Health News

Too much ‘love hormone’ can make healthy people oversensitive

Researchers at Concordia’s Centre for Research in Human Development have shown that too much oxytocin or ” love hormone” in healthy young adults can actually result in over sensitivity to the emotions of others.

With the help of psychology professor Mark Ellenbogen, PhD candidates Christopher Cardoso and Anne-Marie Linnen recruited 82 healthy young adults who showed no signs of schizophrenia, autism or related disorders.

Half of the participants were given measured doses of oxytocin, while the rest were offered a placebo.

The participants then completed an emotion identification accuracy test in which they compared different facial expressions showing various emotional states. As expected, the test subjects who had taken oxytocin saw greater emotional intensity in the faces they were rating.

“For some, typical situations like dinner parties or job interviews can be a source of major social anxiety,” Cardoso, the study’s lead author, said.

“Many psychologists initially thought that oxytocin could be an easy fix in overcoming these worries. Our study proves that the hormone ramps up innate social reasoning skills, resulting in an emotional oversensitivity that can be detrimental in those who don’t have any serious social deficiencies,” he said.

Ultimately, however, oxytocin does have the potential to help people with diagnosed disorders like autism to overcome social deficits.

The study is published in Emotion, a journal of the American Psychological Association.

Source: sisat

Night work ‘throws body into chaos’

Doing the night shift throws the body “into chaos” and could cause long-term damage, warn researchers.

Shift work has been linked to higher rates of type 2 diabetes, heart attacks and cancer.

Now scientists at the Sleep Research Centre in Surrey have uncovered the disruption shift work causes at the deepest molecular level.

Experts said the scale, speed and severity of damage caused by being awake at night was a surprise.

The human body has its own natural rhythm or body clock tuned to sleep at night and be active during the day.

It has profound effects on the body, altering everything from hormones and body temperature to athletic ability, mood and brain function.

The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, followed 22 people as their body was shifted from a normal pattern to that of a night-shift worker.

Blood tests showed that normally 6% of genes – the instructions contained in DNA – were precisely timed to be more or less active at specific times of the day.

Once the volunteers were working through the night, that genetic fine-tuning was lost.

Chrono-chaos
“Over 97% of rhythmic genes become out of sync with mistimed sleep and this really explains why we feel so bad during jet lag, or if we have to work irregular shifts,” said Dr Simon Archer, one of the researchers at the University of Surrey.

Fellow researcher Prof Derk-Jan Dijk said every tissue in the body had its own daily rhythm, but with shifts that was lost with the heart running to a different time to the kidneys running to a different time to the brain.

He told the BBC: “It’s chrono-chaos. It’s like living in a house. There’s a clock in every room in the house and in all of those rooms those clocks are now disrupted, which of course leads to chaos in the household.”

Studies have shown that shift workers getting too little sleep at the wrong time of day may be increasing their risk of type-2 diabetes and obesity.

Others analyses suggest heart attacks are more common in night workers.

Prof Dijk added: “We of course know that shift work and jet lag is associated with negative side effects and health consequences.

“They show up after several years of shift work. We believe these changes in rhythmic patterns of gene expression are likely to be related to some of those long-term health consequences.”

Prof Hugh Piggins, a body-clock researcher from the University of Manchester, told the BBC: “The study indicated that the acute effects are quite severe.

“It is surprising how large an effect was noticed so quickly, it’s perhaps a larger disruption than might have been appreciated.”

He cautioned that it was a short-term study so any lasting changes are uncertain, but “you could imagine this would lead to a lot of health-related problems”.

Source: bbc news

 

Weight loss pill turns into balloon when swallowed

image 11

A new pill that mimics the stomach-restricting nature of weight-loss surgery is helping some patients shed pounds in early trials, British researchers claim.

The pill, called the Obalon balloon, is a capsule containing an a balloon. After a patient swallows the pill, surgeons inflate the balloon inside to make them feel full and eat less.

The device is not permanent though, and needs to be removed after about three months.

“This balloon will act to educate them about portion size and retrain their brain and their mindset a little,” Dr. Sally Norton, a bariatric surgeon at Spire Hospital. Her hospital offers the procedure.

The pill capsule is attached to a tube that can be inflated. Once the capsule hits the stomach, the balloon gets released. A doctor can use an X-ray to find where the balloon is and inflate it with gas through the tube. After, the doctor pulls the tube out through the patient’s mouth, leaving the balloon floating in the stomach.

Up to three balloons are introduced to the stomach over the 12-week period, with placement depending on patient’s fullness and weight loss progress, according to the product website. This fills the stomach, in turn making the patient feel more full.

The device’s makers claim overweight and obese patients can lose up to 20 pounds in three months.

The treatment is not currently approved in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration and is not covered through the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS). Patients in the U.K. can pay more than $3,300 if they want to get the treatment. A two-balloon procedure may cost about $5,000, according to Van Marsh.image 22

However, experts are not convinced the treatment will be a cure-all for obesity, given the balloons have to be deflated and removed after the 12 weeks are over.

“When they take the balloons out, what happens is the stomach hasn’t shrunk,” Tim Bean, a U.K.-based fitness expert. “So you’re left with the same size stomach, or possibly even bigger than there was beforehand.”

Other medical options for weight loss, like the four types of bariatric surgeries, can be more invasive. Some patients undergo the Lap-band procedure. The band is an adjustable ring that wraps around the upper portion of the stomach. It can be inflated by doctors by placing a small needle into a reservoir and filling it with liquid. The more liquid, the tighter the band gets, which makes the stomach smaller and in turn limits food intake.

Other procedures include the Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, the most common surgery, where a doctor staples a portion of the stomach together to create a smaller pouch to limit how much food a person could eat.

There’s also the less common form of bypass called a biliopancreatic diversion with a duodenal switch, where a large portion of the stomach is removed and the remaining pouch is attached to the last segment of the small intestine.

Another procedure known as a vertical sleeve gastrectomy can also be undertaken. Patients have most of their stomach removed, and the remaining portions are joined by staples, leaving a small tube-shaped stomach that fills up quickly.

Source: cbs news

Antacids – why taking them very frequently is not good for you!

Antacids help to treat heartburn (indigestion). They work by changing the stomach acid that causes your heartburn.

You can buy many antacids without a prescription. Liquid forms work faster, but you may like tablets because they are easy to use.

All antacids work equally as well, but they can cause different side effects. If you use antacids often and have problems with side effects, talk with your doctor.

When to Use Antacids
Antacids are a good treatment for heartburn that does not happen very often. Take antacids about 1 hour after eating or at the time heartburn usually happens after you eat. If you are taking them for symptoms at night, do NOT take them with food.

Antacids cannot treat more serious problems, such as appendicitis, a stomach ulcer, gallstones, or bowel problems. Talk to your doctor if you have:

  • Pain or symptoms that do not get better with antacids
  • Symptoms every day or at night
  • Nausea and vomiting
  • Bleeding in your bowel movements or darkened bowel movements
  • Bloating or cramping
  • Pain in your lower belly, on your side, or in your back
  • Diarrhea that is severe or does not go away
  • Fever with your belly pain
  • Chest pain or shortness of breath
  • Call your doctor if you need to use antacids on most days.

Side Effects of Antacids
You may have side effects from taking these medicines. Antacids are made with three basic ingredients. If you have problems, try another brand.

Brands with magnesium may cause diarrhea.
Brands with calcium or aluminum may cause constipation.
Rarely, brands with calcium may cause kidney stones or other problems.
If you take large amounts of antacids that contain aluminum, you may be at risk for calcium loss, which can lead to weak bones (osteoporosis).
Antacids can change the way your body absorbs the other medicines you are taking. It is best to take any other medicine either 1 hour before or 4 hours after you take antacids.

Talk to your doctor or pharmacist before taking antacids on a regular basis if:

You have kidney disease, high blood pressure, or heart disease.
You are on a low-sodium diet.
You are already taking calcium.
You are taking other medicines every day.
You have had kidney stones.

Source: Medline Plus

Does microwaving food remove its nutritional value?

We’ve all heard about how microwaving food removes some nutritional value, but is it true? Is something bad happening to our food behind that microwave glass?

If you do it right, cooking food in the microwave is one of the best ways to retain your food’s vitamins and minerals
There are dangers to microwaving your food. You could get scalded, for one. If you use the wrong kind of plastic (hint: one that doesn’t say “microwave safe”), unhealthy chemicals could seep into your food.

But if you’re concerned about getting the most nutrition out of your eats, microwaving is a safe bet. In fact, it’s near the top of the list for nutritionally sound food-preparation methods. If you use your microwave with a small amount of water to essentially steam food from the inside, you’ll retain more vitamins and minerals than with almost any other cooking method.

“Whenever you cook food, you’ll have some loss of nutrients,” says registered dietician and certified food scientist Catherine Adams Hutt. “The best cooking method for retaining nutrients is one that cooks quickly, exposes food to heat for the smallest amount of time and uses only a minimal amount of liquid.”

Consider spinach. Boil it on the stove, and it can lose up to 70% of its folic acid. Microwave it with just a little water, and you’ll retain nearly all its folic acid. Cooking bacon on a griddle until it’s crispy (yum) can create nitrosamines, while microwaving bacon creates far fewer of these cancer-promoting chemicals.

Of course, you can mess microwaving up. Dump your veggies in a bunch of water and overcook them, and you’ll leach out plenty of nutrition. “When you cook food in a microwave, cover it tightly, creating an efficient steam environment,” advises Hutt.
Steaming over a stovetop is just as good, though. In some cases, it may even be better: One small study found that steamed broccoli retained more of its cancer-fighting sulforaphane than microwaved broccoli.

But in most cases, using your microwave to cook food, if it’s covered tightly in a microwave-safe container with a minimal amount of liquid, is a nutritional win.

In fact, it can even enhance the nutrition of some foods. It makes the carotenoids in tomatoes and carrots more available to our bodies, for example. It makes the biotin in eggs digestible. And heat kills bacteria in food that can make us sick.
“From a safety standpoint,” says Hutt, “you don’t want to be eating raw chicken.”

So go ahead and use that microwave. It’s a quick way to essentially steam food from the inside out. You won’t get the aromas that baking or roasting provides, but if you do it right, with just a little bit of water in a tightly-closed microwave-safe container, you’ll be very well nourished.

Source: CNN health

 

7 Dangerous Acts After A Meal

1. Don’t smoke : Experiments from experts proves that smoking a cigarette after meal is comparable to smoking 10 cigarettes (chances of cancer is higher)

2. Don’t eat fruits immediately: Immediately eating fruits after meals will cause stomach to be bloated with air. Therefore take fruits 1 -2 hours after meal or 1 hour before meal.

3. Don’t drink tea: Because tea leaves contain a high content of acid. This substance will cause the protein content in the food we consume to be hundred thus difficult to digest.

4. Don’t loosen your belt: Loosening the belt after meal will easily cause the intestine to be twisted and blocked.

5. Don’t bathe: Bathing after meal will cause the increase of blood flow to the hands, legs and body thus the amount of blood around the stomach will therefore decrease, this will weaken the digestive system in our stomach.

6. Don’t walk about: People always say that after ameal walk a hundred steps and you will live till 99. In actual fact this is not true. Walking will cause the digestive system to be unable to absorb the nutrition from the food we intake.

7. Don’t sleep immediately: The food we intake will not be to digest properly. Thus will lead to gastric and infection in our intestine.

Source: Nairaland

Health benefits of Natural Wonders – Amla

For centuries, we have seen the benefits of Ayurveda – the age-old therapeutic science that originated in India and is now accepted across world as an alternative form of medicine. The very basis of Ayurveda is to enhance life by emphasizing on using resources found in nature in the form of fruits, vegetables, animal products and minerals. And one the most beneficial fruits, according to Ayurveda, is the Indian gooseberry, or what we commonly call ‘alma’.

Amla is considered to be an especially revitalizing herb with multiple nutritional qualities. This highly fibrous round fruit with 6 vertical lines contains a variety of flavours, ranging from sweet and salty to bitter and sour.
Amla and its rich nutrients

Amla is one of the richest natural sources of Vitamin C – 100 gram of Amla contains 700 mg of Vitamin C or ascorbic acid which is 20 times more than that found in other fruits. Amla is also an excellent anti oxidant and one of its best qualities is that the nutrients don’t reduce on cooking or drying. Amla is 80% moist and contains calcium, carotene, iron, phosphorous and many essential oils. Even the leaves and bark of Amla plant are a good source of tannin (tannin works as an astringent).

Health benefits of amla:

Including amla in your diet can be highly beneficial:
Treats respiratory system: Amla acts as an astringent and helps in drying cough. Being a good source of vitamin C, it’s very helpful when it comes to treating cold, bronchitis and respiratory problems

Treats constipation: The fruit is a good source of fibre and has proved to be an effective laxative. It’s been known to reduce constipation and even helps in the treatment of piles.

Treats skin ailments: Amla contains antibacterial properties which prevent skin disease and ulcers. It can even help in treating acne.

Good for hair: Amla can do miracles with hair problems and is an important ingredient in many products made for stimulating hair growth. Amla soaked in water and kept in an iron utensil overnight could be used as a shampoo-conditioner-hair colour to check hair greying and to make it shiny.

Read Also http://www.texilaconnect.com/ayurvedic-remedies-for-hair-loss/

Improves vision: Amla is good for the eyes and can help in correcting eye problems like trachoma, glaucoma and cataract.

Treats acidity: One gram of Amla powder with a little sugar if taken with milk or water can help reduce acidity.

Treats cardiac disease: Cholesterol, hypertension and diabetes are ailments that contribute to heart disease. Vitamin C helps in widening blood vessels and strengthening heart muscles which can reduce the chances of getting a stroke because of high cholesterol levels which may have accumulated on the walls of blood vessels. Regular intake of a powder mix of Amla and sugar candy taken with water can help stabilize cholesterol levels. If taken in powder form or as triphala – a mixture of Amla with two other herbs; harada and bihara – helps in controlling blood pressure. Amla mixture taken with jamun and bitter gourd powder helps to normalize an enzyme – alanine transaminase found in liver responsible for high level of diabetes.

Good for reproductive health: Amla can act as an aphrodisiac and is supposed to increase sperm count. Dried amla seeds mixed with honey can help reduce white discharge in women.

Treats anaemia: Amla is high in ascorbic acid, which helps in good iron absorption, thus reducing deficiency.

Good for general fitness: The multi-beneficial fruit that amla is, it’s been known to improve metabolism, thus helping in maintaining body weight. Furthermore, it improves human immunity, and provides all-round health benefits.

Source: mdhil

 

Sleep During the Day May Throw Genes Into Disarray

Sleeping during the day a necessity for jet-lagged travelers and those who work overnight shifts disrupts the rhythms of about one-third of your genes, a new study suggests.

What’s more, shifted sleep appears to disrupt gene activity even more than not getting enough sleep, according to the research.

For the new study, which was published in this week’s issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, British researchers put 22 healthy, young volunteers in a dimly lit sleep lab for three days.

During the first day, they disrupted the participants’ sleep at regular intervals to reset their body clock to its innate rhythm. On the second and third days, the volunteers ate and slept on a 28-hour schedule, so their longest period of sleep was from noon until about 6:30 p.m.

The researchers drew blood samples all three days so they could watch what happened to the timing of gene activity.

During the first day, when the body reset its circadian rhythm, nearly 1,400 genes — about 6.4 percent of all genes that were analyzed — were in sync with that rhythm. On the days of shifted sleep, however, the number of genes tied to the body’s clock dropped dramatically, to 228 genes, or only 1 percent of genes analyzed.

The researchers estimated that the sleep disruptions would ultimately impact about a third of a person’s genes.

That’s an even greater disruption than scientists saw in a previous study when they tested the effects of sleep deprivation on gene activity. In that study, which had study volunteers sleeping about five and half hours each night, the number of genes that were in sync with the body’s clock dropped from about 9 percent to 7 percent.

“These are quite fundamental processes that are being affected,” said senior study author Derk-Jan Dijk, a professor of sleep and physiology at the University of Surrey, in the United Kingdom.

“We think that may be related to the negative health outcomes associated with long-term shift work,” Dijk said. Shift workers are at higher risk for many health problems, including obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, disrupted menstrual cycles and cancer, he said.

This study didn’t directly connect health problems and night-shift work, but experts said it does start to help them understand why sleep might have such a powerful influence on a person’s health.

“This study suggests that mistimed sleep can alter circadian rhythms, so the cycling of many, many genes is impaired,” said Dr. Mark Wu, assistant professor of neurology, medicine, genetic medicine and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University. “What this could cause, they can’t really say — except it’s probably not good.” Wu was not involved in the new research.

Genes carry the instructions for making proteins. Proteins make up just about every kind of chemical signal, hormone and tissue in the body, the researchers said.

The timing of when proteins are made is important because their production should correspond to our behaviors, said Frank Scheer, a neuroscientist at Harvard and director of the Medical Chronobiology Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

When the body anticipates a meal, for example, the liver has to stop releasing into the blood the carbohydrates it has stored and the pancreas has to make more insulin, while the muscles have to become more sensitive to insulin that’s released so they can take in blood sugar, Scheer said.

Source: web md

Device uses heartbeat to create electrical source in body

Imagine if one day, a person’s heart and other organs could be used to power medical devices in their body that they need to survive.

That day may be closer than you think. Researchers have developed a tin, flexible device that generates electricity when moved. Then, they implanted the item directly on animal hearts, lungs and diaphragms to see if the natural processes of the body could create power.

“If you look at the trends these days, you’re seeing more and more electronic implantable devices,” author John Rogers, director of the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, said to New Scientist. “I think there’s going to be a growing demand for in-body power.”

The researchers relied on the concept of the piezoelectric effect, which is when electricity is created in certain kinds of solid materials when something puts continuous force on it. In this case, they created nanoribbons made from a piezoelectric-able material called lead zirconate titanate. These nanoribbons were placed on a flexible silicone surface that could be put on an organ and move as it moved.
The researchers found that the best place to put these devices without interfering with the body’s natural processes and movements was on one of the heart’s ventricles. At its best, the device created 0.2 microwatts per square centimeter, which was enough to power an average pacemaker.

While this isn’t the first study to look at this kind of technology, it was the first time it was tested in animals that had organs that were comparable in size to humans. This device can also be stacked on top of each other to create more electrical power if necessary. Rogers said it was a good start but further research needs to be done.

“I think the concept of creating electrical power from motions in internal organs is really interesting,”Rogers said. “The key thing is, if you’re going to do this, you need to be able to achieve efficiency and ultimately power output that is of practical use.”

Their research as published Jan. 20 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Michael McAlpine, a professor of mechanical engineering at Princeton University who was not involved in the research, told The Scientist that the technology is important because it could mean less surgery for people who have battery-powered devices like pacemakers, implantable cardioverter-defibrillators, neural devices and cochlear implants.

“A pacemaker runs off a battery and it’s installed in your body. Every time the battery dies, they actually have to open up your chest to replace the pacemaker completely,” he explained. “If there was some way that you could . . . harvest power from (organ) motion, maybe you could prolong the life of the battery or even replace the battery all together.”

Some experts voiced concern that the device was made out of a lead-based material, and even though it is sealed up, it could leak. However, McAlpine said there are other non-lead based piezoelectric materials that are almost as efficient as lead zirconate titanate, and further research in this area may reveal a better alternative.

“The innovation of this paper is taking what has been done on a small scale and integrating it up to a much more significant scale,” McAlpine.

Source: one news page

Many hospitalized older people need decision help

When the time comes for making critical medical decisions while in the hospital, a new study says older people often rely on family members or other surrogates to make those calls.

Researchers found that about half of the older patients they tracked needed help making decisions within two days of being admitted to the hospital.

Considering the aging U.S. population and the mental burden borne by the family and friends making those decisions, the study’s lead author told Reuters Health that hospitals should work to accommodate surrogate decision makers.

“The long-term goal would be to improve hospital processes,” Dr. Alexia Torke, a center scientist at the Indiana University Center for Aging Research in Indianapolis, told Reuters Health.

Previous studies have examined the role of surrogate decision makers in some medical settings, but Torke and her colleagues write in JAMA Internal Medicine that they couldn’t find research showing how often people rely on others to make decisions while in the hospital.

“We set out to describe the scope of the problem as a whole,” Torke said.

For the study, she and her fellow researchers analyzed data on people who were over 65 years old and admitted to either of two hospitals in one Midwestern city between November 2008 and December 2011.

To be included in the study, a person had to have been hospitalized for 48 hours. After that time, a doctor was interviewed about the decision making process for that patient. Other information was taken from the patient’s medical record.

Of 1,598 study participants, the researchers found that 1,083 faced at least one major medical decision that was discussed with the patient or a surrogate.

Of those cases, about 570 patients made all of their decisions alone, 264 made their decisions with the help of a surrogate and surrogates made all of the decisions for 249 patients.

Most patients with surrogates were in the hospitals’ general wards, not the intensive care units.

Surrogate decision makers were most often the patients’ daughters, followed by sons and spouses.

Within the first two days of patients being admitted to the hospital, the researchers found that about 60 percent of surrogates had to make decisions about life-sustaining treatments and about half had to make decisions about operations and where the patients would go after leaving the hospital.

The study participants who required the help of a surrogate were also most likely to have worse outcomes. They were more likely to need a ventilator or a feeding tube, to be sent to a nursing home and to die.

“It’s not so much that having a family member make decisions for you makes things worse,” Torke said. “It’s that people who need decision makers are sicker.”

In a commentary accompanying the new study, Drs. Yael Schenker and Amber Barnato from the University of Pittsburgh write that the frequent use of surrogate decision makers across hospital settings suggests there are ways to broaden how doctors approach these types of decisions.

“I think there are multiple ways that we can support both patient and family involvement in decision making,” Schenker, an assistant professor, told Reuters Health.

For example, she and Barnato write that doctors should ask about people’s preferences when they are admitted to the hospital. That includes asking people who they want involved in the decision making process and how they want that person involved.

Doctors should also be trained in how to facilitate discussions between themselves, the patients and their chosen surrogate, they write. Part of that may include overcoming a tendency to only consider short-term outcomes instead of a patient’s overall illness and goals.

“I think it’s always helpful for patients and families to start conversations about these things,” Schenker said. “I think it’s also important for patients when they’re hospitalized to let doctors know how they want to approach decisions. It’s also unfortunately the case that they won’t always be asked.”

In the study, the researchers found that only about 25 percent of the patients had living wills or some kind of advanced directive to explain their choices. Torke said those documents may help some people but will not cover everything a surrogate may encounter.

“For older adults and their family members, I hope people will have more conversations about the possibilities about going into the hospital and what the older people’s preferences are,” she said.

Source: Chicago tribune