Category: Health

{Despite their best efforts, no scientist has ever come close to stopping humans from aging. Even anti-aging creams can’t stop Old Father Time.}

But new research from Brigham Young University reveals you may be able to slow one type of aging — the kind that happens inside your cells. As long as you’re willing to sweat.

“Just because you’re 40, doesn’t mean you’re 40 years old biologically,” Tucker said. “We all know people that seem younger than their actual age. The more physically active we are, the less biological aging takes place in our bodies.”

The study, published in the medical journal Preventive Medicine, finds that people who have consistently high levels of physical activity have significantly longer telomeres than those who have sedentary lifestyles, as well as those who are moderately active.

Telomeres are the protein endcaps of our chromosomes. They’re like our biological clock and they’re extremely correlated with age; each time a cell replicates, we lose a tiny bit of the endcaps. Therefore, the older we get, the shorter our telomeres.

Exercise science professor Larry Tucker found adults with high physical activity levels have telomeres with a biological aging advantage of nine years over those who are sedentary, and a seven-year advantage compared to those who are moderately active. To be highly active, women had to engage in 30 minutes of jogging per day (40 minutes for men), five days a week.

“If you want to see a real difference in slowing your biological aging, it appears that a little exercise won’t cut it,” Tucker said. “You have to work out regularly at high levels.”

Tucker analyzed data from 5,823 adults who participated in the CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, one of the few indexes that includes telomere length values for study subjects. The index also includes data for 62 activities participants might have engaged in over a 30-day window, which Tucker analyzed to calculate levels of physical activity.

His study found the shortest telomeres came from sedentary people — they had 140 base pairs of DNA less at the end of their telomeres than highly active folks. Surprisingly, he also found there was no significant difference in telomere length between those with low or moderate physical activity and the sedentary people.

Although the exact mechanism for how exercise preserves telomeres is unknown, Tucker said it may be tied to inflammation and oxidative stress. Previous studies have shown telomere length is closely related to those two factors and it is known that exercise can suppress inflammation and oxidative stress over time.

“We know that regular physical activity helps to reduce mortality and prolong life, and now we know part of that advantage may be due to the preservation of telomeres,” Tucker said.

Source:Science Daily

{Mangoes are great fruits. Not only do they taste great, they also have great nutritional value. Of course, some of us do know this, while some do not.}

I am going to show you some important benefits of MANGOES.

{{ACNE treatment }}

Mangoes are very effective in curing skin problems especially acne. Consuming mango will give you a fresh and glowing skin. But you can also treat acne at home with mango.

Mango aids in clearing the clogged pores of the skin, which are affected with acne. This is a very good home remedy for acne.

First, remove the mango pulp and put it on the acne. Leave it for 10 to 15 minutes and rinse off with warm water.

{{Can help keep diabetes away }}

People with high sugar level can also use mango to ward off early diabetes. Mango helps in moderating insulin levels in the blood. This is due to mangiferin, a substance with antidiabetic properties.

The home remedy involves boiling the tender mango leaves and soaking it overnight. The next morning, the decoction is filtered and taken.

{{Builds your appetite and helps you gain weight }}

Putting on some weight or eating much food can be a challenge for some. Well you could solve that issue with mangoes.

A normal-sized mango usually weighs about 200 g and contains 150 kcal combined with 28 g of carbohydrates, protein and negligible amount of fat.

Eating mango along with milk will help you gain weight.

This home remedy can play a role of a strong natural appetite stimulant, thus useful in treating anorexia.

{{Toothache relief }}

You can make a good toothpaste with dried mango seeds. It also strengthens the gums and helps in curing pyorrhoea.

Also chew tender leaves to avoid bleeding in the gums and reducing pain from toothache. A tooth powder can be made from burnt mango leaves, which also relieves toothache

{{They make the treatment of bilious disorders }}

Bilious disorders are problems associated with the liver or bile secretions. The liver plays an important role in the body, so any disorder affecting it can be harmful.

The acids present in green mangoes enhance the secretion of bile and act as intestinal antiseptic. Consuming green mangoes daily with honey and pepper will help in treating biliousness.

{{They are helpful in the treatment of heat stroke}}

Heat stroke is a common problem in the summer. A herbal remedy prepared with mango can be used to hydrate the body and cure heat stroke.

To prepare this remedy, unripe mangoes are steamed and boiled with sugar and salt, it is a nice remedy for heat exhaustion and heat stroke in summer.

{{They keep Anaemia out }}

Mangoes are extremely rich in iron. This makes them a superb fruit for preventing anemia and improving blood production.

{{They help keep pile away }}

If you want to keep piles off from you, then you must boil tender raw mango with tamarind leaves and eat. Alternatively, grind mango seeds and mix with buttermilk. When taken twice a day it helps people with piles.

Source:Elcrema

{Nothing gives comfort quite like a warm hug but that isn’t the only thing you get from a hug. Besides helping you feel close and connected to people you care about, a hug a day just might keep the doctor away.}

Below are 6 reasons why you should get a hug everyday

{{1. Hugging makes you feel good }}

Oxytocin is released when we hug someone and this makes us feel warm and good inside. Oxytocin also heal feelings of loneliness, isolation, and anger.

{{2. Hugging strengthens our immune system }}

According to a 2015 study from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, people who hug regularly are less likely less likely to come down with a cold. The researchers also found that people who hug frequently have less severe cold symptoms compared to those who don’t.

“Hugging protects people who are under stress from the increased risk for colds [that’s] usually associated with stress,” study author Sheldon Cohen, a professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania is quoted on US News. Hugging “is a marker of intimacy and helps generate the feeling that others are there to help in the face of adversity.”

{{3. Hugging lowers blood pressure }}

Hugging also lowers your blood pressure. According to a report in NPR, pressure receptors called “Pacinian corpuscles” which are found under the skin get activated when you hug. The Pacinian corpuscles then sends signals to the vagus nerve, an area of the brain that is responsible for (among many things) lowering blood pressure.

{{4. Hugging helps build trust }}

You build trust and a sense of safety when you hug your partner regularly. This helps with open and honest communication.

{{5. Hugging is good for the heart }}

Researchers have also found hugging to be good for the heart. According to researchers from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, people who don’t hug their partner developed a quickened heart rate of 10 beats per minute compared to the five beats per minute among those who hug their partner regularly.

{{6. Hugging helps you relieve stress }}

According to a report on NPR, hugging results in a decrease of the stress hormone cortisol.

“Having this friendly touch, just somebody simply touching our arm and holding it, buffers the physiological consequences of this stressful response,” says Matt Hertenstein, an experimental psychologist at DePauw University in Indiana as quoted on NPR.

Source:Elcrema

{A low resting heart rate, which has been linked to aggression and violent offending, has been implicated in stalking behavior in males, according to a recent study.}

“Low Resting Heart Rate and Stalking Perpetration,” by Danielle Boisvert, Jessica Wells, Todd Armstrong, Richard H. Lewis, Matthias Woeckener and Matt Nobles, is the first study to incorporate the biological factor of resting heart rate in assessing stalking behaviors and is among a growing body of literature linking autonomic nervous system functions to antisocial behavior.

The study found that males with a low resting heart rate were at significantly greater risk of engaging in stalking behavior. Based on arousal theory, those with low levels of arousal are less fearful, more likely to seek opportunities to pursue victims to feel stimulated, and are more likely to exhibit impulsive behaviors.

“Participants whose heart rate was one standard deviation below the mean or lower had nearly three times the odds of having engaged in stalking as compared with all other participants, suggesting that low resting heart rate is associated with increased prevalence of stalking behavior,” said Boisvert. “Overall, our findings suggest that while heart rate is generally found to be associated with aggression and antisocial behavior across the sexes, these associations may be sex specific when discussing stalking perpetration.”

Recent estimates suggest that 16.2 percent of women and 5.2 percent of men in the U.S. have been stalked at some point in their lifetime, which represents 20 million women and six million men. Stalking can lead to significant psychological, social and economic effects for victims, costing an estimated $342 million in the U.S. annually.

The study is based 384 college students from a Southern university who answered a survey on stalking measures and had their heart rate monitored through a finger pulse oximeter. Participants were asked if they followed, watched or spied on someone; or tried to communicate through a variety of written and physical methods with someone against their will over the last year. Of the sample, 32 had engaged in these stalking behaviors, including 15 females and 17 males.

Source:Science Daily

{Childhood bullying may lead to long-lasting health consequences, impacting psychosocial risk factors for cardiovascular health well into adulthood, according to a study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The unique study tracked a diverse group of over 300 American men from first grade through their early thirties and the findings indicate that being a victim of bullying and being a bully were both linked to negative outcomes in adulthood.}

The study, led by psychology researcher Karen A. Matthews of the University of Pittsburgh, showed that men who were bullies during childhood were more likely to smoke cigarettes and use marijuana, to experience stressful circumstances, and to be aggressive and hostile at follow-up more than 20 years later. Men who were bullied as children, on the other hand, tended to have more financial difficulties, felt more unfairly treated by others, and were less optimistic about their future two decades later.

These outcomes are especially critical, the researchers note, because they put the men at higher risk for poor health, including serious cardiovascular issues, later in life.

“The long term effects of bullying involvement are important to establish,” says Matthews. “Most research on bullying is based on addressing mental health outcomes, but we wished to examine the potential impact of involvement in bullying on physical health and psychosocial risk factors for poor physical health.”

Previous research has linked psychosocial risk factors like stress, anger, and hostility to increased risk of health problems such as heart attacks, stroke, and high blood pressure. Because bullying leads to stressful interpersonal interactions for both the perpetrators and targets, Matthews and colleagues hypothesized that both bullies and bullying victims might be at higher risk of negative health outcomes related to stress.

The research team recruited participants from the Pittsburgh Youth Study, a longitudinal study of 500 boys enrolled in Pittsburgh public schools in 1987 and 1988, when the boys were in the first grade. More than half of the boys in the original study were Black and nearly 60% of the boys’ families received public financial assistance such as food stamps.

Along with regular assessments on psychosocial, behavioral, and biological risk factors for poor health, researchers collected data from children, parents, and teachers on bullying behavior when the participants were 10 to 12 years old.

Matthews and colleagues successfully recruited over 300 of the original study participants to complete questionnaires on psychosocial health factors such as stress levels, health history, diet and exercise, and socioeconomic status. Around 260 of the men came into the lab for blood draws, cardiovascular and inflammation assessments, and height and weight measurements.

Unexpectedly, neither bullying nor being bullied in childhood was related to inflammation or metabolic syndrome in adulthood. However, both childhood bullies and bullying victims had increased psychosocial risk factors for poor physical health.

The boys who engaged in more bullying in childhood tended to be more aggressive and were more likely to smoke in adulthood, risk factors for cardiovascular disease and other life-threatening diseases.

The boys with higher scores for being bullied tended to have lower incomes, more financial difficulties, and more stressful life experiences. They also perceived more unfair treatment relative to their peers. These outcomes are also related to risk for cardiovascular disease.

“The childhood bullies were still aggressive as adults and victims of bullies were still feeling like they were treated unfairly as adults,” Matthews explained. “Both groups had a lot of stress in their adult lives — so the impact of childhood bullying lasts a long time!”

The effects of bullying were fairly similar for both Black and White men, as well as those participants who came from low socioeconomic status families.

Matthews and colleagues anticipate that both bullies and their victims may be at greater risk for poor physical health, including cardiovascular-disease events, over the long term. But they caution that many participants in the original study could not participate in this follow-up study because they were either deceased or incarcerated, which may have affected the results in unknown ways.

The findings suggest that identifying children who are at risk for involvement in bullying and intervening early on may yield long-term psychosocial and even physical health benefits that last into adulthood.

Source:Science Daily

{The largest observational study to date of dairy intakes and bone and frailty measurements in older adults has found that increased yogurt consumption was associated with a higher hip bone density and a significantly reduced risk of osteoporosis in older women and men on the island of Ireland, after taking into account traditional risk factors.}

The study led by Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, in collaboration with St James’s Hospital Dublin and co-investigators from Nutrition at Ulster University, Coleraine investigated participants from the Trinity Ulster Department of Agriculture (TUDA) ageing cohort study (>5000 people).

Total hip and femoral neck bone mineral density measures in females were 3.1-3.9% higher among those with the highest yogurt intakes compared to the lowest and improvements were observed in some of the physical function measures (6.7% better). In men, the biomarker of bone breakdown was 9.5% lower in those with the highest yogurt intakes compared to the lowest. This is an indication of reduced bone turnover.

To determine risk factors for being diagnosed as osteoporotic, the research team analysed a wide range of factors such as BMI, kidney function, physical activity, servings of milk or cheese, and calcium or vitamin D supplements as well as traditional risk factors for bone health (e.g. smoking, inactivity, alcohol etc.). After adjusting for all these factors, each unit increase in yogurt intake in women was associated with a 31% lower risk of osteopenia and a 39% lower risk of osteoporosis. In men, a 52% lower risk of osteoporosis was found. Vitamin D supplements were also associated with significantly reduced risks both in men and women.

Osteoporosis is a chronic condition associated with a reduction in bone strength and an increased risk of bone fracture. The associated costs of osteoporotic fractures are estimated to be over €650 million annually in Europe.

Lead author of the study and research fellow at the Centre for Medical Gerontology, Trinity, Dr Eamon Laird said: “Yogurt is a rich source of different bone promoting nutrients and thus our findings in some ways are not surprising. The data suggest that improving yogurt intakes could be a strategy for maintaining bone health but it needs verification through future research as it is observational.”

Dr Miriam Casey, senior investigator of this study and Consultant Physician at St James’s Hospital Dublin said: “The results demonstrate a significant association of bone health and frailty with a relatively simple and cheap food product. What is now needed is verification of these observations from randomized controlled trials as we still don’t understand the exact mechanisms which could be due to the benefits of micro-biota or the macro and micro nutrient composition of the yogurt.”

The study included 1,057 women and 763 men who underwent a bone-mineral-density (BMD) assessment and 2,624 women and 1,290 men who had their physical function measured. Yogurt consumption information was obtained from a questionnaire and categorized as never, 2-3 times per week and more than one serving per day. Other factors examined included daily intakes of other dairy products, meat, fish, smoking and alcohol and other traditional risk factors that affect bone health.

Source:Science Daily

{In sleep-deprived mice, caffeine and other drugs to promote wakefulness ease pain better than analgesics}

New research from Boston Children’s Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) shows that chronic sleep loss increases pain sensitivity. It suggests that chronic pain sufferers can get relief by getting more sleep, or, short of that, taking medications to promote wakefulness such as caffeine. Both approaches performed better than standard analgesics in a rigorous study in mice, described in the May 8, 2017 issue of Nature Medicine.

Pain physiologist Alban Latremoliere, PhD, of Boston Children’s and sleep physiologist Chloe Alexandre, PhD, of BIDMC precisely measured the effects of acute or chronic sleep loss on sleepiness and sensitivity to both painful and non-painful stimuli. They then tested standard pain medications, like ibuprofen and morphine, as well as wakefulness-promoting agents like caffeine and modafinil. Their findings reveal an unexpected role for alertness in setting pain sensitivity.

{{Keeping mice awake, through custom entertainment}}

The team started by measuring normal sleep cycles, using tiny headsets that took electroencephalography (EEG) and electromyography (EMG) readings. “For each mouse, we have exact baseline data on how much they sleep and what their sensory sensitivity is,” says Latremoliere, who works in the lab of Clifford Woolf, PhD, in the F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Boston Children’s.

Next, unlike other sleep studies that force mice to stay awake walking treadmills or falling from platforms, Alexandre, Latremoliere and colleagues deprived mice of sleep in a way that mimics what happens with people: They entertained them.

“We developed a protocol to chronically sleep-deprive mice in a non-stressful manner, by providing them with toys and activities at the time they were supposed to go to sleep, thereby extending the wake period,” says Alexandre, who works in the lab of Thomas Scammell, MD, at BIDMC. “This is similar to what most of us do when we stay awake a little bit too much watching late-night TV each weekday.”

To keep the mice awake, researchers kept vigil, providing the mice with custom-made toys as interest flagged while being careful not to overstimulate them. “Mice love nesting, so when they started to get sleepy (as seen by their EEG/EMG pattern) we would give them nesting materials like a wipe or cotton ball,” says Latremoliere. “Rodents also like chewing, so we introduced a lot of activities based around chewing, for example, having to chew through something to get to a cotton ball.”

In this way, they kept groups of six to 12 mice awake for as long as 12 hours in one session, or six hours for five consecutive days, monitoring sleepiness and stress hormones (to make sure they weren’t stressed) and testing for pain along the way.

Pain sensitivity was measured in a blinded fashion by exposing mice to controlled amounts of heat, cold, pressure or capsaicin (the agent in hot chili peppers) and then measuring how long it took the animal to move away (or lick away the discomfort caused by capsaicin). The researchers also tested responses to non-painful stimuli, such as jumping when startled by a sudden loud sound.

“We found that five consecutive days of moderate sleep deprivation can significantly exacerbate pain sensitivity over time in otherwise healthy mice,” says Alexandre. “The response was specific to pain, and was not due to a state of general hyperexcitability to any stimuli.”

{{Analgesics vs. wake-promoting agents}}

Surprisingly, common analgesics like ibuprofen did not block sleep-loss-induced pain hypersensitivity. Even morphine lost most of its efficacy in sleep-deprived mice. These observations suggest that patients using these drugs for pain relief might have to increase their dose to compensate for lost efficacy due to sleep loss, thereby increasing their risk for side effects.

In contrast, both caffeine and modafinil, drugs used to promote wakefulness, successfully blocked the pain hypersensitivity caused by both acute and chronic sleep loss. Interestingly, in non-sleep-deprived mice, these compounds had no analgesic properties.

“This represents a new kind of analgesic that hadn’t been considered before, one that depends on the biological state of the animal,” says Woolf, director of the Kirby Center at Boston Children’s. “Such drugs could help disrupt the chronic pain cycle, in which pain disrupts sleep, which then promotes pain, which further disrupts sleep.”

{{A new approach to chronic pain?}}

The researchers conclude that rather than just taking painkillers, patients with chronic pain might benefit from better sleep habits or sleep-promoting medications at night, coupled with daytime alertness-promoting agents to try to break the pain cycle. Some painkillers already include caffeine as an ingredient, although its mechanism of action isn’t yet known. Both caffeine and modafinil boost dopamine circuits in the brain, so that may provide a clue.

“This work was supported by a novel NIH program that required a pain scientist to join a non-pain scientist to tackle a completely new area of research,” notes Scammel, professor of neurology at BIDMC. “This cross-disciplinary collaboration enabled our labs to discover unsuspected links between sleep and pain with actionable clinical implications for improving pain management.”

“Many patients with chronic pain suffer from poor sleep and daytime fatigue, and some pain medications themselves can contribute to these co-morbidities,” notes Kiran Maski, MD, a specialist in sleep disorders at Boston Children’s. “This study suggests a novel approach to pain management that would be relatively easy to implement in clinical care. Clinical research is needed to understand what sleep duration is required and to test the efficacy of wake-promoting medications in chronic pain patients.”

Source:Science Daily

{When treating depression, the goal is to help individuals achieve full recovery and normal functioning. While traditional treatment such as medication or psychotherapy is effective for many patients, some may not fully recover even with these treatments. Researchers sought to determine if the addition of hatha yoga would improve treatment outcomes for these patients. They found that the benefits of yoga were less pronounced early in treatment, but may accumulate over time.}

The research, entitled “Adjunctive yoga v. health education for persistent major depression: a randomized controlled trial,” has been published in Psychological Medicine. The research was led by Lisa Uebelacker, PhD, a research psychologist in the Psychosocial Research Department at Butler Hospital, a Care New England hospital, and an associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. The team also included Gary Epstein-Lubow, MD; Ana M. Abrantes, PhD; Audrey Tyrka, MD, PhD; Brandon A. Gaudiano, PhD; and Ivan W. Miller III, PhD, of Butler Hospital and the Warren Alpert Medical School; Geoffrey Tremont, PhD and Tanya Tran of Rhode Island Hospital and the Warren Alpert Medical School; Tom Gillette of Eyes of the World Yoga; and David Strong of the University of California, San Diego.

“The purpose of this study was to examine whether hatha yoga is effective for treating depression when used in addition to antidepressant medication,” explained Dr. Uebelacker. “We did not see statistically significant differences between hatha yoga and a control group (health education) at 10 weeks, however, when we examined outcomes over a period of time including the three and six months after yoga classes ended, we found yoga was superior to health education in alleviating depression symptoms.”

According to Dr. Uebelacker, this is the largest study of yoga for depression to date. The team enrolled individuals with current or recent major depression who were receiving antidepressant medication and continued to have clinically significant depression symptoms. Participants were randomized into two groups — those who participated in a hatha yoga class and a control group who took part in a health education class. The intervention phase lasted 10 weeks and participants were followed for six months afterward.

“We hypothesized that yoga participants would show lower depression severity over time as assessed by the Quick Inventory of Depression Symptomatology (QIDS), as well as better social and role functioning, better general health perceptions and physical functioning, and less physical pain relative to the control group,” said Dr. Uebelacker. “We found that yoga did indeed have an impact on depression symptoms.”

Source:Science Daily

{Researchers restore the memory performance of Methuselah mice to a juvenile stage}

Memory performance decreases with increasing age. Cannabis can reverse these ageing processes in the brain. This was shown in mice by scientists at the University of Bonn with their colleagues at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel). Old animals were able to regress to the state of two-month-old mice with a prolonged low-dose treatment with a cannabis active ingredient. This opens up new options, for instance, when it comes to treating dementia. The results are now presented in the journal Nature Medicine.

Like any other organ, our brain ages. As a result, cognitive ability also decreases with increasing age. This can be noticed, for instance, in that it becomes more difficult to learn new things or devote attention to several things at the same time. This process is normal, but can also promote dementia. Researchers have long been looking for ways to slow down or even reverse this process.

Scientists at the University of Bonn and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel) have now achieved this in mice. These animals have a relatively short life expectancy in nature and display pronounced cognitive deficits even at twelve months of age. The researchers administered a small quantity of THC, the active ingredient in the hemp plant (cannabis), to mice aged two, twelve and 18 months over a period of four weeks.

Afterwards, they tested learning capacity and memory performance in the animals — including, for instance, orientation skills and the recognition of other mice. Mice who were only given a placebo displayed natural age-dependent learning and memory losses. In contrast, the cognitive functions of the animals treated with cannabis were just as good as the two-month-old control animals. “The treatment completely reversed the loss of performance in the old animals,” reported Prof. Andreas Zimmer from the Institute of Molecular Psychiatry at the University of Bonn and member of the Cluster of Excellence ImmunoSensation.

Years of meticulous research

This treatment success is the result of years of meticulous research. First of all, the scientists discovered that the brain ages much faster when mice do not possess any functional receptors for THC. These cannabinoid 1 (CB1) receptors are proteins to which the substances dock and thus trigger a signal chain. CB1 is also the reason for the intoxicating effect of THC in cannabis products, such as hashish or marihuana, which accumulate at the receptor. THC imitates the effect of cannabinoids produced naturally in the body, which fulfil important functions in the brain. “With increasing age, the quantity of the cannabinoids naturally formed in the brain reduces,” says Prof. Zimmer. “When the activity of the cannabinoid system declines, we find rapid ageing in the brain.”

To discover precisely what effect the THC treatment has in old mice, the researchers examined the brain tissue and gene activity of the treated mice. The findings were surprising: the molecular signature no longer corresponded to that of old animals, but was instead very similar to that of young animals. The number of links between the nerve cells in the brain also increased again, which is an important prerequisite for learning ability. “It looked as though the THC treatment turned back the molecular clock,” says Zimmer.

{{Next step: clinical trial on humans}}

A low dose of the administered THC was chosen so that there was no intoxicating effect in the mice. Cannabis products are already permitted as medications, for instance as pain relief. As a next step, the researchers want to conduct a clinical trial to investigate whether THC also reverses ageing processes in the brain in humans and can increase cognitive ability.

The North Rhine-Westphalia science minister Svenja Schulze appeared thrilled by the study: “The promotion of knowledge-led research is indispensable, as it is the breeding ground for all matters relating to application. Although there is a long path from mice to humans, I feel extremely positive about the prospect that THC could be used to treat dementia, for instance.”

Source:Science Daily