of 2.525). Battery acid has a pH of 1.0. Pure water at room temperature has a pH of 7.0.
. . The results show that a soda's acidity is not the whole story when it comes to tooth erosion. The type of acid in the soda, level of soda and calcium content are also factors. Citric acid is the most erosive acid found in soft drinks and is the predominant acid in non-cola drinks.
Mar 15, 07: Laugh and the world laughs with you. Even better, you might live longer, a Norwegian researcher reports. Adults who have a sense of humor outlive those who don't find life funny, and the survival edge is particularly large for people with cancer, says Sven Svebak of the medical school at Norwegian U of Science and Technology. He released his study of about 54,000 Norwegians, tracked for seven years.
. . The greater a role humor played in their lives, the greater their chances of surviving the seven years, Svebak says. Adults who scored in the top one-quarter for humor appreciation were 35% more likely to be alive than those in the bottom quarter, he says.
. . In a subgroup of 2,015 who had a cancer diagnosis at the start, a great sense of humor cut someone's chances of death by about 70% compared with adults with a poor sense of humor.
Mar 13, 07: Exercise boosts brainpower by building new brain cells in a brain region linked with memory and memory loss, U.S. researchers reported. Tests on mice showed they grew new brain cells in a brain region called the dentate gyrus, a part of the hippocampus that is known to be affected in the age-related memory decline that begins around age 30 for most humans.
. . The researchers used magnetic resonance imaging scans to help document the process in mice --and then used MRIs to look at the brains of people before and after exercise. They found the same patterns, which suggests that people also grow new brain cells when they exercise.
Mar 6, 07: A study of four popular diets found that women put on the one with the least carbohydrates --the Atkins plan-- lost at least twice as much weight as those on the others, researchers said.
Feb 27, 07: Eating garlic raw or in supplement form does not lower "bad" cholesterol levels, despite widespread health claims for the pungent plant bulb, researchers said. Some of the claims that garlic lowers cholesterol emanate from laboratory experiments but there is no proof it reacts in the body the same way, Gardner wrote.
. . In test tubes and some animal subjects the compound released from crushed garlic, allicin, has been found to inhibit the synthesis of cholesterol. But in Gardner's study of 192 subjects who had slightly elevated levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL), the so-called bad cholesterol that tends to clog arteries, garlic had no impact.
. . The participants were divided into four groups: one ate a clove of garlic six days a week, usually in a gourmet sandwich prepared for them; two other groups consumed the equivalent amount of garlic either in a popular garlic supplement pill or powder, one of which advertised itself as "aged" garlic that removed the bad-breath problem; and the other group consumed a placebo.
. . Gardner said other health claims ascribed to garlic --that it strengthens the body's immune system and combats inflammation and cancer-- needed to be studied, too.
. . Garlic's healthy reputation goes back to the ancient Egyptians, and it was widely consumed by the Greeks and Romans. Its juice has also been used as an antiseptic. Its assumed benefits may have something to do with it growing wild around the Mediterranean, where diets are often rich in healthy olive oil, fish, nuts and fruit.
Feb 22, 07: A new study debunks the widely held belief that diet plus exercise is the most effective way to lose weight. Researchers report that dieting alone is just as effective as dieting plus exercise.
Feb 22, 07: People who live in the densest, pedestrian-friendly parts of New York City have a significantly lower body mass index (BMI) compared to other New Yorkers, a new study finds. Lower BMI indicates less body fat.
. . They say placing shops, restaurants and public transit near residences may promote walking and independence from private automobiles. Other research has shown that suburban sprawl and all the driving that comes with it leads to health woes.
Feb 7, 07: Children who do not get enough sleep are more likely to be overweight than those who get more, according to a study published on Wednesday that tracked more than 2,000 U.S. kids for five years.
. . An extra hour of sleep cut the likelihood of being overweight from 36% to 30% in children ages 3 to 8, and from 34 to 30% in those ages 8 to 13. Experts recommend that children ages 5 to 12 sleep for 10 to 11 hours a night and adolescents sleep for 8 to 9 hours. But the researchers said children in the study at age 7 on average got less than 10 hours of sleep on weekdays and at age 14 got 8.5 hours of sleep on weekdays.
. . Not getting enough sleep may affect hormones that influence appetite, Snell said. Getting less sleep --for example, staying up an hour later at night-- may provide more opportunity to eat, she added. And she said not getting enough sleep may leave a person more lethargic, cutting down on exercise.
Feb 6, 07: Older oral contraceptives contain estrogen and progestin hormones. But newer ones sold in the United States --so-called "third generation"-- contain a different type of progestin called desogestrel.
. . "By banning third-generation oral contraceptives, the FDA will potentially save hundreds of young women a year from developing venous thrombosis and its disabling and sometimes fatal consequences", the group wrote.
. . Health Research Group estimated that in the year ended last October, more than 7.5 million prescriptions were filled for such pills, which also includes Johnson & Johnson's Ortho-Cept and Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s Reclipsen.
. . The petition also targeted Barr's Mircette, Velivet, Kariva and Apri-28, as well as Organon's Desogen. Generic contraceptives containing desogestrel were also cited.
Feb 5, 07: Researchers on a safari for microbes have found that human skin is populated by a veritable menagerie of bacteria --182 species-- some apparently living there permanently and others just dropping by for a visit. There's no need for alarm, said microbiologist Dr. Martin Blaser of New York University School of Medicine: the bacteria have been with us for quite a while and some are helpful.
. . They took swabs from the forearms of six healthy people to study the bacterial populations in human skin --our largest organ.
. . "We identify about 182 species", Blaser said. "And based on those numbers, we estimate there are probably at least 250 species in the skin." The researchers noted that microbes in the body actually outnumber human cells 10-to-1.
. . "Without good bacteria, the body could not survive. We think that many of the normal organisms are protecting the skin. So that's why I don't think it's a great idea to keep washing all the time because we're basically washing off one of our defense layers."
. . They used a sophisticated molecular technique based on DNA to conduct a rigorous census. The inhabitants proved to be more diverse than had been thought, with about 8% of the species previously unknown. The findings suggested the two sexes may differ in the bacteria they tote along.
. . "Microbes have been living in animals probably for a billion years. And the microbes that we have in our body are not accidental. They have evolved with us." [ The skin also produces antibiotics.]
Breast milk is awesome stuff.['specially in the original container!]
. . The evidence is convincing: Mothers milk provides a child with immunoglobulin IgA, which protects against infection. It contains DHA, a lipid associated with improved mental development --which may be why breast-fed kids tend to score higher than bottle-fed ones on IQ tests. Breast-feeding has also been correlated with lower rates of allergies, obesity, diabetes, and a host of other conditions. Scientists dont fully understand how the heck breast milk does all this, but hey, it was designed by evolution --the ultimate quality-assurance program.
Jan 31, 07: Grape juice seems to have the same protective effect against heart disease as red wine, French scientists said. Red wine and certain types of grape juice have high levels of polyphenols, which block the production of a protein linked to cardiovascular disease --the number one killer in many Western countries. Heart and vascular problems develop when endothelial cells that make up blood vessels do not work properly. But not every grape juice has the beneficial effect.
Jan 30, 07: About a quarter of babies born in vaginal deliveries had a small amount of bleeding in their brains, while none delivered by Caesarean section did, according to a study.
. . But the researchers said it was premature to view their surprising findings as an endorsement of C-sections. They said the findings suggest brain bleeding in some newborns has been commonplace in vaginal deliveries throughout history, but is being detected now only because of highly sophisticated imaging technology. "There's no evidence that these bleeds are associated with problems in later life in either mental or physical function or ability."
. . Bones in a newborn's skull are not yet fused, allowing them to shift and overlap as the baby exits the birth canal --a process that can compress the brain or tear blood vessels, causing bleeding, Gilmore said. [I remember a stat that people born after 2-3 siblings have higher IQ.]
Jan 30, 07: Some people call them floaters. Eye doctors call them "vitreous opacities." A surgeon, John Karickhoff, has done a laser procedure more than 1,400 times over the past 15 years and claims a success rate of better than 90%, with minimal risk of complications.
. . Nearly everybody has floaters or will develop them at some point in life, especially older and nearsighted people. Sometimes shaped like specks or snakes, they float through a person's field of vision, and are most easily seen when you look against a light background like a blue sky or a white wall. They are harmless, usually just bits of membrane that have become dislodged from other parts of the eye. Karickhoff estimated that 95% of people who have floaters ought to leave them alone. But for that 5%, they can be a legitimate problem.
. . Only a handful of doctors in the United States -perhaps as few as two- regularly treat floaters with laser surgery.
Jan 29, 07: A woman's hormones affect specific parts of the brain called the reward pathway, researchers said, in a finding that could offer insight into treating drug abuse and mood disorders.
. . This might help explain other studies that show women get a bigger kick from cocaine and amphetamines during one phase of the fertility cycle --and perhaps why women are less vulnerable to schizophrenia than men are, the researchers said. "This demonstrates for the first time that female ... hormones affect the reward system in very specific ways during particular parts of the cycle."
. . Not only are women more susceptible to drug abuse at certain points, but they may also find testosterone-type facial traits in men more appealing at certain times in their cycles.
Jan 24, 07: Women entering menopause who are worried about whether it is safe to take hormone replacement therapy got a little reassurance from experts who said it is not as dangerous as many fear. A new "position statement" from the North American Menopause Society outlines the pros and cons of taking HRT.
. . The WHI involved women with an average age of 63, long past menopause, and Utian said that factor may have affected the study. Women typically enter menopause between the ages of 45 and 55, with the average age being 51.
. . "There is very little reason for old women to be taking these hormones", Utian said. "We regard perimenopause as young --45 to 55 in the year 2007 is young for a woman."
. . It says studies show they are very useful for helping reduce often-debilitating hot flashes and specific symptoms affecting the vagina. "They can also have a snowball effect. They can produce secondary symptoms ... She may be fatigued, and if she is fatigued she is going to say she is irritable, maybe blue, depressed. She may not perform as well on the job", Utian said. "She may say she is losing her memory. But they are actually the result, I think, of deprived sleep (caused by) night sweats."
. . A third of women going through menopause have moderate to severe symptoms. "Under that circumstance, if you look at everything that's out there, only the hormones are highly effective." Antidepressants are effective about 60% of the time, he said, and placebos are 40% effective. "Which is why all the health store stuff, the stuff on the shelves, is 40% effective because it is essentially working as a placebo", Utian said.
. . The general advice is to take hormones only to relieve hot flashes, night sweats and vaginal thinning or dryness, and to take them for five years or less if possible.
. . Doctors once believed that HRT prevented heart disease and the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis and would routinely prescribe the drugs for those reasons, even if patients had no troubling symptoms from menopause.
. . It is possible the drugs help protect the health of younger women who take them, the Society found. For example, a study last year in the Journal of Women's Health found that women who started taking the drugs as they began menopause had a 30% lower risk of heart disease than women who did not take them.
Jan 23, 07: After three years researching a compound found in red wine called resveratrol, which has been shown to extend life and reduce disease in lab animals, he began taking 50 milligrams a day. "It seems it's more powerful than all the antioxidants put together", Cracraft says. "You get all that in one pill, and it's too good to pass up."
Jan 22, 07: Two minutes in a microwave oven can sterilize most household sponges, U.S. researchers reported. A team of engineering researchers at the University of Florida found that two minutes of microwaving on full power killed or inactivated more than 99 percent of bacteria, viruses or parasites, as well as spores, on a kitchen sponge.
. . At least 76 million Americans get sick from food borne microbes every year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 5,000 people die from them.
Jan 9, 07: Drinking tea can reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke but only if milk is not added to the brew, German scientists said.
. . Research has shown that black tea improves blood flow and the ability of the arteries to relax but researchers at the Charite Hospital at the University of Berlin in Mitte found milk eliminates the protective effect against cardiovascular disease.
They discovered that proteins called caseins in milk decrease the amount of compounds in tea known as catechins which increase its protection against heart disease.
Jan 8, 07: The Bangor, Maine City Council approved a measure that prohibits people from smoking in vehicles when children are present. Similar statewide measures have been adopted in Arkansas and Louisiana and are under consideration in several other states. People who smoke with children present in the confined space of a car or truck might as well be deliberately trying to kill those children, said City Councilor Patricia Blanchette, who is a smoker.
Dec 20, 06: In an indication that the brain, like the body, needs exercise in old age, researchers reported that older people given training in mental functions stayed sharper for years afterward.
Dec 7, 06: A chemical that makes sour, acidic food taste wonderfully sweet may soon be flowing from a genetically altered lettuce created by scientists in Japan. A team of researchers at the U of Tsukuba genetically engineered lettuce into a living factory capable of producing large quantities of miraculin, a protein that can fool taste buds into thinking acidic foods and liquids are actually sweet.
. . Miraculin works by bonding to sweet receptors on the tongue. It's effect lasts as long as the protein is bound to the tongue, which can be up to an hour. It makes most acidic foods taste sweet, but does not improve the taste of bitter things.
. . The major natural source of miraculin is an African berry, Richadella dulcifica, that is often called "miracle fruit." But it is quite difficult to extract miraculin from the berries and purify it. Thus, if miraculin were to become popular as a sweetener, a better source would be necessary. As the Japanese researchers showed, adding Richadella genes to lettuce fit the bill: The scientists were able to obtain up to 40 micrograms of miraculin per gram of lettuce leaves, a tremendous amount considering the potency of the exotic protein.
. . Researchers have proposed using miraculin in place of artificial sweeteners, but there are a number of drawbacks. Since it is a protein, it cannot be cooked. "Miraculin must be taken before eating. It should not be mixed into food."
A small amount of dark chocolate a day can thin the blood and cut the risk of clots in much the same way as taking aspirin, US researchers have said. Researchers carried out tests on 139 "chocoholics" who were disqualified from another study because they could not give up their habit.
. . Previous research has suggested that chocolate is good for the heart. "Eating a little bit of chocolate or having a drink of hot cocoa as part of a regular diet is probably good for personal health, so long as people don't eat too much of it, and too much of the kind with lots of butter and sugar."
. . It is thought compounds called flavonoids, in which chocolate is rich, may be the key ingredient. Vicky Evans, a cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: "The chemicals in cocoa beans may have some benefits for our circulation but chocolate is more often part of the problem for heart health rather than a solution. "This is particularly the case for milk chocolate which tends to be higher in fat and sugar. Eating five portions of fruit and vegetables a day is a far better way to get heart-protective flavonoids without having to worry about the fat and sugar packed into each chocolate bar."
Nov 6, 06: Pitchers with activated-carbon filters are the most effective way to reduce potentially harmful chemicals in tap water, Canadian researchers say.
Rising affluence has made about 60 million Chinese -equal to the population of France- obese, state media said. "An increasing number of Chinese are eating more fat and junk food but less grains and vegetables, leading to a high number of cases of high blood pressure and diabetes."
. . Pan said a widening wealth gap meant that the increase in the number of obese people came as 24 million people in China still live in abject poverty and suffer malnutrition.
Nov 6, 06: Silicone implant makers were forced to take their products off the U.S. market except for treating mastectomy patients and some other special cases. The link with immune disease and other problems was never proven.
. . In 1999, the Institute of Medicine published a report that found silicone breast implants don't cause cancer or rheumatoid arthritis. One study in 2001 found an increased risk of fibromyalgia was associated with silicone breast implants, but further studies failed to confirm the finding.
. . Penis implants that have been used for decades are made of the same type of silicone as their breast counterparts.
. . Saline leaks and deflates more often. He said women with saline implants are also more likely to encounter rippling and capsular contracture, which is caused by collagen fibers that tighten and squeeze the implant, distorting its appearance. "These are mechanical devices. They're like tires on your car and at some point they may have to be replaced. They are not lifelong implants."
Nov 3, 06: Lowering the body temperature of mice extended their life span by up to 20%, said scientists studying how to prolong life, but they said it was impractical to do this with people.
. . Researchers previously found that the life span of warm-blooded animals could be lengthened by cutting calories consumed. But the mice used in the new study, published in the journal Science, were permitted to eat as much food as they wanted while their core body temperature was lowered modestly. "We are showing that there is a way to obtain the benefit on life span and aging that are known to be conferred by calorie restrictions without necessarily undergoing calorie restrictions."
. . Animals involved in the earlier studies involving calorie restriction experienced lower body temperatures as a side effect. Researchers set out to discover whether it was the actual calorie restriction that was responsible for added longevity, with lower body temperature being incidental, or whether reduced body temperature itself was a key factor in life span. They focused on the hypothalamus, a brain structure that acts as the body's thermostat.
. . They found that mice with reduced body temperatures lived longer than those with normal temperatures. Median life span in females was extended by about 20% and in males by about 12%. The male mice also weighed roughly 10% more, possibly due to the diminished energy needed to maintain a lower body temperature, researchers said.
. . But people wanting to live a decade or two longer are going to have to find another way, at least for now. Conti said using the same technique in people was "technically feasible", but there is too little info on the safety of the approach.
Nov 1, 06: Scientists say it's far too early to start swilling barrels of red wine. But some are calling the latest research promising and even "spectacular."
. . The study by the Harvard Medical School and the National Institute of Aging shows that heavy doses of red wine extract lowers the rate of diabetes, liver problems and other fat-related ill effects in obese mice. Fat-related deaths dropped 31% for obese mice on the supplement, compared to untreated obese mice, and the treated mice also lived long after they should have, the study said. The study is so promising that the aging institute this week is strongly considering a repeat of the same experiment with rhesus monkeys, coming the closest to humans.
. . Resveratrol, produced when plants are under stress, are found in the skin of grapes and in other plants, including peanuts and some berries.
Oct 31, 06: Keeping an active lifestyle can reduce the risk of developing an eye disease that is a leading cause of blindness in the elderly, researchers said. Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) gradually destroys the central vision of the eye. It is linked to aging.
. . Exercise helped to reduce the odds of suffering from "wet", or exudative, AMD --a form of the condition in which new blood vessels grow behind the eye causing bleeding and scarring which leads to distorted vision and impaired sight. The effects were still noticed after taking of other risk factors such as weight, blood pressure and smoking.
. . "Engaging in an active lifestyle or walking more ... reduced the risk of developing exudative AMD over 15 years by 70% and 30%, respectively."
Oct 20, 06: Why does eating feel so good? The secret may lie in the head, not in the stomach, U.S. researchers reported. Tests on rats show that the appetite hormone ghrelin acts on pleasure receptors in the brain. The findings may help researchers develop better diet drugs.
. . Ghrelin is produced in the gut and triggers the brain to promote eating. "In mice and rats, ghrelin triggers the same neurons as delicious food, sexual experience, and many recreational drugs; that is, neurons that provide the sensation of pleasure and the expectation of reward", the researchers write.
. . Several hormones are known to be involved in eating and appetite, and studies have shown that influencing them can affect weight gain in rats and mice. Influencing human eating behavior has proven far more difficult, however. Horvath said it might be possible to design a drug that interferes with GHSR and thus help people with eating disorders.
Oct 19, 06: A trend for children and adolescents to stay up later and sleep less may be linked to rising levels of obesity, according to a review of existing research.
. . Bristol University researcher Shahad Taheri said televisions, computers, mobile phones and other gadgets should be banned from children's bedrooms to enable them to get a good night's sleep.
. . Taheri said there was increasing evidence that shortened sleeping times result in metabolic changes that may contribute to obesity, insulin resistance, diabetes and heart disease.
. . A UK study published last year indicated that insufficient sleep in infants aged 30 months was associated with obesity by the time they reached the age of seven. Taheri said this suggested that sleep loss at a young age may alter the body's mechanisms that regulate appetite and energy expenditure. Limited sleep is also a problem for teenagers, whose need for sleep increases during the critical years of adolescent development.
. . Other research, published by Taheri in 2004, found that adults sleeping only five hours had almost 15% higher levels of ghrelin --a hormone released by the stomach to signal hunger-- than those managing eight hours. The same group of short sleepers also had more than 15% less Leptin, a hormone produced by fat tissue when energy levels are low.
. . Children waking up tired from not enough sleep were also likely to take less physical exercise, adding to the likelihood of putting on weight, Taheri said. They would miss the beneficial effects of physical activity, not least its tendency to lead to better sleep. [A viscious circle!]
Oct 17, 06: Most people should eat more fish because of its health benefits, the U.S. Institute of Medicine reported today, but added that consumers must also consider the risks of chemically contaminated seafood.
. . The report was hailed by the U.S. fisheries industry and criticized by environmental and science watchdog groups, which said the study used old data and failed to adequately address the environmental impacts of fishing and fish-farming.
. . The report offered guidelines that suggest a limited intake of fish --two 85-gram (3-ounce) servings a week-- for women of child-bearing age and children aged 12 and under, but even these two groups can safely eat 340 grams (12 ounces) a week.
. . For healthy adolescent and adult males, and for women who will not become pregnant, and for adults at risk for coronary heart disease, the guidelines list no upper limit.
Oct 4, 06: Lenny Guarente from MIT's molecular biology department has identified what seems to be the human gene which regulates a large part of aging and, interestingly, it's related to starvation. When human beings think they are calorically restricted, this gene seems to shut down various forms of metabolic expression which control our aging. So, he is working on a drug which will simulate the effects of human starvation. So not only will it make you kind of thin
.but it wll also have the side effect perhaps of giving us some longeivity. It [may] also compress all the diseases of old age to the final six months of a ninety year life.
Sept 21, 06: Throwing a raw egg at someone may be considered a prank or a harmless political protest but in fact it carries a high risk of causing blindness, a study has said. It may smash harmlessly against the thick bone of the skull, but can inflict nasty damage when impacting against the soft tissue of the eyeball.
Sept 21, 06: Scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center are developing implantable living chips to monitor patients wirelessly and in real time. These tiny devices will integrate living cells with electronics to become literally 'living chips.' They could be used in a few years to better test new drugs or to control other implanted devices, such as an insulin pump, to detect patients' changes and react to them.
Sept 20, 06: Boosting breast size with plastic surgery has been linked to a significantly higher suicide rate among women in a new 15-year study. [BUT...]
. . While overall risk of health problems did not change, the suicide rate was much higher for women with breast implants compared with the general population, scientists announced. The connection between breast implants and suicide was not tested and no direct link was found between the two.
. . Compared with the control group, the scientists calculated the mortality rate was 26% lower in the women with breast implants. The discrepancy can be accounted for, they said, by the fewer deaths from cancer, notably breast cancer, and heart disease for the women with breast implants. Rather than a consequence of the breast augmentations, Brisson suggested the lower mortality could be attributed to socio-economic status.
. . However, Bisson said previous studies have characterized women who receive breast implants by a low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence and more frequent mental illnesses such as depression. [...predisposed to getting implants *and depression.]
. . The research team also analyzed a group of 16,000 women who had undergone plastic surgery procedures other than breast augmentation. They found similar results, with a lower mortality rate and a higher suicide rate than the general population.
Sept 19, 06: Surgeons in China who said they performed the first successful penis transplant had to remove the donated organ because of the severe psychological problems it caused to the recipient and his wife. [as opposed to the LACK of one?!!]
. . There had been no signs of the organ being rejected by the recipient's body. But Hu said more cases and longer observation are needed to determine whether sexual sensation and function can be restored. "The patient finally decided to give up the treatment because of the wife's psychological rejection, as well as the swollen shape of the transplanted penis."
Sept 18, 06: Nerves send us the nasty, prickly feelings. While some nerve fibers focus on feeling pain and touch, we have others dedicated to the itch sensation.
Sept 18, 06: Histamine, a protein released during an allergic reaction, commands some of our itch nerves to transmit information to the spinal cord where it is processed and zipped off to the brain. The sites activated in the brain when we itch are very similar to those switched on when we're in pain. Antihistamine drugs work by disabling the protein's signaling powers.
. . However, histamines aren't the only chemicals in the body that cause annoying tingles. Fibers sensitive to itch were first discovered almost a decade ago by Schmelz. Recently, he's found the existence of new fibers that stimulate itchy feelings in a different way than the histamine-sensitive nerves he previously identified.
Sept 18, 06: Traditionally, auditory hallucinations, as psychologists call them, are associated with mental illness. They can be a symptom of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and sometimes depression.
. . But studies by Dutch researchers that began in the 1990s found that some healthy people also regularly hear voices. The scientists ran a program on Dutch television asking for volunteers who heard voices, and they got a surprising response. Many of the people who contacted them did not find the voices disruptive and had never felt the need to consult mental health services. Some even said they found the experience to be positive or inspirational.
. . The resulting studies found that more people might hear voices than psychologists had thought, perhaps around 4% of the population.
Sept 12, 06: Marie Michel's fifth child was one for the record books. Michel gave birth to a 14-pound, 13-ounce boy today.
Sept 13, 06: The world's first ban on overly thin models at a top-level fashion show in Madrid has caused outrage among modeling agencies and raised the prospect of restrictions at other venues. The mayor of Milan, Italy, Letizia Moratti said she would seek a similar ban for her city's show unless it could find a solution to "sick" looking models.
. . Madrid's fashion week has turned away underweight models after protests that girls and young women were trying to copy their rail-thin looks and developing eating disorders.
. . The Madrid show is using the body mass index or BMI -- based on weight and height -- to measure models. It has turned away 30% of women who took part in the previous event. Medics will be on hand at the September 18-22 show to check models.
Sept 13, 06: Drinking green tea can substantially cut the risk of dying from a range of illnesses, a Japanese study has found. The research, which looked at over 40,000 people, found the risk of fatal cardiovascular disease was cut by more than a quarter.
. . Throughout the study, the benefits of green tea appeared greater in women. Those who drank five cups or more of green tea each day had a 31% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease compared with those who had less than one. Studies carried out in laboratories and on animals have suggested green tea in particular has extensive health benefits.
. . Tea is the most consumed beverage in the world, aside from water. Three billion kilograms of tea are produced each year worldwide.
. . But British heart experts said the benefits may be linked to the whole Japanese diet, which is healthier than that eaten in the west.
Sept 1, 06: Anger and hostility can be bad for your lungs, a new study suggests.
. . Researchers studied 670 men age 45 to 86. Initially, they gauged anger and hostility, ranking each man on a scale of 7 to 37. Then they measured lung functionhow much air could be blown out in one secondon three separate occasions over an average of eight years.
. . Lung function was "significantly poorer" at the outset among those deemed more angry and hostile, and it got worse with these men at each examination. The findings held up after controlling for other factors, such as smoking and education, the researchers reported.
. . Hostility and anger have been associated with cardiovascular disease, asthma, and death in other research. Changes in mood can have short term effects on the lungs, the scientists said, and it might all have to do with anger and hostility altering neurological and hormonal processes, which in turn might disturb immune system activity, producing chronic inflammation, the scientists said.
. . Another study last year found that marital spats and household hostility can cause physical wounds to heal more slowly. "Indeed, it is hard to find a disease for which emotion or stress plays absolutely no part in symptom severity, frequency, or intensity of flare-ups."
Aug 24, 06: Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc. won U.S. approval to sell its Plan B "morning-after" contraceptive without a prescription to women 18 and older, the company said today. Younger girls still need a prescription for Plan B, Barr said in a statement. The Plan B pills may prevent pregnancy when taken within 72 hours of sexual intercourse.
. . The Food and Drug Administration approval follows more than three years of controversy. Backers and opponents of wider access had fiercely lobbied the agency, and the feud stalled the nominations of two FDA commissioners.
. . Plan B will be kept behind pharmacy counters, Barr said. The pills should be available in a dual nonprescription and prescription package by the end of the year. [pregnancy is the main cause of deaths in childbirth! Actually a serious point.]
Aug 23, 06: Fiber helps keep us "regular" by banging up against the gastrointestinal tract and tearing cells, which release mucus that helps us, well, go, scientists reported today. The frequent injury of cells and their subsequent repair cause more mucus production, which eases food through the pipes and provides protection for the cells themselves. "It's a bit of a paradox, but what we are saying is an injury at the cell level can promote health of the GI tract as a whole", said study co-author Paul L. McNeil.
Aug 7, 06: A whiff of bad breath can hint at matters more serious than a meal of onions and garlic or a skipped tooth brushing. Foul exhalations warn of gum disease, dry mouth, and other unhealthy medical conditions.
. . Unfortunately, even the healthiest of bodies suffer from morning breath. Cavities and tongues with deep grooves serve as prime reservoirs for bacteria we commonly call plaque. The bacteria produces volatile sulphur compounds that give a person bad breath, or halitosis. A malodorous mouth can be a warning sign of gum disease, which is caused by plaque. Brushing your teeth, and even your tongue, helps scrub away the bad bacteria.
. . No research had ever been conducted to measure what daily floss can accomplish. In a recent study of twins ages 12 to 21, Bretz had one group brush their teeth and tongue regularly. The other group added a daily floss to the regimen. After just two weeks, the flossers had better breath and less gum bleeding than their siblings who weren't flossing.
. . An unhealthy mouth often signals an unhealthy body. For example, scientists directly correlate gum disease and heart disease. Research has determined that other diseases and health problems produce halitosis as a side effect.
. . Dry mouth, a condition where the body doesn't produce saliva, keeps the body from flushing reeking bacteria out of the mouth. At night, we all essentially have dry mouth. No one produces saliva when they sleep, which is why we all wake up with morning breath.
. . Kidney failure, diabetes, hormonal changes, and lung problems may also cause halitosis. Tobacco contributes to a stinky smokers' exhale.
Aug 7, 06: Absent from the U.S. for so long that some thought they were a myth, bedbugs are back. Entomologists and pest control professionals are reporting a dramatic increase in infestations throughout the country, and no one knows exactly why.
. . Bedbugs are tiny brownish, flattened insects that feed exclusively on the blood of animals and humans. Their bites may cause itchy red welts or swelling. Unlike mosquitoes, though, they are not known to transmit blood-borne diseases from one victim to another. They are extremely resilient and very difficult to exterminate. Experts say bedbugs are not necessarily an indicator of unsanitary conditions.
Aug 7, 06: Ultrasound disrupts the brain development of unborn mice, U.S. researchers said in a study published on Monday that adds to growing evidence that too many ultrasound scans could also affect human fetuses.
. . Prolonged ultrasound scans of the brains of fetal mice interfered with a process known as neuronal migration in which neurons move from one place to another. "Proper migration of neurons during development is essential for normal development of the cerebral cortex and its function."
. . Ultrasound scans are one of the delights of pregnancy, giving the parents a peek at the unborn child and doctors a chance to see if there are any serious defects that might be corrected before or right at birth.
. . A 1993 study published in the Lancet medical journal found that babies given ultrasounds before they were born were more likely to be left-handed. A separate study found a possible decrease in weight in newborns who were scanned, while a third found delayed speech.
. . But another study showed that children who had received ultrasound exams before birth actually did better on language tests when they were older.
. . They did scans of pregnant mice on the 16th day of gestation. This is the last week of gestation and a time when, in mice, the brain cells known as neurons move to a new position in the brain. After prolonged, multiple scans, some of these cells went to the wrong place.
A UK newspaper reminds us that cellphones are just downright disgusting, and are even dirtier than toilets.
Aug 1, 06: Researchers found that when they gave rats a vaccine against a "hunger hormone" called ghrelin, the animals were able to live the dream of eating what they wanted without packing on body fat.
. . Secreted primarily by the stomach, ghrelin is one of the hormones that help regulate appetite, metabolism and weight. Ghrelin levels rise before a meal, putting the brakes on calorie burning and fat breakdown, then decline after a person eats. The hormone promotes weight gain and fat storage. Two of the antigens were able to bind to the active form of ghrelin, which then triggered the animals' immune systems to produce antibodies against the hormone.
. . This immune reaction apparently had effects on the animals' metabolism. Despite having free access to food and eating as much as their unvaccinated mates, the immunized rats gained less weight and boasted leaner, less flabby physiques.
. . That the weight effects came without diet changes was a surprise, Janda said. It means that the ghrelin vaccine acted on metabolism, and not appetite. They were eating the same, but still losing weight.
. . A highly integrated system involving the brain, nerves and numerous hormones strives to keep body weight stable, especially when calorie intake drops -- a fact that "wasn't a problem" back in the hunter-gatherer days of scarce food supplies, Janda pointed out.
. . More research in animals and more data on safety will be needed before an obesity vaccine is widely tested in humans.
July 25, 06: Obesity is also obscuring medical scans like X-rays and ultrasound. In yet another example of how obesity is playing havoc with Americans' health, a new study finds that the number of inconclusive diagnostic imaging exams has doubled in the last 15 years --a phenomenon experts attribute to all those extra pounds." Obesity is affecting the ability to image these people. We're having trouble finding out what's wrong."
July 25, 06: Constant Barking Drives Dogs Nuts, Too. Continuous snarling of multiple dogs in an animal shelter can create a disastrous symphonic recipe for the health of the animals, reports a new study.
July 17, 06: Advisers working at some federally funded pregnancy resource centers mislead pregnant teens about the risks of abortion, falsely telling callers it raises the risk of breast cancer, infertility and mental illness, a U.S. congressman said today.
. . Democratic staff on the House of Representatives Government Reform Committee who called up some faith-based pregnancy resource centers said they received incorrect advice aimed at discouraging abortion. "Twenty of the 23 centers reached by the investigators (87%) provided false or misleading information about the health effects of abortion", California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman said.
. . "There is a medical consensus that induced abortion does not cause an increased risk of breast cancer. Despite this consensus, eight centers told the caller that having an abortion would in fact increase her risk", Waxman's report reads.
July 10, 06: In a breakthrough that could help improve the treatment of male infertility, scientists have produced mice using sperm grown in the laboratory from embryonic stem cells. [I always feel another way about anything that increases the population!]
July 7, 06: Thousands of genes behave differently in the same organs of males and females, researchers reported, a finding that may help explain why men and women have different responses to drugs and diseases. Their study of brain, liver, fat and muscle tissue from mice showed that gene expression --the level of activity of a gene-- varied greatly according to sex. The same is almost certainly true of humans. The smallest differences were in brain tissue, they found. Studies show that aspirin is more effective at preventing heart attack in men than women.
July 5, 06: Heating pads and hot water bottles have long been thought to remedy stomach aches or menstrual pain. "The heat doesn't just provide comfort and have a placebo effect --it actually deactivates the pain at a molecular level in much the same way as pharmaceutical painkillers work." When heat over 40 Celsius is applied to the skin, heat receptors deeper down, where the pain is, are switched on. The heat receptors in turn block the effect of chemical messengers that cause pain to be detected by the body.
July 3, 06: The mechanism behind jet lag, insomnia and other disorders that rely on an inner body clock is not what it seems, scientists announced. The effect of a mutation in a key gene involved in the regulation of sleep and wake cycles in mammals works in the opposite way from what was previously thought.
. . The bodies of humans and other mammals know what time it is by constantly measuring the concentration of a protein called PER in the body. Drug companies are currently working on ways to manipulate the level of PER in the body to treat disorders caused by disruptions to the body's clock, or "circadian rhythm."
. . The buildup of PER, it was thought, sped up a mammal's internal clock, causing it to have shorter days. However, the new study finds that actually the opposite occurs: The tau mutation doesn't slow down PER degradation --it speeds it up. Thus, it is not excess PER that leads to shorter days in affected animals, but not enough PER.
. . The finding will affect new drugs currently in development for the treatment of disorders that are influenced by our circadian rhythms, including depression, insomnia and even some forms of cancer.
July 3, 06: A new study finds people aren't sleeping as much as they report in other studies. Not wanting to rely just on diaries, researchers attached monitoring devices to 669 middle-age test subjects to record when they actually slept. Though they spent an average of 7.5 hours a night in bed, the study participants slept just 6.1 hours.
. . Sleeping patterns varied among the participants:
* White women: 6.7 hours a night
* White men: 6.1 hours
* Black women: 5.9 hours
* Black men: 5.1 hours
July 3, 06: Technology that enables artificial limbs to be directly attached to a human skeleton has been developed by British scientists. The breakthrough, developed by researchers at University College London, allows the prosthesis to breach the skin without risk of infection. They looked at how deers' antlers can grow through the animals' skin without infection.
June 30, 06: You've heard of the placebo effect, in which someone taking a dummy pill feels better. The effect is reaffirmed by new research that reviewed 21 studies involving more than 46,000 participants.
. . People who take their medicine regularly, even if it's a placebo, have a lower risk of death than those who don't. But the conclusion is not just that the power of positive thinking is at work, as other studies have shown. Rather, taking medicine regularly and properly may indicate a person's overall tactical approach to health.
. . The reason may be that people who are good about taking their medicine are better overall at maintaining healthy behavior, the researchers write. It's also possible that people who fail to take their medicine have some other underlying condition such as depression, which can affect overall health. "Adherence to drug therapy may be a surrogate marker for overall healthy behavior."
June 28, 06: Researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton filed patents earlier this month in the US for the tool based on low-intensity pulsed ultrasound technology after testing it on a dozen dental patients in Canada.
. . The tiny ultrasound machine gently massages gums and stimulates tooth growth from the root once inserted into a person's mouth, mounted on braces or a removable plastic crown. "Right now, we plan to use it to fix fractured or diseased teeth, as well as asymmetric jawbones, but it may also help hockey players or children who had their tooth knocked out."
. . The wireless device, smaller than a pea, must be activated for 20 minutes each day for four months to stimulate growth, he said. It can also stimulate jawbone growth to fix a person's crooked smile and may eventually allow people to grow taller by stimulating bone growth.
. . It is still at the prototype stage, but the trio expects to commercialize it within two years. The bigger version has already received approvals from American and Canadian regulatory bodies.
June 29, 06: Today, an American man who makes it to 65 can expect to live 81.6 years. Then if he manages to make it to 85, he can expect to reach his 90th birthday.
. . As with the rest of the world, American women still outlive men in general, but the gap is closing. On average, a 65-year-old American woman can expect to live to about 85about three years longer than a man.
. . Disability rates among the elderly are falling, as are mortality rates for afflictions such as heart disease, cancer and strokes. One contributing factor to this trend is that more seniors are living in homes designed for the elderly and which have fewer or no stairs. The availability of medical devices and techniques such as hip replacement and cataract surgery are also helping old people live healthier lives.
June 26, 06: Cell phone emissions excite the part of the brain cortex nearest to the phone, but it is not clear if these effects are harmful, Italian researchers reported. Their study adds to a growing body of research about mobile phones, their possible effects on the brain, and whether there is any link to cancer.
. . 2 billion people around the world already use them. Of these, more than 500 million use a type that emits electromagnetic fields known as Global System for Mobile communications or GSM radio phones. Their possible effects on the brain are controversial and not well understood.
. . In 12 of the 15 volunteers, the cells in the motor cortex adjacent to the cell phone showed excitability during phone use but returned to normal within an hour.
. . The researchers stressed that they had not shown that using a cell phone is bad for the brain in any way, but people with conditions such as epilepsy, linked with brain cell excitability, could potentially be affected.
June 21, 06: An experimental drug designed to kick-start growth hormones in humans shows signs of helping the elderly age without becoming too frail, researchers reported today, while another team found clues to healthy longevity in the blood of 100-year-old women.
. . The reports, presented to a meeting of the International Congress of Neuroendocrinology, gave a snapshot of some of the progress in the growing field of aging research.
. . Capromorelin is a growth hormone stimulator. It causes the body to secrete human growth hormone in a way seen at puberty and in young adulthood. In young adults, those pulses of growth hormone are associated with a buildup of lean muscle mass and strength, and elderly people have much lower levels of the hormone -- and less lean muscle mass. Patients who got the drug gained an average of 1.4 kg in lean muscle mass after six months, and also were better able to walk a straight line --a test of balance, strength and coordination.
. . A study by Polish researchers suggested other routes of research. The women aged over 100 had measurably higher levels in their blood of adiponectin, a protein produced by fat tissue. It is not clear if the women's adiponectin was a cause or effect of healthier lifestyle. The protein counteracts inflammation, which is linked with disease, helps keep vessels clear of fatty deposits and plays an important role in metabolism.
June 21, 06: Amid the aisles of spaghetti and canned peas, cereals and breads made with mysterious-sounding grains like amaranth and quinoa are sprouting up at major supermarkets.
. . Wheat is still king of this country's whole grains, but the appearance of such alternatives indicates consumers are beginning to expand a niche market once relegated to the obscure corners of health food stores. "People are realizing there's a benefit to eating a diversity of grains and these grains have some incredible nutritional properties", said Carole Fenster, an author of numerous cookbooks that incorporate wheat-free grains.
. . NuWorld Amaranth, one of the country's main buyers of amaranth, reported a 300% increase in sales in the past three years. Bob's Red Mill, which sells alternative wheat-free grains, saw a 25% increase in sales in the past year, with quinoa driving the bulk of the growth.
. . Amaranth, grown for millennia by the Aztecs, has twice as much iron as wheat and is higher in protein and fiber. Quinoa, an ancient Andean crop, has less fiber but more protein and iron than wheat.
. . It may take some time for the unfamiliar grains to find broad acceptance. The American palate is still adjusting to whole wheat, and amaranth's distinct, slightly nutty taste could take some getting used to.
. . One reason for the fledgling demand is a growing awareness of celiac disease, which is triggered by gluten, the protein found in wheat. Symptoms range from severe cramping to chronic fatigue and even organ disorders. The condition is believed to affect about 2 million Americans, with others sensitive to the protein.
. . Estimates of U.S. farmland devoted to amaranth, for example, range from 1,000 acres to 3,000 acres compared with 50 million acres for wheat.
June 20, 06: The American Heart Association has become the first big health group to urge a specific limit on trans fats in the diet --less than 1% of total calories-- in new guidelines. Also for the first time, the organization's dietary guidelines include lifestyle recommendations, including an emphasis on getting exercise and not smoking. A panel of specialists in nutrition and heart disease reviewed more than 90 studies to update the dietary advice the association released in 2000.
. . Rather than slavishly counting calories and grams of fat, people should try something simpler: getting in the habit of cooking with healthier oils, and balancing calories consumed with calories burned through exercise, said Alice Lichtenstein, a Tufts University nutrition expert who chaired the guidelines panel.
. . Trans fats, or trans fatty acids such as partially hydrogenated oils, are in many cookies, crackers, breads, cakes, French fries and other fried foods. They contribute to heart disease risk by raising LDL, or the bad cholesterol.
June 5, 06: Premature and low birthweight infants are up to three times more likely than bigger babies to suffer from hyperactive behavior, according to a new study. Danish research shows that babies born at 34-36 weeks have an 80% increased risk of hyperkinetic disorder (HKD) than full-term infants.
. . Low attention span and impulsiveness are symptoms of HKD and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Low birthweight is a weight of less than 2,500 grams (5.5 lbs).
. . The link between extreme prematurity and a raised risk of behavioral problems and hyperactivity is known. But Linnet and her team have shown the risk is not limited to just very premature babies.
. . Full-term babies who weighed less than 2,500 grams at birth were 90% more likely to develop the condition. The risk of HKD decreased with an increase in birthweight. The researchers added that nine out of 10 of the babies that developed HKD were boys. The condition was diagnosed when the children were 2-18 years old.
May 19, 06: Women who consume animal products, specifically dairy, are five times more likely to have twins than those who do not, a new study finds. The reason may involve growth hormones fed to cows.
. . A growth protein called IGF is released from the liver of animals and humans in response to growth hormones. IGF circulates in the blood gets into an animal's milk. IGF increases ovulation and might also help embryos survive in the early stages of development, said study leader Gary Steinman.
. . The concentration of IGF in the blood is about 13% lower in vegan women than in women who consume dairy. Vegans abstain from eating anything derived from animals.
. . The percentage of multiple births has increased significantly since 1975, roughly when science began to assist couples that struggled to make babies. Some part of the increase owes to more older women getting pregnant, as they are statistically more likely to birth twins.
. . "The continuing increase in the twinning rate into the 1990's, however, may also be a consequence of the introduction of growth-hormone treatment of cows to enhance their milk and beef production", Steinman said.
May 18, 06: Jack Ladenson is one of thousands of Americans bothered by caffeine. The older he gets, he says, the more he switches to decaf coffee. The problem is he never trusts what he's getting in coffee bars or restaurants. So Ladenson, a chemist, is working on a dipstick that would measure levels of caffeine on the spot. What he envisions is something that might work similar to a home pregnancy strip.
May 17, 06: Amid concern that some people take too many dietary supplements, the
National Institutes of Health today released preliminary recommendations that generally urge caution. The statement from the agency concerns multivitamin and mineral supplements, collectively called MVMs. "Half of American adults are taking MVMs, and the bottom line is that we don't know for sure that they're benefiting from them. In fact, we're concerned that some people may be getting too much of certain nutrients."
. . The researchers found no evidence to recommend beta carotene supplements, a form of vitamin A, for the general population, and strong evidence to caution smokers against taking them. Beta-carotene has been linked to an increase in lung cancer among smokers who took it regularly.
. . Health conscious people are the most likely to consume MVMs, which makes it difficult to determine whether MVMs, exercise, diet or other factors are responsible for their good health, the panel concluded.
. . Despite the general pubic perception that MVMs are safe, the panel identified several possible risks. Too much of certain nutrients can have adverse effects, the scientists said. And the combined effects of eating fortified foods, taking MVMs, and consuming single vitamins or minerals in large doses can lead to overconsumption.
May 2, 06: If you can walk a quarter-mile, odds are you have at least six years of life left in you, scientists announced today. And the faster you can do it, the longer you might live.
. . While walking is no guarantee of health or longevity, a new study found that the ability of elderly people to do the quarter-mile was an "important determinant" in whether they'd be alive six years later and how much illness and disability they would endure.
. . Finishing times were found to be crucial, too. Those who completed the walk but were among the slowest 25% faced three times greater risk of death than the speedier folks.
May 2, 06: Studies showing the negative or null effects of vitamins supplements are so common that it is surprising doctors still find these studies to be surprising. Vitamins are not as simple as A-B-C.
. . Doctors in Australia provided nearly 1,900 pregnant women with either supplements of vitamins C and E or a placebo to see whether the vitamins would lower the risk of developing high blood pressure during pregnancy. It didn't work. Surprisingly, the doctors said, the vitamin group had a slightly higher rate of high blood pressure compared to the placebo group.
. . Americans spend about $2 billion a year on vitamins C and E, along with beta carotene (a precursor of vitamin A) and selenium, according to Nutrition Business Journal. These are the most popular antioxidants, a class of chemicals said to cure just about everything. The trouble is, science can't seem to support the bad movie script created by the vitamin supplement industry.
. . Free radicals are as good as they are bad, and too many antioxidants may do the body harm. It is true that antioxidants serve as sort of a rust protector for the body, stopping a process called oxidation. Important molecules in the body, such as those that form artery walls, become oxidized when they lose an electron. Once oxidized, they become unstable and easily break apart.
. . The culprit, without a doubt, is the free radical. Yet free radicals are necessary for life. The body's ability to turn air and food into chemical energy depends on a chain reaction of free radicals. Free radicals are also a crucial part of the immune system, floating through the veins and attacking foreign invaders. Hydrogen peroxide is a prime example of a free radical. Your blood actually contains trace amounts of hydrogen peroxide, an internal germ fighter. In fact, you could not fight bacteria without free radicals.
. . How antioxidants work is an utter mystery, which explains the contradicting results of very large and well-conducted studies in the past decade showing, for example, that vitamin E slowed the progress of coronary artery disease but increased the risk of a heart attack.
. . One thing that studies do reveal is that a diet rich in antioxidants, as opposed to supplements, is associated with lower rates of cancer and circulatory disease.
Apr 25, 06: Two strains of bacteria are the key to making beans flatulence-free, Venezuelan researchers reported. They identified two bacteria, Lactobacillus casei and Lactobacillus plantarum, which can be added to beans so they cause minimal distress to those who eat them, and to those around the bean-lovers.
. . Flatulence is gas released by bacteria that live in the large intestine when they break down food. Fermenting makes food more digestible earlier on.
. . They found that adding these two gut bacteria to beans before cooking them made them even less likely to cause flatulence. "In spite of being part of the staple diets... their consumption is limited by the flatulence they produce."
. . Smart cooks know they can ferment beans, and make them less gas-inducing, by cooking them in the liquor from a previous batch. But Granito's team wanted to find out just which bacteria were responsible for this.
. . When the researchers fermented black beans with the two bacteria, they found it decreased the soluble fiber content by more than 60% and lowered levels of raffinose, a compound known to cause gas, by 88%. The lactic acid bacteria involved in the bean fermentation, which include L. casei as a probiotic, could be used as functional starter cultures in the food industry", the researchers wrote.
Apr 22, 06: A new study suggests that constant bullying prevents overweight children from exercising, and all the teasing can make it harder to shed the pounds as an adult.
Apr 18, 06: Women can maximize their chances of having healthy babies by spacing their pregnancies at least 18 months but no more than five years apart, researchers say. The analysis found that spacing babies too close together or too far apart raises the risk of complications such as premature births and low birth weight. The findings suggest that millions of infant deaths could be avoided worldwide with better family planning.
Apr 18, 06: Eating a "Mediterranean-style" healthy diet significantly reduces the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, a study has suggested.
. . US researchers looked at the diet and health of 2,200 people over four years. The more people kept to a Mediterranean diet, the less likely they were to develop Alzheimer's, according to the Annals of Neurology study.
. . The Mediterranean diet --rich in fruit, vegetables and cereals with some fish and alcohol and very little dairy and meat-- has been cited as being generally good for health for some time.
. . Compared to the third of people who scored worst on the Mediterranean diet scores, those in the mid-ranking group had a 15% to 21% lower risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, and those with the highest score had a 39% to 40% lower risk. "A strong adherence to a healthy diet can reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease by as much as 40%."
Apr 15, 06: "Arm or thigh liposuction for 1,500 pounds (260 dollars) only." But many have no/little training, or are not sertified.
. . A *qualified* Egyptian surgeon charges around 900 dollars for the same operation, which can fetch at least 2,000 dollars in the United States. "Prices for cosmetic surgery in Egypt can be 60 to 70% lower than for corresponding treatment in the UK.
Apr 15, 06: A new study adds to evidence that while women with breast implants are not at greater risk of breast cancer, they do seem to have an elevated rate of suicide.
. . The reason for the suicide risk is unclear, but several studies have now come to similar conclusions. Some researchers believe the link is explained by higher rates of depression, anxiety and low self-esteem among women who undergo breast augmentation. [It helps most women's esteem, but some egos still refuse to identify with their new image.]
. . Supporting that theory, one recent study found that women who received cosmetic breast implants were more likely to have a history of psychiatric hospitalization than those who underwent other types of plastic surgery.
. . Women who'd received implants had a lower risk of death from most causes when compared with the general population. That included a lower risk of dying from breast cancer, a disease that has been a concern among breast implant recipients. Though research has failed to show that the implants contribute to breast cancer development, there is evidence that implants can interfere with mammography screening for breast tumors.
. . In this study, however, women with implants were only half as likely as those in the general population to die of breast cancer, according to the researchers, led by Dr. Louise A. Brinton of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.
Apr 13, 06: Scientists have long known that genes are the software of life, determining what a creature will look like and where the parts go. Kahn's team examined the genes in fat around internal organs and under the skin of nearly 200 people thin and fat and in between, as well as in some mice.
. . C. Ronald Kahn of the Harvard Medical School and president of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston said that without looking at you, they can examine a sample of your genes and tell you if you're shaped like an hourglass or a pear and whether you have huge hips or a beer belly. Specifically, those shaped like apples -with their fat concentrated in the abdomen- are at much higher risk for diabetes.
. . Three genes -named Tbx15, Gpc4, and HoxA5- express themselves so distinctly that the differences can be used to predict a person's body mass index (BMI) and waist-to-hip ratio.
Apr 11, 06: In a new survey, 90% of Americans say most other Americans are overweight. But only 39% see themselves as overweight, leaving at least an 11% discrepancy in perceptions. Also interesting: Only 70% said the people they know are overweight.
Apr 11, 06: Pharmaceutical firms are inventing diseases to sell more drugs, researchers have warned. Disease-mongering promotes non-existent diseases and exaggerates mild problems to boost profits, the Public Library of Science Medicine reported. Researchers at Newcastle University in Australia said firms were putting healthy people at risk by medicalising conditions such as menopause.
. . Report authors David Henry and Ray Moynihan criticized attempts to convince the public in the US that 43% of women live with sexual dysfunction. They also said that risk factors like high cholesterol and osteoporosis were being presented as diseases --and rare conditions such as restless leg condition and mild problems of irritable bowel syndrome were exaggerated.
. . The report said: "Disease-mongering is the selling of sickness that widens the boundaries of illness and grows the markets for those who sell and deliver treatments. It is exemplified mostly explicitly by many pharmaceutical industry-funded disease awareness campaigns - more often designed to sell drugs than to illuminate or to inform or educate about the prevention of illness or the maintenance of health."
Apr 10, 06: A laser which melts fat is being developed by scientists. Experts from the Massachusetts General Hospital in the US said it could be used to treat heart disease, cellulite, and acne.
. . The laser is able for the first time to heat up fat in the body without harming the overlying skin. Using the Free-Electron Laser at selected wavelengths, scientists were able to heat the fat up, which was then broken down and excreted by the body.
. . Professor Rox Anderson, dermatologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital, led the experiment using pig fat and skin samples about two inches thick. He said the results showed that selective photothermolysis --heating tissues with light-- could have medical applications in the future, including treating acne. "The root cause of acne is a lipid-rich gland, the sebaceous gland, which sits a few millimeters below the surface of the skin. "We want to be able to selectively target the sebaceous gland and this research shows that, if we can build lasers at this region of the spectrum, we may be able to do that."
. . Cellulite and body fat could also be targeted as well as the fatty plaques that form in arteries, leading to heart attacks, he said.
. . Researchers said it would be several years before the technique could be tested on humans. The results of the research were presented to the annual meeting of the American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery.
Apr 7, 06: If a high-fat cholesterol-laden snack doesn't trigger a heart attack, then a healthy economy just might. The risk of a fatal heart attack rises when the U.S. economy strengthens and increases further if macroeconomic conditions remain robust over the next several years, according to a study published last month. The death rate rises in the year the economy expands and grows further if the lower rate of joblessness is maintained.
Apr 1, 06: It's true -you might die of loneliness, but not until you're older. About one in five Americans is lonely.
. . In a new University of Chicago study of men and women 50 to 68 years old, those who scored highest on measures of loneliness also had higher blood pressure. And high blood pressure is a major risk factor for heart disease, the number one killer in many industrialized nations and number two the United States.
. . Lonely people have blood pressure readings as much as 30 points higher than non-lonely people, said the study leaders Louise Hawkley and Christopher Masi. Blood pressure differences between lonely and non-lonely people were smallest at age 50 and greatest among the oldest people tested. Weight loss and physical exercise reduce blood pressure by the same amount that loneliness increases it.
. . The morbid health effect of loneliness accumulates gradually and faster as you get older, the study found. Loneliness was worse for blood pressure than any other psychological or social factor the researchers studied.
. . The main psychological difference between lonely and non-lonely people is that the former perceive stressful circumstances as threatening rather than challenging and cope passively and withdraw from stress rather than trying to solve the problem, said study co-author John T. Cacioppo.
. . Future research could demonstrate if loneliness causes higher blood pressure, or is simply associated with it.
Mar 30, 06: The use of mobile phones over a long period of time can raise the risk of brain tumors, according to a Swedish study, contradicting the conclusions of other researchers.
Mar 26, 06: U.S. scientists said they had genetically engineered pigs that make beneficial fatty acids and may one day serve as a healthier source of pork chops or bacon. [But see below that Omegs3 is not the good thing thot.]
. . The pigs produced omega-3 fatty acids, compounds that have been shown to improve cardiac function and reduce the risk of heart disease in people. The only way now for humans to get omega-3s is through taking dietary supplement pills or by eating certain fish. Some fish, however, may have high levels of toxic mercury. Seeking another source of omega-3s, researchers transferred a worm gene called fat-1 into pig cells in a laboratory. They used cloning technology to create embryonic cells that were implanted into the womb of a normal pig. The gene produced an enzyme that converted the less desirable omega-6 fatty acids that the pigs naturally produced into omega-3s, the researchers wrote. Other scientists are trying to make fish, chickens and cows rich in omega-3s.
Mar 24, 06: There is no evidence of a clear benefit to health from fats which are commonly found in oily fish, researchers say. Consumption of omega-3 fatty acids is thought to protect against heart disease and UK guidance advise eating up to four oily fish portions a week.
. . But the British Medical Journal review of 89 earlier studies looking at heart disease, cancer or strokes found no evidence the fats offered protection. Looking at 3,114 men with stable angina in 2003 it found that those given high amounts of oily fish were at a higher risk of heart attack and recorded an increased number of cardiac deaths.
. . The authors could not say why the results of this trial differed from other large studies in the field. Whether omega-3 fat prevents cognitive impairment and dementia is currently being tested in trials, with the first results expected in 2008.
Mar 24, 06: People who get only 6 to 7 hours a night have a lower death rate than those who get 8 hours of sleep. -From a six-year study of more than a million adults.
. . Wake up, says psychiatry professor Daniel Kripke of the University of California, San Diego. The pill-taking is real but the refrain that Americans are sleep deprived originates largely from people funded by the drug industry or with financial interests in sleep research clinics. People worldwide spent $2 billion on the most popular sleeping pill, Ambien (zolpidem), in 2004.
. . Earlier this month, it was reported that some Ambien users are susceptible to amnesia and walking in their sleep. Some even ate in the middle of the night without realizing it.
. . A six-year study Kripke headed up, of more than a million adults ages 30 to 102, showed that people who get only 6 to 7 hours a night have a lower death rate than those who get 8 hours of sleep. The risk from taking sleeping pills 30 times or more a month was not much less than the risk of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, he says.
. . Those who took sleeping pills nightly had a greater risk of death than those who took them occasionally, but the latter risk was still 10 to 15% higher than it was among people who never took sleeping pills. Sleeping pills appear unsafe in any amount, Kripke writes in his online book, "The Dark Side of Sleeping Pills."
. . The Cancer Prevention Study II even showed that people with serious insomnia or who only get 3.5 hours of sleep per night, live longer than people who get more than 7.5 hours.
. . Until 15 years ago, sleeping pills were mainly addictive barbiturates (such as Seconal, Halcion, Qualude) and sedatives called benzodiazepines (Valium and Dalmane). For this reason, they were less popular and less prescribed. That changed in the early 1990s when Ambien, which is less addictive, came on the market. It acts on the same neural receptors as a benzodiazepine, but is safer. It is the only hypnotic drug Kripke recommends and then, only for fewer than four weeks. Other new hypnotic drugs are safe but ineffective, he says.
. . Most sleeping pills are recommended for short-term use, but lots of people take them frequently and become dependent upon them to fall asleep. Most sleeping pills, especially when taken over long periods of time, stay in the bloodstream, giving a hangover the next day and beyond, impairing memory and performance on the job and at home.
. . A time-release version of Ambien (Ambien CR) bound for the market and designed to prevent waking after 4 hours when the drug normally would wear off, along with one of the newest pills on the market, Lunesta, or eszopiclone, (designed for longer-term use) might be even more harmful in this way, Kripke says.
. . Hypnotic drugs have dangerous side effects, Kripke says. For one, they reduce fear of risky behavior, such as driving fast. Ironically, that could result in the inability to see that the sleeping pills are doing more harm than good over time.
Mar 18, 06: Evidence for what may be a large and relatively recent impact crater has been found off the coast of Antarctica. Scientists say the evidence, if correct, points to a space rock some 5km across having crashed into the Ross Sea about three million years ago. It's a 100km-wide depression, known as Bowers Crater, under the Ross Sea. This could have generated a huge tsunami, according to a member of the team investigating the collision.
. . Team members examined cores drilled from around the area to look for evidence of an impact. In the cores, they found microscopic glassy grains shaped like teardrops, spheres and dumbbells which are collectively known as tektites. These are created when rock fragments are hurled high up into the atmosphere by the impact of a large meteoroid or "asteroid". Other glasses were also found. These are thought to have been formed by cooling of the melted rock and sediment. Similar glasses can be formed through volcanism, but the Ross Sea specimens seem to have a distinct structure under the microscope.
. . The findings alone do not prove there was an impact in the area a few million years ago, but team member Dallas Abbott says she hopes to search the core material further for a mineral called shocked quartz. The presence of this mineral is considered most diagnostic of a space collision.
Mar 14, 06: One new study found that a low-fat diet didn't reduce the risk of cancer or heart attacks. The other found that taking calcium supplements did more harm than good. It cost $415 million, which is astoundingly high for a health study.
. . The main problem with the low-fat study was that it didn't study a low-fat diet. Oops. A low-fat diet recommends only 20 to 25 grams of fat per day, which would be about 10 to 15% of a 2,000-calorie diet. The subjects, all women, couldn't reach the modest study goal of 20%. They tried, but they ended up with 24 to 29% of their calories from fat. The researchers compared these ladies to a control group at the 35-percent fat level. And they found no difference? Amazing!
. . This was an eight-year study of women over 50, another gross limitation. Whether or not cancer or heart problems develop during this tiny window after 50 years of undocumented lifestyle is inconsequential. And the study didn't differentiate among fats now known to be healthy, such as those with omega-3 fatty acids, and unhealthy fats, such as the aforementioned bacon grease.
. . We spent a lot of money and learned nothing about a low-fat diet. You may think a low-fat diet is bunk, and maybe it is, but this study provides no insight.
. . The calcium study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that popping calcium tablets didn't prevent broken bones but instead led to kidney stones. What the calcium study reveals is that grand American philosophy: If something is good for you, then even more of it must be better.
. . We see this with megadoses of vitamins, even though an excess of vitamin C can cause health problems. We see this with the recommendation to drink more tea because of antioxidants, with no regard for the fact that tannins in tea interfere with iron absorption.
. . Of course, excess calcium causes kidney stones; kidney stones are made of calcium. The truth about osteoporosis, or weak bones, is that animal protein leaches calcium from bones. Because the American diet is high in animal protein, Americans require two to three times more calcium than other cultures do. The trick is to minimize leaching through exercise and less animal protein, and to start early in life.
. . Unfortunately, the combined force of these two study results, widely published, has left many of us thinking that diet doesn't matter.
Mar 13, 06: If you want to keep the weight down, switch to a meat-free diet, scientists said. Researchers who studied the eating habits of 22,000 people over five years, including meat eaters and vegetarians, found they all put on a few kilos but meat eaters who changed to a vegetarian or vegan diet gained the least. "Contrary to current popular views that a diet low in carbohydrates and high in protein keeps weight down, we found that the lowest weight gain came in people with high intake of carbohydrates and low intake of protein."
. . The EPIC study has already revealed that diabetics have three times the normal risk of developing colorectal cancer, which kills more than 490,000 people worldwide each year. It also showed that diet is second only to tobacco, as a leading cause of cancer, and, along with alcohol, is responsible for nearly a third of cancer cases in developed countries.
Feb 27, 06: A re-usable, lightweight suit could help save the lives of thousands of women in poor countries who die each year during childbirth, researchers said. The garment, which resembles the bottom half of a wetsuit, restores blood flow to vital organs in women in shock and suffering from obstetrical hemorrhaging, or bleeding, during the birth. They found that women using the suit lost half the amount of blood as the others.
Feb 15, 06: [!] Bolivia's foreign minister says coca leaves, the raw material for cocaine, are so nutritious they should be included on school breakfast menus. "Coca has more calcium than milk. It should be part of the school breakfast." A coca leaf weighing 100 grams contains 18.9 calories of protein, 45.8 mg of iron, 1540 mg of calcium and vitamins A, B1, B2, E and C, which is more than most nuts, according to a 1975 study by a group of Harvard U professors.
Feb 9, 06: Depressed loner mice get more sociable when researchers delete a memory molecule from their brains, a finding that might help treat human ills like social phobia and post-traumatic stress, scientists said. This molecular therapy worked about as well as giving mice the antidepressants Prozac or Tofranil.
. . They targeted a molecule in a section of the brain known to be related to sensations of pleasure and danger. Deleting the molecule from this part of the brain meant that the mice never got depressed and fearful, Berton said, even though conditions were set up that normally would make them run away and hide.
. . Deleting the molecule involved anesthetizing the mice, then injecting this very specific part of their brains with a virus that disabled the molecule. This kind of technique has been used experimentally in research into Parkinson's disease.
The result in mice was to block the typically depressed response to bullying, mimicking the response to chronic antidepressant therapy.
Feb 9, 06: That fresh grassy smell wafting up from the newly sliced tomato may be its way of saying "I'm good for you." Indeed, the odors from foods ranging from garlic and onions to ginger and strawberries may be nutritional signals that the human nose has learned to recognize. "Studies of flavor preferences and aversions suggest that flavor perception may be linked to the nutritional or health value" of foods, researchers report.
. . However, they caution, domestication of many vegetables has not been kind to them, tending to favor qualities like color, shape, yield and disease resistance instead of flavor and nutrition. Flavor is complex and uniquely challenging to plant breeders, they note, and as a result has not been a high priority.
. . Take the tomato, for instance. Klee and Goff analyzed two types of tomato, the wild cerasiforme and the commercially grown Flora-Duke. Except for one chemical that also affects color, the sugars, organic acids and volatile compounds associated with tomato flavor were reduced in the commercial product.
. . For example, one of the volatile compounds associated with the "tomato" or "grassy" flavor is called cis-3-Hexenal, which is also an indicator of fatty acids that are essential to the human diet. They found that the wild tomato contained more than three times the amount of that chemical than the cultivated version.
. . Two other contributors to tomato flavor -2- and 3-methylbutanal- are indicators of the presence of essential amino acids and are also three times more common in the wild tomato.
. . In addition to tomatoes, those chemicals are also important constituents of the flavors of apples, strawberries, bread, cheese, wine and beer, they reported.
. . Goff and Klee also noted that the scent compounds produced in many spices are associated with health properties. For example, curcumin, which is present in tumeric, is reported to have anti-inflammatory properties, compounds in ginger have antioxidants and there are antimicrobial chemicals that contribute to the scent of onions, garlic, rosemary, sage, clove, mustard, chili peppers and thyme.
. . The odors of the compounds are of particular interest because they are a major factor in how taste of foods is perceived. The human tongue senses just five flavors sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami, sometimes called savory -and scent provides considerable added information about a food.
Feb 7, 06: Any parent will tell you kids can be depressing at times. A new study shows that raising them is a lifelong challenge to your mental health. Not only do parents have significantly higher levels of depression than adults who do not have children, the problem gets worse when the kids move out. No type of parent reported less depression than non-parents.
. . Some parents are more depressed than others, however. Parents of adult children, whether they live at home or not, and parents who do not have custody of their minor children have more symptoms of depression than those with young children all in the nest, regardless of whether they are biological children, step children or adopted. "Young children in some ways are emotionally easier", Simon said. "Little kids, little problems. Big kids, big problems."
. . Simon also found that married parents are less depressed than the unmarried. But, surprisingly, the effects of parenthood on depression were the same for men and women. Part of the problem, Simon figures, is that Americans don't get as much help at parenting as they once did, or as is the case in other countries.
Feb 7, 06: In a project that could benefit human health, scientists forced the evolution of a common virus so that it can avoid the human immune system, making it potentially useful as a delivery vehicle for gene therapy. The adeno-associated virus, or AAV, infects about 90% of humans. Our immune system is adept at dealing with it. And because antibodies attack and neutralize the virus so readily, it's rendered useless for delivering drugs.
. . So researchers sped up the virus' evolution, forcing two generations within about two months. Similar so-called "directed evolution" has been done before to change activity of specific enzymes or to make antibodies bind better with target on cells, but in the viral realm, "this approach is essentially untapped."
Feb 8, 06: A popular herbal pill used by millions of men doesn't reduce the frequent urge to go to the bathroom or other annoying symptoms of an enlarged prostate, a rigorous new study concludes. The yearlong research found the plant extract, saw palmetto, was no more effective than dummy capsules in easing symptoms for the 225 men in the study. It is the third-highest-selling herbal dietary supplement in the U.S., after garlic and echinacea.
Feb 6, 06: Tien Wong of the Center for Eye Research Australia at the University of Melbourne has shown in several large-scale studies that abnormalities of the blood vessels in the retina can be used to predict patients' risk for diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure), stroke and heart disease. These four disorders are some of the most common causes of death, hospitalization and disability in the developed world. But the ability to predict them is limited.
. . Systemic diseases -those that affect several organs or the whole body- such as hypertension, diabetes, AIDS, Graves' disease, lupus, atherosclerosis, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and sickle cell anemia often cause changes in the eye that can show up as red dots or small blood clots.
. . Blood vessels of the eyes are so predictive because they are part of the brain's vascular system, so they share anatomical features and respond similarly to stress and disease, Wong said. In fact, eyes are so transparent compared to the rest of the body that they are the only organ that allows physicians to directly see blood vessels. The digital photography approach is non-invasive -no blood is taken, no incisions are made, no probes in orifices. It takes just a few seconds.
Feb 2, 06: Giving in to those late-night munchies won't make you gain weight after all, according to a new study. "Eating at night is no more likely to promote weight gain than eating during the day", said study co-author Judy Cameron.
Jan 30, 06: [this could go in the "disease" file, too! ] Mounting evidence suggests obesity is contagious, scientists said. A human pathogen called the adenovirus Ad-37 causes obesity in chickens, according to a new study. Previous research found that two related adenoviruses, Ad-36 and Ad-5, cause obesity in animals. Adenoviruses typically cause respiratory infections. Importantly, Ad-36 has associated with human obesity in previous studies, and Ad-37 might be, too, but more research is needed.
. . "It's a big mental leap to think you can catch obesity." If obesity is contagious, the virus might be responsible for only part of the worlds growing girth. Changing diets, scientists say, surely also plays a role. "If Ad-36 is responsible for a significant portion of human obesity, the logical therapeutic intervention would be to develop a vaccine to prevent future infections."
. . They studied 500 obese people in 2004 and found that about 30% of them had antibodies to the Ad-36 virus, which suggests they may have been exposed to the virus.
Jan 24, 06: Chimpanzee blood may provide a safer vaccine against smallpox. A vaccine made by splicing chimp and human antibodies was both safer and more effective than the current vaccine, which uses a live virus and has a high rate of side effects, the researchers reported.
. . Smallpox was eradicated as a naturally occurring infection in 1980, but experts fear that some samples of the virus were made into biological weapons which groups or governments could use in an attack. So the U.S. government has been vaccinating military personnel and some police, health and emergency workers against smallpox, using Wyeth's old DryVax vaccine. This vaccine is based on decades-old technology and uses a live virus, called vaccinia, which is related to smallpox. It can cause severe side effects and, rarely, death.
. . Dr. Robert Purcell and colleagues made a synthetic antibody --an immune system protein that recognizes and helps neutralize invaders such as viruses. They genetically engineered parts of an antibody from chimpanzees, which are immune to smallpox, and a human antibody.
Jan 23, 06: Malaria parasites develop in the lymph nodes of the immune system, researchers have discovered. Scientists say the finding was unexpected, and underlines just how complex malaria infection can be. The immature parasites are known to travel to an infected person's liver, which, until now, scientists thought was the only place they could develop.
. . The researchers infected mosquitoes with fluorescently tagged Plasmodium parasites, and then allowed the mosquitoes to bite a mouse. From each mosquito bite, they found an average of 20 fluorescent parasites embedded in the animal's skin. The parasites were found to move through the skin at high speed in a random, circuitous path. After leaving the skin, the parasites frequently invaded blood vessels. This was no surprise, as they need to travel through blood vessels to get to the liver. However, about 25% of the parasites invaded lymphatic vessels of the immune system, ending up in the lymph nodes close to the site of the bite. Their journey seemed to stop there, as the malaria parasites almost never appeared in lymph nodes farther away.
. . Within about four hours of the mosquito bite, many of the lymph-node parasites appeared degraded. They were also seen interacting with key mammalian immune cells, suggesting that the immune cells were destroying them. A small number of the parasites in the lymph nodes, however, escaped degradation and began to develop into forms usually found only in the liver. By 52 hours after the mosquito bites, no parasites remained in the lymph nodes, which suggests that they cannot develop completely there.
Jan 19, 06: A new study reveals the chemical in chocolate that produces known heart-healthy benefits. The research found that epicatechin, one of a group of chemicals known as flavanols, is directly linked to improved circulation and other hallmarks of cardiovascular health.
Bush Explains Medicare Drug Bill.
. . WOMAN IN AUDIENCE: 'I don't really understand. How is it the new plan going to fix the problem?'
. . Verbatim response: PRESIDENT BUSH: 'Because the all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculated, for example, is on the table. Whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be or closer delivered to that has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the -like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate- the benefits will rise based upon inflation, supposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those -if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.'
Jan 9, 06: Adding fish oil supplements to the diet can prevent the constriction of the airways brought on by exercise in asthmatics, a very common problem in this patient group, new research shows.
Jan 1, 06: Ampakines may prove to be the worlds most powerful cognitive-enhancing, memory-boosting drugs. behemoths such as Eli Lilly and GlaxoSmithKline, are pursuing what many consider the holy grail of pharmacology, a pill to boost sagging memory -Viagra for the brain. The profit potential is enormous. A link lasting for days or years is called long-term potentiation (LTP), and LTP is the fundamental biological mechanism of memory. Ampakines enhance LTP. Extending the amount of time that glutamate bonds to the ampa receptors triggers the opening of the neighboring NMDA receptors (another docking site for glutamate). They, in turn, admit calcium into the neuron, which signals the cell to establish LTP.
. . Ampakines have an additional, related benefit: They trigger the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which many researchers suspect will lead to the creation of more receptor sites. In other words, the drug doesnt just make the neurons listen longer, it also builds new ears.
. . Making memory stronger may also be a liability. Remembering is important, but so is forgetting; otherwise the brain would become swamped with trivia. Im not at all clear what is going to happen when you take a drug that makes it harder to get rid of the things youve encoded."
Dec 9, 05: Baby pacifiers can reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), the leading cause of death in babies under a year old, according to new research.
Scientists in the US found babies who used a pacifier, also known as a "dummy", while they slept had a 90% reduced risk of cot death compared to other babies.
. . Most cot deaths occur between two to four months of age and are more prevalent in boys than girls. The cause is unknown but lying the baby down on its stomach, parental smoking and old mattresses which may harbor toxic bacteria, have been cited as possible culprits.
. . A campaign to encourage parents to put infants to sleep on their backs has led to a dramatic fall in cot deaths.
Dec 5, 05: There is even more proof that an unhappy marriage is bad for your health, researchers reported. The stress that comes from discord appears to slow the initial production of a blood protein that is key to healing wounds, the report from Ohio State University said.
. . Quarreling couples studied in a laboratory setting had a slower wound healing process than when they were not arguing, as measured by how rapidly blisters healed. The blisters were deliberately inflicted on the test subjects by using a vacuum pump on the arm.
. . "Couples who demonstrated consistently higher levels of hostile behaviors ... healed at 60% of the rate of low-hostile couples." The authors said stress appears to slow the local, wound-site production of proinflammatory cytokines -- protein molecules produced by white blood cells that play a key role in the early stages of healing.
. . But the study also found that couples with high degrees of conflict had higher levels of the same cytokines generally in the bloodstream the morning after an argument, compared to those who were not in as much disagreement. While greater early production at wound sites is beneficial, the authors said, a higher systemic level is harmful.
Dec 5, 05: Coffee and tea may reduce the risk of serious liver damage in people who drink alcohol too much, are overweight, or have too much iron in the blood, researchers reported.
. . The study of nearly 10,000 people showed that those who drank more than two cups of coffee or tea per day developed chronic liver disease at half the rate of those who drank less than one cup each day.
. . The study, conducted by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and Social & Scientific Systems, Inc., found that coffee provided no protection to people at risk of liver disease from other causes, such as viral infections.
Dec 3, 05: Any heart gains from drinking alcohol in moderation are likely outweighed by the harm, say researchers. The findings in The Lancet suggest that drinking a glass or two of wine a day may not be such a good idea. Although past research suggests some heart benefits, the New Zealand team says the studies were flawed. Indeed, there is more evidence that heavier drinking provides the most heart protection --alcoholics have relatively 'clean' arteries-- they say.
Dec 2, 05: Researchers are working a high-tech way to trick people into desiring less fat without dangerous side effects. In an effort to curb obesity, they would inject the body with manufactured nanoparticles designed to fool the brain. This technology will help people to feel satisfied with a small serving of food instead of a large helping."
. . Gilbertson's team is engineering molecule-sized nanoparticles made of the same fat molecules that occur naturally in your body. The nanoparticles would be geared to fool specific specific cells inside you that communicate with the brain about fat intake. He points out that nanoparticle treatments are already used to battle cancer and cardiovascular disease.
. . "Our bodies, our taste buds, are trained to help us get the nutrients we need. For instance, our ability to taste sweet things helps us identify foods with carbohydrates. Our salty taste helps us find minerals. And our general aversion to bitter foods helps us avoid ingesting poisonous substances."
. . There has been little research on whether we taste fat, however. Gilbertson's research shows we do, but the ability is not confined to specific taste buds as it is with sweets and salt. Importantly, these fat receptors aren't just on the tongue but exist throughout the body, including in the small intestine. When you eat fat, these receptors send signals to the brain. In some people, Gilbertson has found, the fat receptors are not as sensitive, so they eat more fatty foods than other people.
Tryptophan doesn't act on the brain unless it is taken on an empty stomach with no protein present.
Nov 21, 05: Oops. Researchers for the US National Institutes of Health have found that drinking caffeine-free coffee increases the levels of "bad" cholesterol in the blood which can lead to grotty arteries and heart disease.
Nov 9, 05: In a discovery with implications for fighting obesity in humans, Canadian scientists have discovered a molecular switch in specially bred laboratory mice that makes the animals skinnier than their normal brethren.
. . The altered mice, which lack a certain gene, have half as much fat as normal mice and the fat they do have isn't the kind that piles on the weight, say researchers at the Ottawa Health Research Institute. The leaner mice have a higher proportion of what are known as brown fat cells, which burn up fat and release it as heat. Normal mice -and humans and other mammals, for that matter- have mostly white fat cells, which metabolize fat as energy to fuel muscles and other bodily functions. So when food intake exceeds energy output, these white fat cells multiply and expand.
. . The knocked-out gene in the mice called P107 seems to act as a switch on precursor cells, causing them to develop into heat-producing brown fat cells instead of lipid-storing white fat cells.
Nov 8, 05: Women do not develop high blood pressure from a coffee drinking habit, but there is a link between hypertension [high blood pressure] and drinking colas, & it may have nothing to do with caffeine, a study said. Previous studies have offered conflicting findings about the relationship between coffee consumption and hypertension.
. . There was an association found between hypertension and consumption of caffeinated colas, independent of whether the soft drinks were sugared or diet. The current study did not look at non-cola soft drinks. "We speculate that it is not caffeine but perhaps some other compound contained in soda-type soft drinks that may be responsible for the increased risk.
. . Roughly 50 million people in the United States suffer from hypertension, and the number is increasing. The condition increases the risk of heart disease, stroke and kidney trouble.
Oct 25, 05: Female twins are up to four times more likely to reach the menopause early than other women, say researchers. The findings come from a study of 1,700 female twins presented at a fertility conference in Montreal, Canada. In some of the cases, only one twin was affected.
He believes premature menopause in identical twins might be to do with the embryo splitting process.
. . About 1% of women in general have gone through the menopause by the age of 40, but among the twins the figure was about 5%. By 45, more than 15% of the twins had gone through the menopause, in contrast to about 5% of the general female population.
. . Given that the rate of premature menopause was similar among the identical and non-identical twins, the researchers do not believe it is simply down to genes.
Oct 25, 05: The anti-impotence drug Viagra can reduce the effects of stress on the heart, research has found. The drug, used by millions of men, slowed the increase in the strength of heart contractions by half. The Johns Hopkins University study, published in Circulation, found the drug acted as a "brake".
. . Viagra helps maintain erections by blocking the action of an enzyme which, preventing the relaxation of blood vessels in the penis. The same enzyme, called phosphodiesterase 5 (PDE5A), is also involved in the breakdown of a key molecule, cyclic GMP, which helps control stresses and limit heart enlargement.
. . Impotence affects nearly half of men between 40 and 70 years old.
. . "The findings that Viagra affects blood pressure is not surprising - before it was known as a successful treatment for impotence, it was actually being researched for lowering effects on blood pressure."
Oct 24, 05: Iron is rich in free radicals, highly reactive molecules with unpaired electrons that steal away pairing electrons from other molecules, thus modifying their chemical structures. Once started, the process continues in a chain reaction until it encounters a chain-breaking molecule --known as antioxidants or "radical scavengers"-- such as beta-carotene, vitamin C or vitamin E.
Oct 19, 05: Cats are blamed for triggering asthma attacks in humans, but veterinarians in Scotland said it may also work the other way around. Irritants such as cigarette smoke, dusty homes and human dandruff can increase inflammation in feline lungs and worsen asthma in cats.
Oct 17, 05: UK scientists say they can cut the time it takes to grow new tissue from days to minutes. The lengthy process can be accelerated by simply removing the water present in the starting material, the University College London team discovered. Following such shrinkage by a factor of at least 100, tissues could be created in 35 minutes. This speed may one day allow doctors to make tissue implants at the bedside.
Sept 23, 05: The activation in the brain of chemical receptors, called mu-opioid receptors, appears to be involved in producing what is known as the "placebo effect", according to a report in The Journal of Neuroscience.
. . The placebo effect occurs when people are given an inactive drug or therapy, but experience an improvement in their symptoms anyway. Researchers often compare new drugs to placebo to gauge the true benefit of a therapy.
. . The study provides the "first direct evidence" that the administration of a placebo with presumed analgesic properties activates pain and stress inhibitory systems in the brain "through direct effects on the mu-opioid receptors
. . "We are now looking at individual differences in the placebo response --why some individuals have a more profound response than others-- for example, the effects of gender, hormones and genes", Zubieta said.
Sept 15, 05: Eating a diet rich in beans, nuts and cereals could help to prevent cancer because the foods contain a natural compound that inhibits the growth of tumors. Scientists at University College London said today that the substance called inositol pentakisphosphate, which is also found in lentils and peas, could also help researchers develop new therapies against the disease. They discovered that the compound inhibits an enzyme called phosphoinositde 3-kinase which promotes tumor growth.
. . Scientists have been trying to develop drugs to inhibit the cancer-promoting enzyme but have had difficulty so far.
. . When the researchers tested inositol pentakisphosphate in mice and cancer cells in the laboratory, it killed the animal tumors and enhanced the effect of drugs used against ovarian and lung cancer cells. The researchers believe the compound, which was non-toxic even at high concentrations, could also be used to increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy drugs.
Sept 2, 05: University of Pennsylvania biologist Gary Beauchamp to analyze freshly pressed extra-virgin olive oil, in which he found a chemical that acted like ibuprofen. He and his team named their discovery oleocanthal and found that, although it has a different chemistry, its effect is similar to that of the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory compound in the commercial pain-killer.
. . The discovery is significant because scientists believe to an increasing extent that inflammation plays an important part in a variety of chronic diseases like stroke, heart disease, and breast and lung cancer. It may also go some way to explaining the health benefits long attributed to the olive-oil rich Mediterranean diet.
Aug 30, 05: Ten years of using a mobile phone results in no increased risk of a tumor in the nerve connecting the ear to the brain, researchers said. Research has also investigated the possible association of other kinds of brain tumor with mobile phones but scientists say acoustic neuroma would be a prime candidate to be affected.
. . Previous independent studies have found mobile phone radiation may have some effect on the human body, such as heating up the brain and causing headaches and nausea. But no study that could be independently repeated has proved mobile phones have permanent harmful effects and the mobile phone industry argues there is no conclusive evidence that electromagnetic radiation causes harm.
Aug 29, 05: Starving --officially known as caloric restriction-- may make worms and mice live up to 50% longer but it will not help humans live super-long lives, two biologists argued. They said their mathematical model showed that a lifetime of low-calorie dieting would only extend human life span by about 7%, unlike smaller animals, whose life spans are affected more by the effects of starvation. This is because restricting calories only indirectly affects life span.
. . Researchers at various universities and the national Institutes of Health are testing the theories but there are groups already cutting calories by up to a third in the hope they can live to be 120 or 125, while staying healthy.
. . The average life span for a Japanese male is 76.7 years. "Sumo wrestlers, however, consume an average of approximately 5,500 calories per day and have a life expectancy of 56 years." People living on the Japanese island of Okinawa eat somewhat less than the average Japanese. They also live slightly longer. This could give a basis for calculating the benefits of eating less.
. . Calculations based on the Okinawa and sumo wrestler data suggest that if Japanese people ate just 1,500 calories a day, the longest average life span attainable would be just under 82 years.
Aug 28, 05: Coffee not only helps clear the mind and perk up the energy, it also provides more healthful antioxidants than any other food or beverage in the American diet, according to a study. Of course, too much coffee can make people jittery and even raise cholesterol levels, so food experts stress moderation.
. . People are getting the most antioxidants from beverages. Antioxidants, which are thought to help battle cancer and provide other health benefits, are abundant in grains, tomatoes and many other fruits and vegetables.
. . Vinson said he was researching tea and cocoa and other foods and decided to study coffee, too. His team analyzed the antioxidant content of more than 100 different food items, including vegetables, fruits, nuts, spices, oils and common beverages. They then used Agriculture Department data on typical food consumption patterns to calculate how much antioxidant each food contributes to a person's diet.
. . They concluded that the average adult consumes 1,299 milligrams of antioxidants daily from coffee. The closest competitor was tea at 294 milligrams. Rounding out the top five sources were bananas, 76 milligrams; dry beans, 72 milligrams; and corn, 48 milligrams. According to the Agriculture Department, the typical adult American drinks 1.64 cups of coffee daily.
. . That does not mean coffee is a substitute for fruit and vegetables.
. . In February, a team of Japanese researchers reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that people who drank coffee daily, or nearly every day, had half the liver cancer risk of those who never drank it. The protective effect occurred in people who drank one to two cups a day and increased at three to four cups.
. . Last year, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health found that drinking coffee cut the risk of developing the most common form of diabetes. Men who drank more than six 8-ounce cups of caffeinated coffee per day lowered their risk of type 2 diabetes by about half, and women reduced their risk by nearly 30%.
Aug 26, 05: Post-menopausal women who use hormone therapy for long periods have fewer wrinkles, a new study found. "These benefits were seen in women who had consistently used hormone therapy and had been in menopause for at least five years", said Hugh Taylor of Yale School of Medicine. "We don't believe hormone therapy will make wrinkles melt away once they're already there, but the results of our study shows that hormone therapy can prevent them", Taylor said. "Hormone therapy makes wrinkles less severe and keeps skin more elastic."
Aug 26, 05: Scientists in the United States have discovered a gene that can keep mice alive for 30% longer than normal. They say the gene has a key role to play in many of the processes related to ageing. Because humans have a very similar version of the gene, the hope is that it will show a way to improve our declining years.
. . The gene studied in the new research is called Klotho, named after a minor Greek goddess who spins life's thread. The gene certainly seems to do that. Mice --and people-- with defective forms of the gene appear to age prematurely.
. . Klotho seems to delay many of the effects of old age, like the weakening of bones, clogging of the arteries and loss of muscle fitness. This is important for those researching the causes of ageing, whose intention is not so much to prolong life as to improve the quality of our final years.
. . But there may be downsides with Klotho. The long-lived mice in the new experiments tend to be less fertile. And the gene may also predispose people to diabetes. The trick for researchers will be to find ways of getting the life-enhancing results of Klotho while avoiding the drawbacks.
Aug 23, 05: In the entire nation, only Oregon isn't getting fatter. Some 22.7% of American adults were obese in the 2002-04 period, up slightly from 22% for 2001-03, says the advocacy group Trust for America's Health. Alabama had the biggest increase. There, the obesity rate increased 1.5 percentage points to 27.7%.
Aug 16, 05: Drinking a glass of orange juice a day may help stave off arthritis, new research suggests. Certain carotenoids, compounds commonly found in some fruits and vegetables, appear to be responsible. Carotenoids, the chemicals responsible for the orange and yellow coloring of fruits and vegetables, can reduce inflammation through antioxidant effects.
. . Average daily intakes of the carotenoids beta-cryptoxanthin and zeaxanthin were 40 and 20% lower, respectively, for arthritis patients compared with healthy subjects. By contrast, consumption of two other well-known carotenoids, lutein and lycopene, did not seem to protect against arthritis.
. . Further analysis showed that subjects with the highest beta-cryptoxanthin and zeaxanthin intake were about half as likely to develop inflammatory polyarthritis than those with the lowest intake. "These data add to a growing body of evidence that some dietary antioxidants, such as the carotenoids beta-cryptoxanthin and zeaxanthin."
Aug 13, 05: Dogs can now have their blood type tested, potentially saving thousands of canine lives. Currently, dogs can only have one blood transfusion in their lives because of the risk of a harmful immune reaction. But soon it will be possible to administer blood of the right type, just as it is in humans.
Aug 8, 05: Scientists are testing an extract of red clover as an alternative to hormone replacement therapy for symptoms of the menopause, such as hot flushes.
The extract contains chemicals called isoflavones, which mimic the effects of the female sex hormone estrogen. They'll also test a second treatment, using low doses of a compound known as desvenlafaxine succinate, which is thought to stabilize the body's heat control mechanism.
Aug 1, 05: Babies born at night are at least 12% more likely to die, according to a new U.S. study. Scientists examined records of more than 3.3 million babies born in California from 1992 to 1999. Those born at night had a 12 to 16% increase in neonatal mortality, defined as dying within 28 days. Those born between 5 p.m. and 1 a.m., as well as those born around 9 a.m., were more likely to die.
. . Lack of proper care is thought to be the reason, though scientists have not pinned down the exact culprits. The higher death rates coincided with times when doctors and nurses were changing shifts.
July 28, 05: A common blood pressure drug could help people who have witnessed traumatic events, such as the London bombings, to block out their distressing memories. Cornell University psychiatrists are carrying out tests using beta-blockers.
. . Post-traumatic stress disorder affects around one in three of people caught up in such events, and memories can be triggered just by a sound or smell. People with PTSD are given counselling, but because it is not always effective, researchers have been looking for alternative therapies.
. . The beta-blocker propranolol has been found to block the neurotransmitters involved in laying down memories. However, there are concerns that a drug which can alter memories could be misused, perhaps by the military who may want soldiers to become desensitised to violence. Dr Paul McHugh, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland and member of the US President's Council on Bioethics expressed concern over the possible uses of the drug. "If soldiers did something that ended up with children getting killed, do you want to give them beta blockers so that they can do it again?"
July 25, 05: Suicide is the number one cause of death among people aged 20 to 35 in China, where an estimated quarter of a million people a year --or 685 a day-- take their lives, state media said. Each year an additional 2.5 million to 3.5 million Chinese unsuccessfully attempt suicide, which stood as the fifth major cause of death among the country's 1.3 billion people. It appears to be a direct result of increasing stress in China's rapidly changing society. "Society is full of pressure and competition, so young people, lacking experience in dealing with difficulties, tend to get depressed."
. . A national, 24-hour free suicide prevention hotline in August 2003. Since then, more than 220,000 people had called the number, though Canadian Michael Phillips, executive director of the Beijing Suicide Research and Prevention Center, said only one in 10 callers could get through on the first try. [That could be worse than nothing!]
July 25, 05: British scientists said today they had developed a new treatment that could help obese and overweight people lose weight by making them feel full. Researchers at Imperial College London believe the treatment, an injection of a natural digestive hormone called oxyntomodulin that is released in the small intestine, could help to stem the world's growing obesity epidemic. "It is just fooling the brain that you have already had lunch by releasing the appetite hormone before you have actually eaten."
. . Being overweight or obese is calculated by using the body mass index (BMI) -- dividing weight in kilograms by height in meters squared. A BMI of more than 25 is overweight. Above 30 is considered obese.
. . Excessive weight is a risk factor for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, osteoarthritis and other illnesses. Researchers have shown that treating obesity-related disorders costs as much or more than treating illnesses caused by aging, smoking and problem drinkers.
. . Bloom and his colleagues have developed a once-a-day injection and are looking into delivering the treatment through a nasal spray. "When it comes to taking a pill with water or taking a disposable syringe with a super-fine needle and pressing the plunger, it really isn't very difficult."
. . Patients given the injection also had reduced levels of leptin, a protein responsible for regulating the body's energy expenditure. They also had lower amount of adipose hormones that encourage the build-up of adipose tissue -- where fat cells are stored in the body.
June 15, 05: Adding a dash of rosemary extract to ground beef appears to reduce the amount of cancer-causing compounds created during the cooking process, according to new study findings. The investigators found that when they added antioxidants extracted from rosemary to ground beef, the hamburgers contained smaller amounts of heterocyclic amines, or HCAs, carcinogenic compounds that form when muscle meats like beef, pork and poultry are cooked at high temperatures. He added that people can purchase extracts of rosemary, but they're fairly expensive.
. . To keep meat safe, Smith recommended avoiding cooking meat at extremely high temperatures. Previous research has also suggested that frequently flipping burgers, trimming off fat and skin before grilling meat, and removing charred portions after grilling may reduce the amount of HCAs in meat. Microwaving meat does not appear to create HCAs, Smith added, because the temperature in a microwave stays relatively low.
June 14, 05: Women searching for ways to ward off the anxiety and irritability caused by premenstrual syndrome may be able to find answers as nearby as their local supermarket. A new study finds that a diet rich in calcium and Vitamin D -available in milk, cheese, yogurt and fortified orange juice- appears to help women reduce the risk of PMS symptoms.
. . The findings support earlier research indicating calcium seems to help women cope with PMS. But the new study also suggests that when calcium is combined with enough vitamin D, it may help prevent PMS altogether.
. . Researchers say women who ate four servings or more a day of a dairy product, including milk, were less likely to develop feelings of anxiety, loneliness, irritability, tearfulness and tension that characterize PMS. Estimates are that 8% to 20% of women may have premenstrual syndrome.
May 25, 05: Ohio State University researchers found the brains of mice shrink when deprived of sunlight, which they say might provide a clue about why humans get the winter blahs. If humans' brains similarly shrink without sunlight exposure, it could be physical evidence of depression some people complain about when daylight decreases. About 6% of Americans suffer from seasonal affective disorder during winter months.
. . However, to test Pyter's theory on humans, subjects would have to be deprived of light and have their brains dissected to measure results. Pyter and her adviser, Randy Nelson, think the shrinking in mice could be the result of fewer brain cells being created during short days in the area of the brain involved with memory and learning, called the hippocampus. The hippocampus seems to produce melatonin, a hormone that may cause depression, at increased levels when humans are exposed to longer periods of darkness, Stange said.
May 25, 05: "Bad" metabolism may explain why people who have never smoked and do not have high cholesterol levels suffer from a potentially lethal build-up of plaque in the arteries, scientists said. The plaque build-up, or atherosclerosis, is the main cause of cardiovascular diseases and increases the risk of suffering a stroke or heart attack.
. . They found that abnormal metabolism in the walls of the arteries can lead to atherosclerosis. "We're very interested in the potential for nutritionally modifying these processes with specific fats." The scientists believe a deficiency in essential fatty acids that are required in the human diet may contribute to changes in metabolism in the wall of blood vessels. Fish, shellfish, soya oil, pumpkin seeds, leafy vegetables and walnuts are rich in omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.
May 12, 05: Even though they don't pose a health threat, bed bugs, which live off human blood, can take a nasty bite out of a hotel's reputation and business. A number of companies have been sued by guests who complained of being bitten by the insects. Even upscale hotels are not immune to litigation, and bug specialists say the pests can thrive even in a spotlessly clean room. Bed bugs come home in luggage. "They just don't walk into your house. You bring them in from somewhere else."
. . Oval-shaped and less than a quarter of an inch long, the brown-colored insects like to settle close to their food source, often hiding out under mattresses and bed frames, in crevices and behind picture frames. Once attached to a sleeping human, they use a barbed proboscis to bore through the skin and suck their blood meal. They can go months without feeding, patiently awaiting a new host or travel companion.
. . Bed bugs were all but eliminated in America in the late 1940s and 1950s when the insecticide DDT was used to rid infestations in hotels, houses and boarding rooms.
. . Unlike mosquitoes, which can transmit malaria, yellow fever and West Nile virus, bed bugs have not been linked to anything more serious than the itchy, red welts that often appear on a victim's skin. "Hepatitis B has been specifically looked for and the studies have been negative so far."
May 8, 05: Mice genetically engineered to produce a human antioxidant enzyme lived longer than normal mice, which U.S. scientists cited as evidence that antioxidants can counteract the effects of aging and disease. "This study is very supportive of the free-radical theory of aging." It also supports the idea that the mitochondria produce many of these damaging free radicals as part of everyday metabolism.
. . Chemicals known as free radicals damage cells by generating a reaction called oxidation -- the same process that causes metal to rust. Antioxidants interfere with this chemical reaction. They said they helped show free radicals can damage cells and DNA.
. . The researchers used genetically engineered mice that made extra amounts of catalase, an antioxidant enzyme that helps break down hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen. Hydrogen peroxide is produced during metabolism and it can be a precursor of free radicals.
. . The mice that made more catalase in the mitochondria lived about 20% longer. They also had healthier heart muscle tissue, indicating the catalase helped protect from age-related heart problems seen in normal mice.
. . The findings could be used as a basis for drugs or other treatments that protect the body from free radicals and perhaps some age-related conditions. "What we're realizing now is that by intervening in the underlying aging process, we may be able to produce very significant increases in 'healthspan', or healthy lifespan."
Apr 26, 05: Health, not money, should be the priority of women hoping to sell their eggs to science, the National Academies concluded in a 240-page report. As a result, researchers should be barred from paying women for their eggs.
. . The recommended prohibition contrasts with the vibrant commercial market already established for human eggs in reproductive medicine. For baby-making, women are now paid handsomely --in some cases $15,000 or more-- for selling eggs to an infertile couple. And sperm banks routinely pay men from $65 to $500 for their sperm depending on how much is donated and whether the sperm owner releases his identity.
Feb 17, 05: What could be better than breast implants? Why, breast implants that continually repair themselves, of course. Saline implants can leak, rupture, interfere with mammograms, and lose their shape. But scientists are studying ways to make breast augmentations from stem cells, which are famous for their self-renewing capabilities. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago will publish a study in the April issue of Tissue Engineering showing that stem-cell tissue implants in mice kept their shape longer than traditional implants.
. . "The stem cells generated tissue in this particular scaffold and they maintained their shape almost 100 percent four weeks after implantation in mice", said Dr. Jeremy Mao, director and associate professor of tissue engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "In conventional fat transplant, it shrinks substantially over a period of a few weeks."
. . The technique could be ready for human applications in about a decade, he said, depending on scientific progress as well as the Food and Drug Administration approval process.
Apr 25, 05: Experts say a healthy lifestyle is dependent at least in part on four basics that help a person prevent and control chronic diseases: not smoking, eating A good diet, getting physical activity and controlling weight. By these measures, only 3% of Americans are living the healthy life, according to a new study.
. . The research examined data from surveys on 153,000 adults in all 50 states. Specifically they looked at whether the subjects were eating five or more servings of fruits and vegetables a day and getting regular physical activity. While many of the people did well in one or more category, only 3% met the basic requirements of all four. The details:
. . * 76 percent didn't smoke.
. . * 40 percent maintained a healthy weight (these tended to be younger and better educated).
. . * 23 percent ate five or more fruits and vegetables a day.
. . * 22 percent got at least 30 minutes of moderate physical activity at least five times a week.
Apr 19, 05: Researchers at University College London's Department of Epidemiology and Public Health are interested in the functioning of certain key biological processes that are improved by happiness. "In people who have their basic needs met --clean water, sufficient food and shelter-- a crucial determinant of health is how circumstances affect the mind. That is, psychosocial factors." Other studies have shown a connection between happiness and longevity. Happiness is associated with reduced neuroendocrine, inflammatory and cardiovascular activity.
. . The results were clear-cut. There was a 32% difference in cortisol levels between the least and the most happy subjects. Happy subjects also showed lower responses to stress in plasma fibrinogen levels, a protein that in high concentrations often signals future problems with coronary heart disease. Finally, happy men had lower heart rates over the day and evening, which suggests good cardiovascular health.
. . They were able to control for psychological distress --and they found that health-related biological factors were independently related to happiness. In other words, people aren't just happy because they are healthy, they are healthy because they are happy.
Apr 19, 05: If your ears are burning, it's said someone is talking about you, but Australian scientists say its more likely you're having a brainwave. Two researchers in Canberra have developed a high-tech hat that monitors brain activity via changes in ear temperature --offering a cheap way to assess risks for patients ahead of brain surgery.
. . By plugging the converted hard hat into a patient's ears researchers can measure tiny changes in eardrum temperature caused by an increased flow of blood to the side of the brain used to concentrate on a task. "If an area of the brain is more active, it needs more blood, which flows up the carotid artery on either side of the neck. This blood is shared between the brain and the inner ear, so by measuring the ear temperature we can work out which side of the brain is more active."
. . It can be used many times in place of magnetic resonance imaging scans commonly used for brain testing, which cost A$1,000 a time. [US$760]
. . The researchers said the hat, yet to be approved for general use, would also allow them to study the theory that some people are right-brained and others are left-brained. The left side is often associated with linguistic skills, while the right side is said to control visual and spatial functions. "Everything points to people often having one side that is more active than the other, but it may not be as clear-cut as simply saying someone is left-brained or right-brained", said Cherbuin.
. . The researchers said the hat may also help pinpoint damaged brain functions in stroke victims to aid rehabilitation.
Apr 7, 05: Sex, cryptic crosswords and a good run could help ward off dementia and other degenerative conditions by stimulating new brain cells, an Australian researcher said. He said mental and physical exercise helped create and nurture new nerve cells in the brain, keeping it functional and warding off diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
Apr 6, 05: Overweight, obese and inactive Californians cost $21.7 billion annually in medical care, workers' compensation and lost productivity, according to a study commissioned by the California Department of Health Services.
Mar 31, 05: Doctors at the University of New Mexico have discovered that a noticeable amount of two chemicals is released by the brain when it senses pain. They say this knowledge could turn what has been a subjective problem for patients into an objective science in which pain is measurable. "When there are no physical signs of pain, it's very hard for patients to get any sort of acceptance from doctors." "You can put an adverse stimulus on two different people, and one will say there's almost no pain, and the other will be in agony."
. . The doctors stumbled onto the phenomenon when a researcher's ear got pinched by a pair of headphones during a brain scan. The pain triggered a large release of glutamine and glutamate, which help nerves send signals through the brain.
. . Sibbitt said scans of the two chemicals will help doctors study painful diseases more closely and could lead to better pain-fighting techniques. The method could also help pharmaceutical companies develop better drugs to treat pain and study how drugs, diet and exercise work to fight it.
Mar 31, 05: The arsenic-rich, low-cost coal used by the Chinese for cooking and heating is causing a major health threat in many parts of the Asian nation.
Mar 28, 05: UK scientists have developed a new genetically modified strain of "golden rice", producing more beta-carotene. The human body converts beta-carotene into vitamin A, and this strain produces around 20 times as much as previous varieties. It could help reduce vitamin A deficiency and childhood blindness in developing countries. The World Health Organization estimates up to 500,000 children go blind each year because of vitamin A deficiency.
Mar 28, 05: Medgadget brings news of the accuDEXA, an osteoporosis assessment system by Schick Technologies. Simply stick your hand into the unit, follow the on-screen directions, and youll have your bone density results in less than 30 secondsa far less invasive procedure than the usual test. Assuming the temptation to put whatever body part is handy in the machine to test bone density could be overcome, the device would help diagnose osteoporosis early on. The system relies on an ultra-sensitive digital imaging sensor that uses Dual Energy X-Ray Absorptiometry (DEXA) to produce its results.
Mar 27, 05: A new chemical compound, part-cat and part-human, may provide an end to misery-making cat allergies, U.S. researchers reported. And they said their approach in creating the compound may work against more dangerous allergies, such as deadly peanut allergies.
. . Allergies are caused when the immune system mistakenly reacts to allergens -- pieces of protein found in food, on animals or produced by plants. One response is the production of histamine, which brings on allergy symptoms such as sneezing, wheezing, itching, watery eyes and sometimes asthma.
. . The compound stops this process. It uses pieces of an allergy-provoking protein found in cat saliva or dander called Fel d1, tied to a piece of human antibody called IgG Fcg1. The UCLA team named it GFD, or gamma Feline domesticus. "We measured more than 90% less histamine in the (human cell) cultures with GFD."
. . The cat allergen part attaches to antibodies on the surface of the immune system cells that produce histamine, while the human bit stops the cell from getting started.
Mar 25, 05: New research into how the brain controls movement reveals a location of thoughts that determine what you will do. Don't worry, the scientists can't read your most fantastic or lurid imaginings. What the Caltech researchers can do is spot the flicker of activity that occurs while you contemplate moving your hand.
. . The research is expected to improve efforts to build neural prostheses, devices that link a paralyzed person's mind to an external device with the help of brain electrodes and a computer. Several research programs are making progress on similar aspects of mind control over movement. Patients have shown the ability to move a cursor on a screen with nothing but brainpower, for example. And a monkey has been trained to feed itself with a robotic arm.
. . But the new study predicted where a patient would move his hand based on brain activity the instant prior. It promises a more effective way to convert desire into movement for paralyzed patients.
. . The study subjects were epilepsy patients, who were already being analyzed with implanted electrodes in an effort to determine where in the brain their seizures occur. "So for a couple of weeks these patients are lying there, bored, waiting for a seizure", Rizzuto said, "and I was able to get their permission to do my study, taking advantage of the electrodes that were already there."
. . "The next project that we are currently undertaking is to place paralyzed patients into an MRI scanner to record their brain activity while they imagine making arm movements."
Mar 25, 05: As lawmakers consider plans to make the state a hotbed for stem cell research, the University of Connecticut has announced it is poised to become one of the first colleges in the country to launch a program for making human embryonic stem cells.
. . Although he does not plan to leave UConn, Yang said he or other scientists at the Center for Regenerative Biology would consider moving their work to China if the state does not pass a bill supporting stem cell research.
. . In his research, Yang plans to implant DNA from a skin cell into an egg that has had its own DNA removed. The egg is electrically stimulated and begins cell division. Within five days, the new embryo creates an interior ball of embryonic stem cells.
. . Yang envisions therapeutic testing beginning within the next 10 years.
About 90% of the ultraviolet rays which cause suntans and sunburns reflect off the crystals in dry, new snow against just 10-20% from wet snow. "Many people believe that water reflects a lot, because we can quickly go brown sunbathing by the sea. This is wrong. The percentage (of ultraviolet) reflected by water is 6-8%, about as much as by a green field."
Mar 15, 05: Chlorine remains the most widely used disinfectant at 16,000 wastewater treatment plants nationwide.However, the toxicity of chlorine that kills harmful bacteria also hurts other life. That effluent is not pure. It contains dechlorinated byproducts, colloquially referred to as DBPs, which are considered to be carcinogenic. "The chemical process might cause more problems in the environment than if you didn't do it at all."
. . In 1988, SFPUC successfully petitioned the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board to eliminate requirements to disinfect water released from a pipe four miles offshore. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tracked effluent currents and demonstrated that the bacteria died quickly in the cold, salty water and that the stream never made it shoreward, where surfers or bathers might get sick. Effluent released in the bay, closer to where people swim and fish, is still disinfected through chlorination.
. . "At really low concentrations, chlorine can kill aquatic invertebrates. And that can affect the food web, the whole ecosystem. Chlorine is definitely not a good thing to have in the water."
Mar 15, 05: The Bush administration issued the nation's first regulations to cut mercury pollution from electric utilities, relying on a market trading system that gives companies 15 years to reduce it nearly by half.
. . The Environmental Protection Agency's regulations are aimed at reducing levels of a toxic chemical that can severely damage nervous systems, especially in fetuses and children. They result from a lawsuit brought by an environmental group 13 years ago.
. . [So, by the time this emergency is HALF fixed the way it shuda been immediately, it'll be... what? 28 years?! ]
. . The EPA expects to reduce the current 48 tons a year of mercury from smokestacks of coal-burning power plants down to 31.3 tons in 2010, according to a copy of the rule provided Monday by environmental groups. The regulation would further reduce that to 27.9 tons in 2015, and to 24.3 tons in 2020. EPA officials did not dispute those numbers. In the meantime, she said, pregnant women and women of childbearing age should heed government warnings to limit fish intake.
. . Boxer said she was "appalled that the Bush administration is ignoring the clear science."
. . 40% of mercury emissions come from the smokestacks of more than 450 coal-burning power plants, but those emissions have never been regulated as a pollutant. "It's the do-nothing approach to mercury", said John Walke, Natural Resources Defense Council's (NRDC) director of clean air programs. "They get a holiday basically ... that requires them to reduce mercury no more than would incidentally be achieved from their smog and soot cuts."
Mar 15, 05: Women who have one or two alcoholic drinks per day are healthier than teetotallers, according to Australian research. A study into the health of 40,000 women from three generations and across Australia showed that those who consumed up to two drinks a day were better educated, exercised more often and had fewer weight problems than women who never drink alcohol.
. . But women who have more than three drinks a day were also more likely to smoke, to suffer mental illness and use illegal drugs. The reasons behind this were varied and included: women don't drink because of medications they were taking.
Mar 15, 05: Spanish and British scientists have discovered how green tea helps to prevent certain types of cancer. They've shown that a compound called EGCG in green tea prevents cancer cells from growing by binding to a specific enzyme. It "inhibits the enzyme dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR), which is a recognized, established target for anti-cancer drugs."
. . Green tea has about five times as much EGCG as regular tea, studies have shown. It decreased rates of certain cancers but scientists were not sure what compounds were involved or how they worked. Nor had they determined how much green tea a person would have to drink to have a beneficial effect. This means we may be able to develop new anti-cancer drugs based on the structure of the EGCG molecule."
. . The scientists decided to look at ECGC after they realized its structure was similar to a cancer drug called methotrexate. "We discovered that EGCG can kill cancer cells in the same way as methotrexate." It does not bind as tightly as methotrexate, so its side effects on healthy cells could be less severe than those of the drug.
. . The findings could also explain why women who drink large amounts of green tea around the time they conceive and early in their pregnancy may have an increased risk of having a child with spina bifida or other neural tube disorders. Women have been advised to take supplements of folic acid because it protects against spina bifida. But large amounts of green tea could decrease the effectiveness of folic acid.
Mar 11, 05: Busy health-care workers typically wash their hands for just 10 seconds, according to a new study. Thankfully, they use soap. The combination is effective. But don't waste your money on that alcohol-based, water-free hand-cleaner. Convenient, yes, but less effective. With 10 seconds of scrubbing, soap and water gets rid of the common cold virus, hepatitis A, and a host of other illness-bearing germs, the study found.
Mar 10, 05: The Methuselah Mouse Prize, or M Prize as it is popularly known, offers awards to researchers who make significant advances in extending the lives of lab mice --on the assumption that the work will lead eventually to extended human life. The organization offers two prizes. The Longevity Prize is for extending the life of a single mouse; the Rejuvenation Prize is for slowing aging in middle-aged mice.
. . The non-profit Methuselah Foundation is the brainchild of eccentric researcher Aubrey de Grey, the organization's chairman. De Grey has never done laboratory research in biology. He's a computer scientist at the University of Cambridge who works with a team of geneticists. But a life-long interest in why people grow old has led him to a new specialty: biogerontology, the science of aging.
. . De Grey believes there are exactly seven root causes of aging, all of which are reversible. Among the seven deadly, well, things, are cell atrophy, cell death, and unwanted mutations.
Mar 7, 05: In a stunning example of gender differences in medicine, a major new study found that aspirin helps healthy women avoid strokes but makes no difference in their risk of heart attacks unless they're 65 or older -the polar opposite of how the drug affects men.
. . Aspirin is recommended now for both men and women at high risk of heart disease. Many doctors have assumed it also prevented heart problems in healthy women because of research showing it helped healthy men.
. . The Women's Health Study was the first rigorous test of aspirin and vitamin E in women. It found that taking vitamin E did no good, adding to a large body of evidence that such supplements don't help and might even be harmful. "Bottom line: There wasn't a benefit but there wasn't harm" from vitamin E in the new study.
. . After 10 years, aspirin users had a 17% lower risk of stroke and a 24% lower risk of strokes caused by blood clots -the majority of strokes- probably due to aspirin's well-known anti-clotting properties, researchers believe. Women 65 and older got the most benefit: They were 30% less likely to have a stroke caused by a blood clot and 34% less likely to suffer a heart attack.
. . Aspirin's protection was greatest for nonsmokers and former smokers, and didn't vary among women who did or did not use hormones after menopause.
Mar 4, 05: The average life expectancy for Americans is 77.6 years, a record high according to the latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The figure is up from 77.3 in 2002 and comes in spite of a decades-long rise in obesity reported by the agency in October.
. . The new CDC report also shows that the gender gap is closing. The difference between life expectancy in men and women (who live longer) closed from 5.4 years in 2002 to 5.3 years in 2003. The gap as 7.8 years in 1979.
. . * White males - 75.4 years
. . * Black males - 69.2 years
. . * White females - 80.5 years
. . * Black females - 76.1 years
Hawaii had the lowest, or best mortality rate while Mississippi had the highest.
Mar 1, 05: Results from a recent rat study indicate that a naturally occurring compound in carrots reduces the risk of developing cancer by a third. The compound falcarinol helps protect carrots from fungal diseases. The scientists used raw carrots for the study, so it is not yet known if cooked carrots or carrot juice will exhibit the same beneficial effect, and the mechanism for the vegetable's apparent cancer-fighting effects remains unclear.
Feb 17, 05: US scientists say they have made a breakthrough to produce natural breast implants using human stem cells. The U of Illinois team took stem cells destined to become fat cells and grew them on a special gel-like scaffold, they told a US conference. The scaffold can be moulded into any shape, which means the implants keep their size and shape better than artificial ones. There is also no risk of rupture and leakage.
Feb 21, 05: A small camera mounted on spectacles and connected to the optical nerve could restore the sight of thousands of people suffering from deterioration of the retina, European scientists said. It has the potential to help over 300,000 Europeans whose sight is impaired as the thin layer of tissue which lines the eye and processes images deteriorates. "We have implanted (the device) in two patients so far."
. . A camera mounted on glasses sends images to an electronic device implanted behind the eye and stimulates the optic nerve which passes the information to the brain. Based on the price of hearing devices known as Cochlear implants, which also involve inserting components in the head, the new technology will cost about 20,000 euros ($26,120).
. . Fifteen independent teams around the world are working on similar technology. The device would be sold on the market from 2008-10.
Feb 21, 05: Adults can tolerate nearly 25 times more of the potentially toxic chemical perchlorate in their drinking water than previously thought, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said. This marks the first time the EPA has issued an official guideline on how much perchlorate humans can safely ingest. The chemical --commonly used in rocket fuels and explosives-- was found to contaminate water sources nationwide. More recently, perchlorate has been detected in the majority of the nation's milk and lettuce supply. High concentrations of the chemical are thought to disrupt the thyroid gland, which regulates metabolism and is linked to the development of motor skills in children.
February 18: Exposure to lead may be one of the most significant causes of violent crime in young people, says Herbert Needleman of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. "When environmental lead finds its way into the developing brain, it disturbs neural mechanisms responsible for regulation of impulse", he said Friday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "That can lead to antisocial and criminal behavior." The notion is based on previous studies that show children with higher-then-average levels of lead in their blood exhibit more aggression, attention disorders and delinquency. Another study in the Pittsburgh area found between 18 and 38% of all delinquency could be due to lead.
Feb 21, 05: Scientists in the US have created a robotic arm that can be controlled by thought alone. It has a fully mobile shoulder and elbow and a gripper that works like a hand. In early tests, monkeys had tiny probes inserted into their brains and had their limbs restrained - but were then able to manipulate the robotic arm. It'll begin testing in humans within the next four years.
Feb 16, 05: The term Young Blood --meaning an injection of youthful vigor-- could have a medical origin. Scientists at Stanford University found that plumbing up an old mouse to the blood stream of a young one gave a major boost to muscle recovery time in the older one. By contrast, when old blood was pumped round the body of a young mouse, muscle recovery time became more prolonged. The same was true of the livers of older mice. Researchers said the results suggested that the aging process lay less with the organs themselves than with the tired blood off which they fed.
Feb 9, 05: How quickly you react to this story could have something to do with how long you live. Unfortunately, it's not clear what you should do. A new study suggests reaction time is related to longevity. The research meshes with other studies that have found higher IQs tend to predict longer life.
. . It involved 898 people aged 54-58 in Scotland who took part in a 1988 study that measured their IQ and reaction time --how long it took to press a button once prompted-- plus various health factors. Over the next 14 years, 185 of them died. The new study simply compared the living to the dead based on intelligence and quickness.
. . Higher IQs were linked to living longer, but reaction time was a stronger predictor. While reaction time is thought to be somewhat related to IQ, it is seen as a simpler assessment of the brain's ability to process information.
. . A separate study released in 2003 found a curiously mixed result. With 70 years of data to on nearly 1,000 people, also in Scotland, researchers found people in poor neighborhoods lived longer if they had high IQs. But IQ didn't predict longevity for people in wealthy neighborhoods. Maybe the smarter people learned better health behaviors early in life.
Jan 27, 05: People who literally cannot sit still may have inborn behaviour that keeps them slim even if they overeat a little, researchers in the US say. Tests on slim and overweight people who all described themselves as 'couch potatoes' showed the main difference between the two groups was how long they spent sitting still. They found the obese people spent, on average, more than two extra hours a day sitting still compared with the lean volunteers. The difference in activity accounted for about 350 calories a day -- enough to add 10 pounds a year.
. . They put their obese volunteers on a 1,000 calorie-a-day diet for two months and they lost, on average, 18 pounds. But their activity levels did not change. "And how about if lean people gained weight?" Levine asked. "We took lean people and we overfed them and they gained a lot of excess weight and they remained get-up-and-goers."
. . The tendency to fidget may be genetic or it may be learned at a very early age. "Perhaps we need to think about how schools are run and the fact that kids always want to run and we tell them not to", he said. His group discovered in 1999 what they call non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT, underlies the difference between people who can get away with snacking and those who cannot.
Jan 18, 05: Research suggests that while an unmade bed may look scruffy it is also unappealing to house dust mites --thought to cause asthma and other allergies. A study discovered the bugs cannot survive in the warm, dry conditions found in an unmade bed.
The average bed could be home to up to 1.5 million house dust mites.
. . The bugs, which are less than a millimeter long, feed on scales of human skin and produce allergens which are easily inhaled during sleep. The warm, damp conditions created in an occupied bed are ideal for the creatures, but they are less likely to thrive when moisture is in shorter supply.
Jan 21, 05: Folic acid supplements, widely used by women to prevent birth defects, also may fight hypertension in women, perhaps because they relax blood vessels, researchers said. Folic acid occurs naturally in substances such as orange juice and leafy green vegetables and is added to some products, but only high-dose supplements seem to affect blood pressure, the report said.
. . "While the findings are encouraging, we are not yet ready to recommend that women start increasing their folate intake until more research is conducted."
Jan 21, 05: Peanuts, often derided as unhealthy party food, contain the same amount of beneficial chemicals as strawberries, researchers have found. A University of Florida team says peanuts are rich in antioxidants which protect cells from damage linked to heart disease and cancer. Peanuts also contain high levels of protein and "good" monounsaturated fat. But people should steer clear of salted peanuts.
. . Antioxidants are the naturally occurring substances in plants that protect the body from free radicals --'volatile' chemicals in the blood. Although free radicals do play an important role in the immune system, they also alter cholesterol in a process known as oxidation, which is thought to speed up the hardening of the arteries.
. . Red and orange fruits and vegetables are already known to be particularly high in antioxidants. But the US researchers found peanuts were also high in the beneficial chemicals. Peanuts contain high levels of polyphenols, a family of chemicals commonly found in foods, which have strong antioxidant properties.
. . The team is now looking at the possibility of specifically breeding peanuts high in antioxidants.
. . "Peanuts are high in monounsaturated or 'good' fats. But, regardless of the type of fat, that means they are high in calories.
Jan 13, 05: Researchers have identified a gene that prevents the regeneration of inner ear cells that are critical to hearing, a discovery experts say is the first step toward finding a way to correct the most common form of deafness among the elderly.
. . Researchers found that by eliminating the effects of a single gene they could cause inner ear cells vital to hearing to regrow. The researchers now are screening chemicals that would neutralize the Rb1 protein and, thus, cause hair cells to grow. The regrowth replaces nerve endings, called hair cells, that are often lost to injury or age. "Most deafness is caused by the loss of these hair cells." The cells line the cochlea, part of the inner ear that sends the sensation of sound to the brain. Sonic vibrations from the eardrum and bones of the middle ear are relayed to the cochlea where they excite the hair cells. This energy is converted to electrical signals that are carried by nerves to the brain and interpreted as sound.
. . Humans are born with about 50,000 inner ear hair cells, but the cells decline over time due to injury, disease or age. The inner ear organ that controls balance also uses the hair cells and the gradual loss of these cells leads to balance disorders that are also common among the elderly.
. . "When the right number of cells arise, then we would remove the chemical" and halt the hair cell regeneration. "At the moment, we don't know how to do that", said the scientist, and years of more research are needed.
. . Heller said the Rb1 gene is one of a group of genes that helps control cell growth, and without it, there is a risk of developing tumors. As a result, he said Chen and his team will have to find a way to switch the gene off only in the cells of the inner ear and then to switch it on again. "You need to switch it off and on in the right cell", he said. "Otherwise, you are in trouble."
Jan 12, 05: Here are key differences between updated dietary guidelines and those issued in 2000. The Health and Human Services and Agriculture departments on Wednesday unveiled the new guidelines, which are updated every five years.
- For moderately active people between the ages of 31 and 50, recommended calories would be 2,000 per day for women and 2,400 to 2,600 for men.
Thirty minutes of exercise is the minimum. Exercise for 60 minutes to maintain weight and prevent weight gain. If you've lost weight, exercise for 60 to 90 minutes daily.
- Eat a variety of foods that are high in nutrients and low in saturated and trans fat, cholesterol, added sugars and salt.
- Eat at least 4 1/2 cups of fruits and vegetables a day if you have a 2,000-calorie diet. Eat more or less depending on the calorie level.
- Eat fiber-rich whole fruits and vegetables and whole grains often. Eat and drink little added sugar or caloric sweeteners.
- Keep trans fat as low as possible. Get no more than 10% of your calories from saturated fat and no more than 300 milligrams of cholesterol daily.
- Limit salt to about one level teaspoon a day.
- If you drink alcohol, do so in moderation, about one drink per day for women and two for men.
- Clean hands, food contact surfaces and fruits and vegetables. To avoid getting sick from food, separate raw, cooked and ready-to-eat foods while shopping, preparing or storing foods.
Jan 7, 05: Two leading research groups independently reported today that lowering blood levels of a protein that promotes artery inflammation is just as important as reducing bad cholesterol for preventing heart attacks and strokes. Their conclusions reflect a major shift away from the notion that bad cholesterol, or LDL, is the primary villain in heart disease. Levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) also must be reduced to halt the disease's progression, researchers said.
. . Revised just last year, current treatment guidelines reflect what studies then showed: the importance of lowering LDL to below 70 milligrams per deciliter of blood in high-risk patients.
. . But most doctors don't track CRP as they do cholesterol or prescribe drugs to reduce it, such as Lipitor and other potent statins. If doctors are to provide quality care, the researchers said, that will have to change. The inexpensive CRP test ($10 to $15) is widely available and can be done as part of other blood tests. "Our studies suggest that the higher your level of CRP, the more your coronary artery disease progresses."
. . Ridker said the drug used is not as important as reducing LDL to below 70 for high-risk patients, and reducing CRP to below 2 milligrams per liter of blood. Even when you hit the LDL target, you reduce the risk of recurrent heart attacks or of dying from a heart attack or stroke another 50% by lowering the CRP to 2.
Jan 7, 05: Houston tops a Fitness magazine's annual fattest cities list for the fourth time in five years, with four other Texas cities waddling into the top 25. Detroit was the 2004 heavyweight champion.
. . Philadelphia, Detroit, Memphis, Tennessee, and Chicago followed Houston on the seventh edition of the fat list. Texas cities Dallas, San Antonio, Fort Worth and El Paso were in the top 14. Seattle ranked as the fittest city, followed by Honolulu, Hawaii, Colorado Springs, Colorado, San Francisco and Denver.
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