Category: Health

{Unless you’ve never cooked, pretty much everyone has at some point in their life, had to cut onion. If like me, you have, then you know it’s a rarity to do the task without letting out a tear or more. Onions contain a chemical called syn-Propanethial-S-oxide. It’s a type of sulphur, and is volatile in nature. This chemical is released when you chop your onion. Due to its volatile form, syn-Propanethial-S-oxide becomes acidic when it hits the air; it’s the sulphuric acid it produces that hurts the eye. The eye then, struggles to keep it off, resulting in some tears. Now, how do you escape crying while you chop an onion? Well, I know a few tricks.}

{{ Keep a spoon in your month }}

Weird, but it actually works. As you chop your onion, try putting a spoon in your mouth. Due to the metalic form of a spoon, it’ll keep you from crying. The chemicals in the onion bind to the metal of the spoon before they can get to your eyes.

{{Chew something }}

If you have bread around you, get some in your mouth, but don’t forget to leave some of it hanging off your mouth. It’s believed that the bread would soak up the hurtful chemical before they get to your eyes. Bubble gums also work.

{{Dip in water before you chop }}

After you peel off the outer layer of the onion, dip it in water, and leave for a few seconds. The water will draw off some of the harshness of the chemical, so you don’t cry while you chop.

{{Burn a candle }}

This may seem rather weird unless it’s dark, but you know what they say, ‘drastic times, drastic measures’. So what if you have to light a candle to avoid crying as you chop that onion?

Now, to why this measure is effective. It’s believed that the flame on the candle would get rid of some of the fumes before they get closer to your eyes.

{{ Put in the fridge }}

Finally, throw an onion in a refrigerator for about 15 minutes before you chop it. It’s believed that the cold would stop it from releasing the molecules which cause all the problems.

Source:Elcrema

{If you are trying to watch your weight, it’s really important you pay enough attention to what you eat. When you eat foods with almost zero calories, you end up burning more calories by chewing and digesting them than you’ll consume.}

These healthy snacks below are known as ‘zero-calorie foods’ by experts because they won’t contribute to your daily calorie total if eaten in moderation.

{{1. Apples }}

Apples contain just 47 kcals per 100g and they are packed with vitamins such as A, and C. Apples also promote heart health.

{{2. Cucumber }}

Cucumber is mostly water and contains just 6 kcals per 1 inch piece. Cucumbers are good for the eyes and heart and they also help us stay hydrated.

{{3. Watermelon }}

Watermelon helps keep us hydrated and its calorie content is just 16 kcals in a quarter of a slice. Watermelons help prevent weight gain because it stops the buildup of bad cholesterol.

{{4. Lemons }}

The calorie content of lemon is just 3 kcals per slice.

{{5. Garlic }}

Garlics are zero calorie foods if you just consume one clove. The calorie content of garlic is 49 kcals per 100g.

{{6. Cranberries }}

The calorie content of cranberries is 15 kcals per 100g. Cranberries also provide us with vitamin C, fibre, manganese and plenty of antioxidants.

{{7. Apricots }}

Apricots help promote good heart health and its calorie content is just 12 kcals per apricot.

{{8. Green beans }}

The calorie content of green beans is just 24 kcals per 100g. Eating green beans will also help you get a flat stomach.

{{9. Strawberries }}

Strawberries are an ideal food for those watching their weight due to its low calorie content. It’s calorie content is 3 kcals per fruit. Strawberries also aid digestion.

{{10. Lettuce }}

Lettuce is mostly made of water and its calorie content is just 14 kcals per 100g.

Source:Elcrema

{Seemingly countless self-help books and seminars tell you to tap into the right side of your brain to stimulate creativity. But forget the “right-brain” myth — a new study suggests it’s how well the two brain hemispheres communicate that sets highly creative people apart.
}

For the study, statisticians David Dunson of Duke University and Daniele Durante of the University of Padova analyzed the network of white matter connections among 68 separate brain regions in healthy college-age volunteers.

The brain’s white matter lies underneath the outer grey matter. It is composed of bundles of wires, or axons, which connect billions of neurons and carry electrical signals between them.

A team led by neuroscientist Rex Jung of the University of New Mexico collected the data using an MRI technique called diffusion tensor imaging, which allows researchers to peer through the skull of a living person and trace the paths of all the axons by following the movement of water along them. Computers then comb through each of the 1-gigabyte scans and convert them to three-dimensional maps — wiring diagrams of the brain.

Jung’s team used a combination of tests to assess creativity. Some were measures of a type of problem-solving called “divergent thinking,” or the ability to come up with many answers to a question. They asked people to draw as many geometric designs as they could in five minutes. They also asked people to list as many new uses as they could for everyday objects, such as a brick or a paper clip. The participants also filled out a questionnaire about their achievements in ten areas, including the visual arts, music, creative writing, dance, cooking and science.

The responses were used to calculate a composite creativity score for each person.

Dunson and Durante trained computers to sift through the data and identify differences in brain structure.

They found no statistical differences in connectivity within hemispheres, or between men and women. But when they compared people who scored in the top 15 percent on the creativity tests with those in the bottom 15 percent, high-scoring people had significantly more connections between the right and left hemispheres.

The differences were mainly in the brain’s frontal lobe.

Dunson said their approach could also be used to predict the probability that a person will be highly creative simply based on his or her brain network structure. “Maybe by scanning a person’s brain we could tell what they’re likely to be good at,” Dunson said.

The study is part of a decade-old field, connectomics, which uses network science to understand the brain. Instead of focusing on specific brain regions in isolation, connectomics researchers use advanced brain imaging techniques to identify and map the rich, dense web of links between them.

Dunson and colleagues are now developing statistical methods to find out whether brain connectivity varies with I.Q., whose relationship to creativity is a subject of ongoing debate.

In collaboration with neurology professor Paul Thompson at the University of Southern California, they’re also using their methods for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease, to help distinguish it from normal aging.

By studying the patterns of interconnections in healthy and diseased brains, they and other researchers also hope to better understand dementia, epilepsy, schizophrenia and other neurological conditions such as traumatic brain injury or coma.

“Data sharing in neuroscience is increasingly more common as compared to only five years ago,” said Joshua Vogelstein of Johns Hopkins University, who founded the Open Connectome Project and processed the raw data for the study.

Just making sense of the enormous datasets produced by brain imaging studies is a challenge, Dunson said.

Most statistical methods for analyzing brain network data focus on estimating properties of single brains, such as which regions serve as highly connected hubs. But each person’s brain is wired differently, and techniques for identifying similarities and differences in connectivity across individuals and between groups have lagged behind.

Source:Science Daily

{Researchers find that air pollution from wood burning linked to increased risk of heart attacks in seniors.}

The risk of acute myocardial infarction for the elderly living in and around small cities is increased by air pollution caused by biomass burning from woodstoves.

It is well documented that air pollution in big cities causes heart and lung problems. But what are its consequences on people in smaller urban centres?

By comparing pollution data from three cities in British Columbia (Prince George, Kamloops and Courtenay/Comox) with hospital admissions, researchers from McGill and Health Canada found that rising concentrations of fine particulate air pollution caused by wood burning were associated with increased hospitalization for myocardial infarction. During the cold season, when pollution from woodstoves is at its highest, the risk of heart attacks among subjects of 65 years and older increased by 19%.

“We noticed that the association was stronger when more of the air pollution came from wood burning, says McGill University professor Scott Weichenthal, lead author of a new study published in Epidemiology. This suggests that the source of pollution matters and that all particulate air pollution is perhaps not equally harmful when it comes to cardiovascular disease.”

{{Improving public health}}

Scott Weichenthal thinks the findings might push cities across Canada to tackle air pollution caused by fireplaces and woodstoves. Increasing winter smog alerts have prompted cities such as Montreal to bring forward bylaws forcing homeowners to register and, eventually, replace their stoves with cleaner sources of heating. The study, says Weichenthal, gives credence to “initiatives aimed at reducing air pollution from residential wood burning in the interest of public health.”

Source:Science Daily

New research backs up what many women already know: They’re sleep deprived. Unlike men, a good night’s sleep for women is affected by having children in the house, according to a preliminary study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 69th Annual Meeting in Boston, April 22 to 28, 2017.

“I think these findings may bolster those women who say they feel exhausted,” said study author Kelly Sullivan, PhD, of Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Ga., and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. “Our study found not only are they not sleeping long enough, they also report feeling tired throughout the day.”

For the study, researchers examined data from a nationwide telephone survey of 5,805 people. Participants were asked how long they slept, with seven to nine hours per day considered optimum and less than six hours considered insufficient. They were also asked how many days they felt tired in the past month.

Researchers looked at age, race, education, marital status, number of children in the household, income, body mass index, exercise, employment and snoring as possible factors linked to sleep deprivation.

Among the 2,908 women aged 45 years and younger in the study, researchers found the only factor associated with getting enough sleep was having children in the house, with each child increasing the odds of insufficient sleep by nearly 50 percent.

For women under 45, 48 percent of women with children reported getting at least seven hours of sleep, compared to 62 percent of women without children.

No other factors — including exercise, marital status and education — were linked to how long younger women slept.

The study found that not only was living with children associated with how long younger women slept, but also how often they felt tired. Younger women with children reported feeling tired 14 days per month, on average, compared to 11 days for younger women without children in the household. Having children in the house was not linked to how long men slept.

“Getting enough sleep is a key component of overall health and can impact the heart, mind and weight,” said Sullivan, “It’s important to learn what is keeping people from getting the rest they need so we can help them work toward better health.”

Source:Science Daily

{A weight loss drug has reduced the risk of type 2 diabetes by 80 per cent compared to placebo.
}

The drug, which increases the amount of appetite-supressing hormones produced by the gut, was tested on overweight people with ‘prediabetes’. This is also known as ‘borderline diabetes,’ and is characterised by slightly increased blood sugar levels. The condition often leads to type 2 diabetes when untreated.

Prediabetes affects one in ten people in the UK, and progresses into diabetes in 5-10 per cent of patients within ten years. Prediabetes is curable with exercise and a healthier diet, but once it progresses into diabetes, it is significantly harder to treat. Both conditions are strongly linked to early death and poor health outcomes like nerve damage, blindness and amputation.

Now, obesity expert Professor Carel le Roux from Imperial College London and colleagues have found that a drug already used for obesity and diabetes can help to prevent progression into diabetes when combined with diet and exercise, and could even cure patients of prediabetes altogether.

The study is published in The Lancet and was funded by Novo Nordisk.

The researchers recruited 2,254 obese adults with prediabetes at 191 research sites in 27 countries worldwide. After splitting participants into two groups, they studied whether adding daily self-administered injections of liraglutide to diet and exercise helped to prevent progression into diabetes, compared to diet and exercise alone.

After three years, the researchers found that the patients given liraglutide were 80 per cent less likely to develop diabetes than those in the placebo group. In 60 per cent of those patients, prediabetes was reversed and patients returned to healthy blood sugar levels.

Of the patients who did go on to develop diabetes, those who were given liraglutide took nearly three times longer to develop the disease than those in the placebo group. In addition, liraglutide was linked to greater sustained weight loss after three years compared to placebo, with those on liraglutide losing 7 per cent body weight compared to 2 per cent body weight in the placebo group.

Co-author Professor le Roux, from Imperial’s Department of Medicine, said: “These groundbreaking results could pave the way for a widely used, effective, and safe drug to reverse prediabetes and prevent diabetes in 80 per cent of at-risk people. This could improve the health of the population and save millions on healthcare spending.”

Professor le Roux added that the drug seems to work by mimicking the action of naturally-produced hormone that supresses appetite, called GLP-1. This compound is released in response to food, and interacts with the brain’s hypothalamus to suppress appetite.

However previous studies have found that many obese people produce less of this hormone, which may lead to them over-eating. Liraglutide mimics the effects of GLP-1, essentially doing the hormone’s job to regulate appetite.

Professor le Roux said: “Liraglutide promotes weight loss by activating brain areas that control appetite and eating, so that people feel fuller sooner after meals and their food intake is reduced. Although liraglutide’s role in weight loss is well known, this is the first time it has been shown to essentially reverse prediabetes and prevent diabetes, albeit with the help of diet and exercise.”

Liraglutide is already being used to manage weight and diabetes, but it is expensive and not yet widely available in the UK. However, future studies could help develop a test for GLP-1 deficiency, to ensure the drug is given only to those who would benefit. Alternatively, patients could undergo a 12 week trial where the drug is stopped if there is no improvement within that time.

Source:Science Daily

{People who suffer long-term stress may also be more prone to obesity.}

People who suffer long-term stress may also be more prone to obesity, according to research by scientists at UCL which involved examining hair samples for levels of cortisol, a hormone which regulates the body’s response to stress.

The paper, published in the journal Obesity, showed that exposure to higher levels of cortisol over several months is associated with people being more heavily, and more persistently, overweight.

Chronic stress has long been hypothesised to be implicated in obesity — people tend to report overeating and ‘comfort eating’ foods high in fat, sugar and calories in times of stress, and the stress hormone cortisol plays an important role in metabolism and determining where fat is stored.

Previous studies looking at the link between cortisol and obesity relied mainly on measurements of the hormone in blood, saliva or urine which may vary according to the time of day and other situational factors. These studies failed to capture long-term cortisol levels.

This research involved 2,527 men and women aged 54 and older taking part in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, taking data over a four-year period.

In the research, the scientists took a lock of hair 2cm long from each participant which was cut as close possible to a person’s scalp — this represented approximately two months’ hair growth with associated accumulated levels of cortisol. They also examined the participants’ weight, body mass index and waist circumference and how hair cortisol related to the persistence of obesity over time.

They found that people who had higher levels of cortisol present in their hair tended to have larger waist circumference measurements, were heavier, and had a higher body mass index (BMI). Individuals classified as obese on the basis of their BMI (greater than or equal to 30) or waist circumference (greater than or equal to 102cm in men, 88cm in women) had particularly high levels of hair cortisol.

“These results provide consistent evidence that chronic stress is associated with higher levels of obesity,” said Dr Sarah Jackson (UCL Epidemiology and Public Health) who led the research. “People who had higher hair cortisol levels also tended to have larger waist measurements, which is important because carrying excess fat around the abdomen is a risk factor for heart disease, diabetes, and premature death.”

“Hair cortisol is a relatively new measure which offers a suitable and easily obtainable method for assessing chronically high levels of cortisol concentrations in weight research and may therefore aid in further advancing understanding in this area.”

There were limitations to the study, which included the fact the data was from an older population in which levels of cortisol may differ relative to younger adults and the sample was almost exclusively white. It is not currently known whether chronically elevated cortisol levels are a cause or a consequence of obesity.

More research is needed and if causation is proved, then targeting cortisol levels may offer a new method for treating obesity.

Source:Science Daily

{Some people can’t come to the explanation of why their fart smells so bad.}

Flatulence is a natural human occurrence and it is considered to be a sign of a healthy digestive tract. The average human being passes between 500 and 1500 milliliters of gas through their rectum daily. That amounts to ten to twenty farts each day.

{{So why do some farts smell?}}

1. A major reason farts smell is the consumption of foods that are high in sulphur. Sulphur has an odour of rotten eggs and is notorious for causing foul-smelling farts. Foods high in sulphur include vegetables, meat, eggs, cheese, whole cow’s milk, garlic, onions, and sulfite preserved foods like wine and dried fruits.

2. Intestinal gas is composed of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and methane. These gases are generally odourless, but can become foul-smelling when other gases, such as sulfates, are added. If the gas remains in the intestines for an extended period of time, bacteria start adding foul-smelling sulfates to it.

3. Consumption of foods rich in carbohydrates like potatoes, bread and vegetables are good, but your stomach doesn’t fully digest them. They pass into the small intestine and then the large intestine, which are long tubes leading to your anus. Bacteria break the carbohydrates into smaller pieces and then release gases like hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Those gases don’t smell. But other bacteria in the gut take those odourless chemicals and make them into compounds that do smell.

4. Less commonly, frequent and extremely stinky farts can be a sign of a chronic problem, like irritable bowel syndrome or celiac disease, or an infection like gastroenteritis.

5. According to Dr. Myron Brand, a gastroenterologist at Connecticut Gastroenterology Consultants: “Smelly odour is not bad; it’s just a function of what you’re eating and what bacteria are doing inside your gastrointestinal tract. Everyone is different,” Dr. Brand explains. “Foul smell just means the carbohydrates you consume are being malabsorbed — it’s fermented.”

6. Also, frequent farting that is accompanied by discomfort, bloating, or a very foul odor may indicate a food allergy.

Interestingly, in a study performed at the University of Exeter, researchers found that inhaling small amounts of this gaseous compound had protective properties against damage of cell mitochondria and even against cancer. The mitochondria is the “powerhouse” of cells.

Furthermore, smelly farts might not be as bad as you think, and regular farting could also be a sign that you’re consuming enough fiber, and have a healthy collection of bacteria in your intestines.

Source:Elcrema