health News, Opinion and Issues

health News, Opinion and Issues | The Earth Times http://www.earthtimes.org the earth times is an environment specific news agency and news resource covering green news, environmental issues and opinion en-us PHP/5.2.17 earthtimes/healthhttp://feedburner.google.com Speech from the brain
The auditory areas of the cerebral cortex are just above the ears on this representation. Impulses would be taken by attaching receptors to the skull; Credit: Shutterstock

Brian Pasley at the University of California, Berkeley quips, "If a pianist were watching a piano being played on TV with the sound off, they would still be able to work out what the music sounded like because they know what key plays what note,". Something analogous with brainwaves tells us what parts of speech are being matched by neural areas in the auditory cortex. Details of frequency can be extracted and recorded along with their fluctuations and the rhythm of syllables tripping off the tongue.

It sounds a little far- fetched, but if this kind of brain tampering takes off, we are in for thought reading and brain scanning in an alarming way. Perhaps for example, we would no longer need courts of law or juries. The verdict is in the computer: the individual admits guilt without even uttering a syllable!

"The area of the brain that they are recording from is a pathway somewhere between the area that processes sound and the area that allows you to interpret it and formulate a response," says Jennifer Bizley, an auditory researcher at the University of Oxford. She helped create a spectrogram showing how much of each sound frequency is being created in speech over a certain time.

Speech and the brain

Participants listened to words (acoustic waveform, top left), while neural signals were recorded from cortical surface electrode arrays (top right, red circles) implanted over superior and middle temporal gyrus (STG, MTG). Speech-induced cortical field potentials (bottom right, gray curves) recorded at multiple electrode sites were used to fit multi-input, multi-output models for offline decoding. The models take as input time-varying neural signals at multiple electrodes and output a spectrogram consisting of time-varying spectral power across a range of acoustic frequencies (180-7,000 Hz, bottom left). To assess decoding accuracy, the reconstructed spectrogram is compared to the spectrogram of the original acoustic waveform; Credit: PLoS Biology doi:info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001251.g001

The key test is comparing this spectrogram with the original speech spectrogram. Another test converted the neural spectrogram into audible speech. Unfortunately, to date, it is only possible to interpret some words easily. Steven Laureys at the University of Liege, Belgium says, "We know that for much of our sensory processing, mental imagery activates very similar networks." So thinking about a word would be enough to create the neural equivalent. He thinks that medical situations, with comatose patients for example, would benefit from this research.

The research approached the problem of accessing the signals from the cortex by utilising epilepsy treatment techniques from neurosurgery. The cortex of the brain sends electrical signals through receptors on the skull surface. In that way, the spectrograms are composed. The research has a long way to go, but that potential is enormous, and not only for the medical industry.

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Hope that psilocybin may help treat depression
Optimistic people wired differently
Sixty-percent increase in TBIs among US youth athletes
Findings may prevent oxygen deprived fetal brain damage
Childhood abuse raises depression risk says new study

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/health/speech-brain/1803/ health Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:37:01 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/health/speech-brain/1803/ The price of asthma associated with traffic-related air pollution
Asthma Inhaler via Shutterstock

New research warns that the economic costs of asthma caused by traffic pollution are higher than previously thought.

Imagine a couple of asthmatic children, growing up in a polluted urban environment. The air they breathe every day makes their sickness worse, sometimes to the point of hospitalization. But even when they don't have to be admitted to the ER, there are other prices to pay for their unwilling exposure to pollutants.

Things like preventive doctor visits, frequent health checkups, daily medications, associated illnesses, or just missing a few days of school because they're not feeling well enough to leave the house. When all of these are added up, the cost of asthma and other related complaints can be very high indeed. But up until now, scientific research had overlooked this.

A new piece of research on the lifelong costs of asthma cases, very recently published online and soon to be printed in the European Respiratory Journal, shows that the burden of this disease can be much greater than anyone had anticipated so far. The researchers examined a sample of asthma cases from two California communities with high levels of traffic-related air pollution and a significant rate of exposure to pollutants.

Rather than focusing on a limited set of indicators - such as hospitalizations directly related to acute asthma attacks - they took into account a broad range of social, personal, and economic factors connected not just to asthma, but also to the infections that accompany this disease, including preventive efforts.

Traffic-related air pollution via Shutterstock

The conclusion? Not only are asthmatic children at a disadvantage when it comes to socialization and school performance, they also represent a significant financial burden on their families, often to the point of potentially destabilizing their family's household income. This is a very important discovery, given that conventional wisdom has greatly underestimated the overall costs of asthma and other similar respiratory complaints, and therefore little action has been taken to fix this problem.

Hopefully, the findings from this new study, as well as the method it outlines, will be applied to further research into the links between respiratory diseases, pollution, and community economics. Even more hopefully, policy makers will take note. It might take some effort, but there's ways to reduce the incidence of asthma among the world's children. And that, even from a purely economic point of view, is definitely worth it.

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NIH to examine how climate change may affect public health
Emission targets set to clean up rural China

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/health/price-tag-asthma/1783/ health Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:01:01 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/health/price-tag-asthma/1783/ Hope that psilocybin may help treat depression
Psilocybin is found in psilocybe semilanceata or liberty cap mushrooms (Above) via Shutterstock

There is hope that an active ingredient found in magic mushrooms, psilocybin, could be used to help with the treatment of depression.

Two scientific studies published this week show how activity in certain parts of the brain is subdued by an ingredient found in magic mushrooms, psilocybin. Results from both studies conclude that people exposed to psilocybin have clearer memories, which may provide an insight into the effects of psychedelic drugs on the brain.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published the first study yesterday. Tests to measure activity in the brain were done on a group of 30 volunteers, who had psilocybin mixed into their bloodstream while having MRI scans (magnetic resonance imaging). The volunteers were separated into two equal groups, each one studied using a different type of functional MRI (fMRI) scanner. The MRIs showed that instead of increasing brain activity as was previously assumed, activity actually fell in certain highly connected areas of the brain, or brain 'hubs'.

Lead author for both of the studies was Professor David Nutt, from Imperial College London. Professor Nutt, once an advisor to the British Government said: "Psychedelics are thought of as 'mind-expanding' drugs so it has commonly been assumed that they work by increasing brain activity, but surprisingly, we found that psilocybin actually caused activity to decrease in areas that have the densest connections with other areas. These hubs constrain our experience of the world and keep it orderly. We now know that deactivating these regions leads to a state in which the world is experienced as strange."

The volunteers did report various 'strange' visual and bodily sensations, which corresponded to reduced levels of blood flow and medical oxygen saturation in areas of the brain.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging Scanner (MRI) via Shutterstock

Test results in the second of the studies showed psilocybin elevated levels of personal memory recollection and suggests it may be useful to complement psychotherapy and may have future potential to help with the treatment of depression. The full results of this second study are due for publication in the British Journal of Psychiatry later this week.

First author of both study papers, Dr Robin Carhart-Harris, who is also from Imperial College London, said: "Psilocybin was used extensively in psychotherapy in the 1950s, but the biological rationale for its use has not been properly investigated until now. Our findings support the idea that psilocybin facilitates access to personal memories and emotions.

"Previous studies have suggested that psilocybin can improve people's sense of emotional wellbeing and even reduce depression in people with anxiety. This is consistent with our finding that psilocybin decreases mPFC activity, as many effective depression treatments do. The effects need to be investigated further, and ours was only a small study, but we are interested in exploring psilocybin's potential as a therapeutic tool."

It is worth acknowledging, as the authors of the papers do, that the volunteers who participated in the studies did have prior experiences of psychedelic drugs. Regardless, the promising results shown in these two research papers seems evidence enough that further study does seem warranted.

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Coffee connected to a decreased risk of depression in women
Depression could predict strokes says new study
Childhood abuse raises depression risk says new study
Basing parenting style on child personality could reduce depression in children
City-dwellers prone to depression, memory problems, from pollution

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/health/magic-mushrooms-psilocybin-treat-depression/1779/ health Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:02:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/health/magic-mushrooms-psilocybin-treat-depression/1779/ Bushmeat in NYC!
Examples of smuggled simian bushmeat (a) skull, (b) hand, (c) skull and torso, and (d) arm. Ruler units are centimeters. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029505.g001; Credit: PloS ONE

Dr Kristine Smith of the EcoHealth Alliance has led a team investigating the horrifying possibilities associated with wildlife imports. Illegal wildlife products include live rats, chimpanzees and monkeys (often called bushmeat), but meat from these creatures is also imported. At risk of infecting humans are the RNA viruses, herpes viruses, retroviruses and many other potential health problems. A zoonosis is a disease transmitted from animals to ourselves. Most (75%) of recent new infections in humans are zoonoses. Unless US laws are strictly enforced, the country might as well be suffering new infections at a similar rate to these animals' host countries.

In southwest China, SARS quickly established itself and spread to 29 other countries in a couple of months, involving 774 deaths and 8098 cases. A palm civet cat is eaten in the restaurants of Guangdong, and the infection was traced to restaurant workers who had bought, butchered and cooked these animals. The respiratory and gastrointestinal disease is an RNA virus. Flu, hepatitis C and polio. give you an idea of the extent and capability of RNA virus as a successful disease organism. Among the biggest consumers of imported wildlife and wildlife products is the USA. 120,000 wild live animals are legally imported into the US every year along with 25 million kg of non-live wildlife! New York imports the most, along with LA and Miami. Deemed illegal are some Chinese, Filippino, Hong Kong, Thai and Nigerian creatures. One good reason for excluding them is their endemic pathogenic viruses (H5N1 'flu, Nipah virus and simian (primate) retroviruses for example).

There is minimal surveillance in these areas and no surveillance at all for wildlife products. So you could say the illegal catches above were just lucky. Not so lucky are the animals and human victims of Amphibian chytridiomycosis (see Earth Times), exotic Newcastle's disease and monkeypox, all of which have "invaded" the US recently. The monkeypox outbreak was down to a single imported batch of infected monkeys. The only restrictions are on certain turtles, bats, civets and African rodents, while USDA regulates a few birds, fish, tortoise, hedgehogs, various exotic ruminants, tenrecs and brushtail possums because they cause agricultural health problems.

African wild creatures defined as bushmeat have often created disease "emergence." Usually, it's a retrovirus involved, having produced at least three diseases originating in primates. Via European airports, the little understood routes for smugglers can include the 273 tons imported into Paris every year.

For the purposes of this study, five airports were used. At JKK, in Queens, New York, and four other airports, studies gathered illegally-imported shipments, but didn't quantify the rate of the importation. Only a few pieces of data were logged, photographs were taken and ID of species was carried out if possible. Then the pathogen count began, with special searches for leptospira and anthrax, herpesviruses, filoviruses, paramyxoviruses, coronaviruses, flaviviruses, orthopoxviruses, and simian retroviruses (SIV, STLV, SFV). From 28 usable confiscations, with material from 44 species, simian foamy virus and herpes viruses were readily detected. Two genera of herpes viruses included cytomegaloviruses and lymphocryptoviruses and interestingly, multiple viruses were found in some mangabey monkeys (Cercocebus)and baboons.

Zoonoses are little understood by the general public, except perhaps that we can catch infections readily from more closely related species and less readily form distant relatives (eg. bird 'flu). This attempt at qualitative surveillance on a limited number of pathogenic organisms should obviously be followed up with regular quantitative studies. This would establish just how much risk is being taken. But it is a large risk. In addition, of course, endangered animals are involved, and other countries have found dangerous excesses when investigating bushmeat imports (in France). One major danger for the near future is the increasing pathogenicity of a virus, once established in human tissues. A virus may be incapable of transmission to another human, but that virus can soon mutate into a functioning transmissible disease., causing epidemics. Following our pig and bird virus events, you would like to believe that we are ready for a worse "hit" from a closer relative. That remains to be seen.

Latent infections are common in retroviruses and herpesviruses, although severe disease such as catarrhal fever and herpes B has been caused in non-host species such as humans. A virus can lie dormant like the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in 90% of the American adult population. Antibodies in the blood prove it has been present in that number of people. Then add on the viruses that now appear on our doorstep, ready to increase the number of apparently symptom free infections. Now we have to consider all of those horse, carnivore, reptile, bird and other diseases which this research was unable to cover. Perhaps the word time-bomb will make government take action and govern where it surely must.

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Are rats and bees the solution to Africa's bushmeat problem?
Trade in bushmeat decimating Tanzanian forests

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/health/bushmeat-nyc/1757/ health Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:27:01 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/health/bushmeat-nyc/1757/ Death of loved-one raises heart attack risk up to 21 times
Heart attack via Shutterstock

The death of someone close raises the risk of a heart attack by up to 21 times and can cause a 'broken heart', a study has found.

The five-year study of around 2,000 victims of myocardial infarctions (heart attacks) found the risk was around 21 times greater within the first day of the death of a loved one and eight times more within the first week, the study from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), Boston, USA, found.

The lead author, Elizabeth Mostofsky, MPH, ScD, a post-doctoral fellow in the centre's cardiovascular epidemiological unit, says, "Bereavement and grief are associated with increased feelings of depression, anxiety and anger, and those have been shown to be associated with increases in heart rate and blood pressure, and changes in the blood that make it more likely to clot, all of which can lead to a heart attack."

Senior author and BIDMC doctor and director of the centre's cardiovascular epidemiological research program, Murray Mittleman, MD, DrPH, says, "Some people would say a 'broken heart' related to the grief response is what leads to these physiologic changes. So that emotional sense of the broken heart may actually lead to damage leading to a heart attack and a physical broken heart of a sort."

The study, just published in the online journal Circulation, found the risk of a heart attack was still higher than normal for at least a month after the death. Those taking part in the study were questioned about events that may have triggered the incidents, including the death of a loved within the previous 12 months.

Although many believe the death of someone close can cause medical problems, there are few studies about it. The two authors believe if people are aware of the risk, the danger can be mitigated.

Dr Mittleman says, "Physicians, patients and families should to be aware of this risk and make sure that someone experiencing grief is getting their physical and medical needs met. And if an individual develops symptoms that we're concerned might reflect the beginnings of heart attack, we really need to take it very seriously and make sure that that patient gets appropriate evaluation and care."

Psychological aid can also help those grieving and prevent health issues, says Dr Mostofsky. "We do think it's plausible that social support during that increased time of vulnerability would help mitigate the risk of heart attack."

Other co-authors of the report, financed by the National Institutes of Health, include Jane B. Sherwood, RN, of BIDMC; Malcolm Maclure, ScD, from the University of British Columbia, Canada; Geoffrey H. Toffler, MD, from the Department of Cardiology at Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney, Australia; and James E. Muller, MD, from InfraReDx, Burlington, Massachusetts, USA.

BIDMC is a patient care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School. Is receives the third highest funding of America's independent hospitals from the National Institutes of Health. It is also the official hospital of the Boston Red Sox baseball team. For more details, go to: www.bidmc.org.

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]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/health/death-loved-greatly-raises-heart-attack-risk/1751/ health Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:09:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/health/death-loved-greatly-raises-heart-attack-risk/1751/ Run Don't Walk
The calf muscle is that highlighted at the back of the lower rear leg, otherwise referred to here as the medial gastrocnemius via Shutterstock

Biomedical engineers Dr. Gregory Sawicki and Dr. Dominic Farris have looked at the relationship between the gastrocnemius muscle and the Achilles tendon. The North Carolina State University research in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has revealed a surprising clutch-like mechanism that conserves energy in our locomotion. It means that when we walk fast, like a hip-swivelling Olympic athlete, then we are limiting our range. The ancestral human runner could get further and hunt more prey organisms if he got up on his tippy toes and ran with it.

Around 2 m/sec or 4.5 mph, we can comfortably run long distances if necessary like the original Marathon messenger, Phidippides. Well maybe he wasn't so comforted. Attaching a tiny ultrasound probe and measuring force by means of a treadmill, the changes in the back of the calf were recorded with high speed motion capture.

It showed the medial gastrocnemius engages early in a running stride and holds the Achilles like a clutch. Then it stretches the Achilles tendon before releasing the pent-up energy in a rapid recoil. An ancient myth of "Spring-heeled Jack" comes to mind.

This was a famed Barcelona event, showing the heel placement necessary to avoid being disqualified for running! via Shutterstock

The faster we walk, the faster the calf muscle shortens then relaxes in normal muscle activity. At high speed walking, however, the power produced is less and less, compared to the effort put in because "the muscle can't catch up to the speed of the gait as you walk faster and faster", reports Gregory Sawicki. "But when you shift the gait and transition from a walk to a run, that same muscle becomes almost static and doesn't seem to change its behaviour very much as you run faster and faster, although we didn't test the muscle at sprinting rates." He is obviously a jogger!

Implications of the enlightening research include prosthetics or conditioning and strengthening the legs of sport professionals. While previous studies have concentrated on computer models, this research has indicated human evolutionary potential gained from running and provided insight into the in vivo situation of people who run at relatively low speeds. Next up, Usain Bolt.

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A high-speed camera reveals the secrets of a leaping frog
'Thunderthighs' - a new species of dinosaur discovered

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/health/run-dont-walk/1743/ health Fri, 06 Jan 2012 13:54:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/health/run-dont-walk/1743/ Calories, not protein, causes weight gain
Nutritional Facts via Shutterstock

It's the New Year and so there is a chance that one of your New Year resolutions is to lose weight. You will be interested to know the new findings from a study conducted with 25 healthy individuals who were put into a controlled setting and fed random diets.

It was found that those consuming low protein diets had less weight gain compared to the individuals who had normal and high protein diets. However, the study was not just about weight gain itself, it was about actual body fat. The research showed that it was calories though and not the actual protein itself that appeared to cause an increase in body fat, which is the primary cause of heart related illnesses and other health concerns in much of the developed World.

The article that was published regarding the research outlined the importance of the study and why it was carried out, "Obesity has become a major public health concern with more than 60 percent of adults in the United States categorised as overweight and more than 30 percent as obese,"

It has long been known that protein contributes to weight gain. Most people who work out or body build will consume protein in one form or another in a bid to repair and build muscle. As muscle weighs more than fat this often leads to weight gain. However, what the study seems to indicate is that it is calories rather than the protein itself that leads to the increase in body fat.

Body fat measurement via Shutterstock

At the Pennington Biomedical Research Centre in LA, George A. Bray, M.D. and his team conducted the survey to find out whether the level of protein in a person's diet affected weight gain or energy expenditure. They selected a small panel of twenty five healthy participants. The entire panel was made up of people of both sexes; male and female, who were between eighteen years of age and thirty five years of age. They also made sure that each person in the study had a body mass index of between 19 and 30. The participants were first fed a diet that helped to stabilise their weight. This diet lasted between 13-25 days. Randomised diets were then fed to the participants. Some were fed low protein diets, others were fed normal protein diets and others were fed high protein diets. The protein diets contained around 40% more calories than the original weight stabilisation diet.

Every single participant gained weight regardless of sex. However, the participants in the lower protein diet group saw much less weight gain that those in the other two groups.

"Body fat increased similarly in all 3 protein diet groups and represented 50 percent to more than 90 percent of the excess stored calories. Resting energy expenditure, total energy expenditure, and body protein did not increase during overfeeding with the low protein diet," the authors of the study write.

Lean body mass was actually seen to decrease during the overeating period in the low protein group. The other two groups though made large gains.

"In summary, weight gain when eating a low protein diet (5 percent of energy from protein) was blunted compared with weight gain when eating a normal protein diet (15 percent of energy from protein) with the same number of extra calories. Calories alone, however, contributed to the increase in body fat. In contrast, protein contributed to the changes in energy expenditure and lean body mass, but not to the increase in body fat," the researchers of the study write, "the key finding of this study is that calories are more important than protein while consuming excess amounts of energy with respect to increases in body fat." They continue.

The findings are likely to be of interest to the diet industry and to people in general who are looking to lose weight due to being overweight, or those looking to gain weight as part of a body building process. The main importance though is of body fat which is the root cause of many health concerns and issues.

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]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/health/calories-protein-weight-gain/1736/ health Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:21:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/health/calories-protein-weight-gain/1736/ Avoiding accidents on ice
People ice skating via Shutterstock

A warning has gone out for people - and their pets - to stay off ice, after several fatal accidents in America. Spells of relatively warmer weather has caused areas of frozen water to thaw and freeze and more than 10 fatal or serious accidents have already been reported, says charity The National Drowning Prevention Alliance (NDPA).

Executive Director Kim Burgess says, "We urge everyone to stay off all frozen bodies of water. The perceived recreational benefit is simply not worth the risk to yourself or your loved ones."

Gerald M. Dworkin, a water safety and rescue expert and NDPA board member, says most emergency calls are sparked by people trying to rescue their pets from frozen bodies of water.

"It's also important to prevent pets from roaming onto ice. More than half of ice emergency 911 calls are triggered by people trying to save a pet who fell through ice. Never attempt to rescue an animal yourself, but rather, call 911.

"Ice seldom freezes uniformly. It will be thinner when it has formed over moving water, and where it surrounds partially submerged objects."

Avoiding accidents on ice

Image Credit: Lifesaving Resources LLC

Mr Dworkin has provided six tips on how to stay safe on ice:

(i) Fresh, clear ice is stronger than ice that has been covered with snow or has been thawed and frozen again; (ii) anyone falling through the ice should first kick their legs to move them behind their torso before pulling themselves out; (iii) when out the water, the victim should not stand up, but roll away until they are around 15-feet away from the break; (iv) it is useful for those on the ice and rescuers to carry ice picks; (v) rescuers should get someone to call 911 and try to find a buoyancy aid, such as a jug with a rope attached; (vi) if a rescuer has to go onto the ice, they should distribute their weight as widely as possible.

"All first responders should be trained and equipped for ice rescue. Ice rescue suits, ice picks, water rescue rope, and an animal control stick are the minimum equipment needed," Mr Dworkin adds.

The NDPA provides advice to people of all ages to help prevent drowning accidents. For more details, go to its website at: www.ndpa.org.

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Tropical volcanoes caused Little Ice Age claim
Ice cores to reveal climate change data
The tenth warmest year ever is: 2011
Arctic scythe laying the ice-sheets low
Examining Ice Age Hominins' adaptability to Climate Change

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/health/avoid-accidents-ice/1733/ health Wed, 04 Jan 2012 03:40:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/health/avoid-accidents-ice/1733/ Breast cancer and the environment
X-ray mammogram via Shutterstock

These days, all over the world and in the United States in particular, breast cancer is one of the most common health risks for women. It's not something to be taken lightly - this disease is a killer, and more often than not it has long-term consequences even for those that survive it. So it's not strange that scientists have devoted a lot of time and effort to understand breast cancer, and all that research has turned out to be very productive; for one, we have been able to identify substantial risk factors for the disease such as aging, timing of menopause and first menstruation, specific genetic characteristics, and so on.

Now, the Institute of Medicine at Washington, D.C. has reviewed multiple scientific studies in order to produce a comprehensive report on the potential relationship between environmental factors and the risk of breast cancer.

The conclusions of the IOM report are not entirely definitive, or even satisfactory in some cases, partly because of the inherent difficulties in carrying out environmental studies - which require complex, long-term observations of large samples - and also because we don't completely understand the biology of breast cancer, nor of the human breast itself.

Therefore, while the report looks at a wide range of possible environmental risk factors, from smoking and alcohol consumption to radiation and a variety of chemicals found on everything from gasoline to hair dyes, the evidence so far is mostly inconclusive. In other words, many of the studied risk factors are more or less plausible - sometimes to a very convincing degree - but we just don't have enough scientific data to know for sure, one way or the other.

On the other hand, the report does give a few useful pointers on how to minimize your risk of developing breast cancer. The first step, not surprisingly, is to have a healthy lifestyle - regular physical activity, no smoking and limited alcohol consumption. You might also want to avoid unnecessary CT scans and other medical tests that involve ionizing radiation, and certain hormone therapies. And if you're one of those people who subscribe to the "Better safe than sorry" motto, you probably want to be careful when choosing cosmetics and dietary supplements, pumping gas, or using plastic containers. Many of these contain chemicals that have been linked more or less tentatively to breast cancer.

Following all of these guidelines does not automatically free you of the breast-cancer menace, but it's definitely a step in the right direction toward reducing the risk. And in any case, the advice given in the IOM report is useful not just to prevent cancer, but to improve health in general. Moderation, an active life, and conscious choices when it comes to the things you use and the substances you're exposed to, can go a long way toward making you stronger and better able to deal with illness.

So, go for it!

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The drawback of eating starch
A new technology to help combat breast cancer
Tumour aggression linked to breast cancer patients' stress
Protein responsible for drug resistance in breast cancer found
Yoga boosts women in recovery from breast cancer treatment

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/health/breast-cancer-environment/1700/ health Sat, 10 Dec 2011 20:17:01 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/health/breast-cancer-environment/1700/ The drawback of eating starch
Breast cancer via Shutterstock

I know more than a few women who have survived breast cancer - for at least one of them it took a mastectomy to save her life, and I know that ever since the ghost of breast cancer recurrence has hung over them. Unfortunately, at present there's just no good way to predict a repeat performance, or even evaluate its likelihood.

So many different factors go into the development of breast cancer: physiological changes; environmental factors; genetic predisposition. The same mix of potential causes can be faulted for the recurrence of this disease.

In response to this problem, medical researchers have spent a great deal of time and effort trying to figure out the risk factors for breast cancer recurrence. A recent such study looked at the relationship between certain dietary choices and the frequency of breast cancer reappearance.

(This is not a new idea - most forms of traditional medicine consider food an essential part of healing and illness prevention; but it's only in relatively recent times that Western medicine has started taking a serious look at the concept.) The researchers presented their findings in the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium of early December, 2011.

According to them, lower-grade breast cancer is more likely to recur in women who increase their consumption of starch than in women who reduce it.

In a practical sense, of course, limiting your intake of starch might prove difficult, considering that starch is the most common carbohydrate in the human diet. Almost every staple food we consume - potatoes, rice, corn, wheat - is rich in this substance.

Are you in the habit of eating oats for breakfast? Starch! Do you like sweet potatoes? They contain plenty of starch. So do many kinds of beans. The same goes for bananas, acorns, chestnuts, and a large assortment of other foods widely exploited in ethnic cuisines worldwide. Not to mention barley, a basic ingredient in the brewing of beer.

It's not a simple matter, then - coming up with a diet that decreases starch consumption to any significant degree, remains nutritious, and does not force us to give up too much, all at the same time. Moderation and diversity are of course two basic keywords, but there's probably other things we could try.

More research needs to be done on the subject, and dietary specialists must do some careful thinking in order to put together some suitable recommendations. Given the high rate of breast cancer incidence among women worldwide, I hope they're getting right on it. In the meantime, for those of us who like to be proactive, why don't we start searching for some alternatives on our own?

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Breast cancer and the environment
Early Detection of COPD could help prevent lung cancer
Men, women and oral contraception
A new technology to help combat breast cancer
Screening could cut bowel cancer deaths by a quarter, says study

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/health/drawback-eating-starch/1699/ health Sat, 10 Dec 2011 20:02:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/health/drawback-eating-starch/1699/ Seaweed could help weight loss treatments
Seaweed via Shutterstock

Seaweed could help you lose weight - not with some magical calorie-shrinking chemical reaction but by making you feel fuller. The research was carried out by scientists at the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Copenhagen who used fibres from the unappetising sounding brown algae in their tests.

High fibre diets are known to be good for keeping weight steady and this study shows that alginates, which are extracted from brown algae, help people feel fuller quicker thus reducing the amount they eat.

Morten Georg Jensen, a PhD student who made the findings, said: "Over a three-year period, we have studied the effect of taking different alginate doses. We are able to demonstrate that the healthy subjects who took alginates and were also allowed to eat as much as they wanted felt less hungry and ate less than the subjects not drinking fibre drinks with alginates."

In a study lasting 12 weeks, 96 men and women who were overweight were put under the microscope. Half of them drank an alginate drink, while the others were given a placebo drink.

Not all the subjects finished the study, but of the 80 who did, those who had drink alginates showed much greater weight loss and the researchers found the loss was down to a reduction in the percentage of body fat.

The seaweed drinkers lost, on average, 1.7kg more than their placebo drinking counterparts.

"A probable explanation of the weight loss is that the alginates form a gel in the stomach which strengthens the gastrointestinal satiety signals to the brain because the gel takes up space in the stomach," Jensen said. "The overweight subjects thus ate less than usual."

The developed world is going through an obesity epidemic and Jensen and his colleagues hope in time to use their research to help treat overweight patients with the first seaweed drink.

There are three types of seaweed, green red and brown and Jensen's team used the brown algae, palm seaweed.

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Overweight teens wanting to lose weight are not properly informed
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]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/health/seaweed-weight-loss-treatments/1695/ health Fri, 09 Dec 2011 04:20:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/health/seaweed-weight-loss-treatments/1695/ The ups and downs of anxiety
Anxiety via Shutterstock

Anxiety is quite normal. Everyone feels anxious when faced with a situation that is threatening or difficult, whether it is a simple day-to-day activity, such as crossing a busy road, being concerned about the safety of a child, or having to cope with a sudden emergency when driving on a motorway.

But anxiety is also a stepping-stone to other conditions. When someone is faced with a problem in life that can't be solved, we call that worry. If the anxiety is the result of a sudden threat, we call it fear.

Around one in every ten people will suffer from troublesome anxiety or phobia at some point in their lives. This means that around 6 million UK people could be suffering from some form of anxiety at any one time.

But anxiety also has its benefits. Actors who feel extreme anxiety before going on stage often end up by giving an outstanding performance. Actress Sarah Bernhardt famously told a young man who claimed never to have stage fright that he need not worry because it was something that came with talent.

Employers often use anxiety as a management tool, the logic being that when someone is anxious about their job, their performance will improve.

Some level of anxiety is good, because it keeps a person alert and makes them perform well, but it can become a problem if it carries on when it is no longer needed. A person can become uncomfortable, life will generally be more difficult and depression will result, leading to damage to physical health.

Some effects of anxiety are in the mind. These can include continual worry, tiredness, lack of concentration, irritability, insomnia and a general feeling of depression.

Other effects are more physical and include palpitations of the heart, sweating, dryness of the mouth, muscle pains, numbness in fingers and toes, dizziness, faintness, frequent passing of water and stomach cramps. Anxious people often see these as signs of a more serious health problem, thus increasing their anxiety.

There are three main signs of anxiety and there is a substantial amount of overlap between them.

· General anxiety disorder (GAD): is where a person will have symptoms of anxiety for most of the time.
· Panic attacks: are unpredictable and involve intense attacks of anxiety, usually peaking after about 10 minutes. There is a feeling of terror and imminent death. There can be shortness of breath and chest pains. About a quarter of people who go to A & E departments with a suspected heart attack are actually suffering from panic attacks.
· Phobias: are when someone is frightened of something that to most people is quite normal. There are many phobias, but common ones include fear of confined spaces, crowds, meeting people, the dark, insects, spiders and animals.

There are a variety of causes.

· Genes: Some people are genetically more prone to anxiety.
· Psychological: Some people start to worry about mild physical problems caused by anxiety. This makes them worry more, which make the problem worse, and so on.
· Trauma: When someone has been in a particularly upsetting or threatening situation, such as a car crash, a fire, or being in a battle situation, this can cause extreme anxiety for many months or even years, even if the person concerned was not physically harmed in any way. It can also happen if a person was abused or neglected as a child or persistently abused, mistreated or tortured as an adult. This is part of post-traumatic stress disorder.
· Drugs: Street drugs like amphetamines or LSD, or even caffeine in coffee, can cause uncomfortable anxiety.
· Mental Health Problems: About half of people suffering from depression get panic attacks at some point.
· Physical Problems: Some physical problems like thyroid disease can cause anxiety.
· A mixture of all : Sometimes it is difficult to pinpoint the cause. Anxiety is often provoked by events or changes in a person's life.

The most important strategy for dealing with the problem is to learn how to control the anxiety. Babies do this naturally. Sharp sounds might upset or alarm a baby, but over a period of time the baby will come to realise that these are not a threat. In a similar way cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can achieve a similar result. For instance: for people obsessed with germs, a strategy might be for them to touch a doorknob and then to resist the compulsion to wash their hands. Coping strategies need to be developed as part of a gradual process.

If the anxiety is extreme, drugs like Valium can be used that suppress brain activity, but drugs can be addictive and in some cases can lead to further anxiety, especially when the time comes for them to be withdrawn.

There is a clear need for better understanding of the neural pathways of anxiety that will help pharmacologists to develop drugs that are more precisely targeted, but the eventual aim must be to identify likely anxiety sufferers at an early stage so that treatment can preventative rather than simply therapeutic.

Useful references - all have good additional resources:

· Anxiety & Stress Disorders Institute of Maryland: http://www.anxietyandstress.com/
· Royal College of Psychiatrists: http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/
· AnxietyUK: http://www.anxietyuk.org.uk/

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Basing parenting style on child personality could reduce depression in children
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]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/health/ups-downs-anxiety/1675/ health Wed, 30 Nov 2011 22:09:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/health/ups-downs-anxiety/1675/ Mediterranean diet tests prove health benefits
Mediterranean food via Shutterstock

While the economies of southern Europe are giving the world's financial markets the jitters and causing real hardship for their citizens, a scientific study has confirmed the long-held belief that the Mediterranean diet is very good for you.

The research, by John Hopkins University in Baltimore will be presented to the American Heart Association's scientific meeting in Orlando, Florida next week, and heart health and diabetes were at the heart of the new evidence.

The Mediterranean diet is so well established that it's even been recognised by UNESCO, the United Nations Cultural Organisation, as a part of the heritage of Italy, Spain, Greece and Morocco and one of the area's great contributions to the world.

The diet is high in unsaturated fats, usually sourced from olives and olive oil, nuts and avocados. The John Hopkins team say that introducing these fats into the diet is good for the heart, even if patients don't lose weight as part of the process. The diet also avoids highly processed carbohydrates, like white bread and white pasta.

This study, led by postdoctoral fellow Meghana Gadgil, M.D., M.P.H., looked at evidence from the OmniHeart Trial. This trial put 164 people with slightly raised blood pressure but who had no diabetes through a programme of three diets: a high carbohydrate diet, a high protein diet and one with a lot of unsaturated fats - the so-called Mediterranean diet. The insulin and blood sugar levels of participants were tested after six weeks on each diet and up to a month back on their regular diet. Poor insulin use is a pre-indicator of type two diabetes and subsequent heart disease.

The diets were otherwise balanced, and the research confirmed that the Mediterranean diet came out tops for insulin use.

"The introduction of the right kind of fat into a healthy diet is another tool to reduce the risk of future heart disease," Gadgil said.

"A lot of studies have looked at how the body becomes better at using insulin when you lose weight," Gadgil says. "We kept the weight stable so we could isolate the effects of the macronutrients. What we found is that you can begin to see a beneficial impact on heart health even before weight loss."

Typically, the Mediterranean diet is characterised by lots of olive oil, legumes like peas, beans and lentils, whole foods and plenty of fruit and vegetables. Mediterranean diets are relatively low in dairy products and favour fish over meat - all washed down with wine, in moderate amounts of course.

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]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/health/mediterranean-diet-tests-prove-health-benefits/1633/ health Wed, 16 Nov 2011 20:00:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/health/mediterranean-diet-tests-prove-health-benefits/1633/ Ban smoking in cars, say doctors
Smoking in a car via Shutterstock

Smoking should be banned in private vehicles, say UK doctors. The British Medical Association (BMA) has produced research to show smoking in vehicles exposes others to high levels of toxins from secondhand smoke.

The doctors' organisation is asking UK governments to extend the smoking ban to private vehicles.

BMA Director of Professional Activities, Dr Vivienne Nathanson, says, "Every year in England there are over 80,000 deaths that are caused by smoking. This figure increases to a shocking six million worldwide.

"But behind the stark statistics, doctors see the individual cases of ill-health and premature death caused by smoking and second-hand smoke. For this reason, doctors are committed to reducing the harm caused by tobacco."

The ban on smoking in public places was a positive move, but further action could be taken, she says.

"We are calling on UK governments to take the bold and courageous step of banning smoking in private vehicles. The evidence for extending the smoke-free legislation is compelling.

"The current UK Government prefers voluntary measures or 'nudging' to bring about public health change but this stance has been shown to fail time and time again."

The BMA's call comes just a week before the second reading of MP Alex Cunningham's Private Members Bill to ban smoking in private vehicles is considered in the House of Commons on Friday 25 November.

The research gathered by the BMA shows that because cars are restrictive, smoking can expose drivers and passengers to toxins 23 times greater than in the smoky atmosphere of a bar.

Children, who absorb a greater level of pollutants and have a less effective immune system than an adult, are at a greater risk from second-hand smoke. In addition, they may not be able to refuse to travel.

Those who are elderly and have breathing problems also have a higher risk of being harmed.

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Secondhand smoke in California
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]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/health/ban-smoking-cars-doctors/1631/ health Wed, 16 Nov 2011 18:39:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/health/ban-smoking-cars-doctors/1631/ The Drawbacks of Antibiotic Overuse
Antibiotics via Shutterstock

Recent research for the Extending the Cure project carried out by the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy in Washington, D.C. has pointed out a new threat to effective medical care in the United States: outpatient abuse of antibiotics in many parts of the country, particularly the southeastern states.

According to the center's findings, Americans have grown increasingly reliant on antibiotics to treat a range of ailments that could be just as easily cured in other ways - certain adult upper respiratory infections, for instance, don't necessarily call for antibiotics - or even do not respond to antibiotics at all, such as a cold, the flu, or other illnesses caused by viruses. This is partly the fault of physicians, who needlessly prescribe these antibiotics to their patients, and partly the responsibility of consumers, who demand these drugs.

This development is troubling, and not only because it points to a set of unhealthy relationships between people and their physicians. There's also a biological reason why people shouldn't overuse this particular sort of drugs. Like every other living organism in the planet, bacteria have the ability to evolve. They adapt to changes in their environment, and also to current threats. When bacteria are exposed to antibiotics over a period of time, they develop a resistance to their action and eventually grow immune to them. Simply put, the more an antibiotic is used, the less effective it becomes.

Recent findings suggest that the high rates of antibiotic use in the United States have caused a rapid decrease in the ability of these drugs to work against bacterial infections. This might be an even greater cause for concern if we take into account factors such as environmental change and the natural mutation of existing diseases into new, more aggressive strands. If left unchecked - all things considered - the American people's tendency to consume unnecessary antibiotics could have disastrous consequences for their future health and that of their children.

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Time to act on battle-plan to save antibiotics
Pollution Leads To More Resistant Bacteria

]]> http://www.earthtimes.org/health/antibiotics-overuse-america/1629/ health Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:51:00 GMT http://www.earthtimes.org/health/antibiotics-overuse-america/1629/

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