Health & WellnessS


Alarm Clock

Later school start times improve sleep and daytime functioning in adolescents

sleepy school children
© Dan Woods
How much extra sleep can make a difference to adolescent depression?

A new study finds a link between later start times at school and improved mood and sleep in teenagers.The study, published in the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, delayed the waking up time of adolescents at a boarding school by just 25 minutes (Boergers et al., 2013). They found that afterwards the number of students getting more than 8 hours sleep a night jumped from 18% to 44%.

Evil Rays

Flashback 34 scientific studies showing adverse biological effects + damage from Wi-Fi

warning wifi
Here is a collection of scientific papers finding adverse biological effects or damage to health from Wi-Fi signals, Wi-Fi-enabled devices or Wi-Fi frequencies (2.4 or 5 GHz), complied by campaign group WiFi In Schools. The papers listed are only those where exposures were 16V/m or below. Someone using a Wi-Fi-enabled tablet computer can be exposed to electromagnetic fields up to 16V/m. Papers are in alphabetical order. A file of first pages, for printing, can be found here.

If you feel like sending a copy of this collection to the local schools in your area, you can search for them here [UK only] http://schoolsfinder.direct.gov.uk/schoolsfinder and either print out this article to post or email the link.

Pills

Guideline based on discredited research may have caused 800,000 deaths in Europe over the last 5 years

emergency
Last summer British researchers provoked concern when they published a paper raising the possibility that by following an established guideline UK doctors may have caused as many as 10,000 deaths each year. Now they have gone a step further and published an estimate that the same guideline may have led to the deaths of as many as 800,00 people in Europe over the last five years. The finding, they write, "is so large that the only context in the last 50 years comes from the largest scale professional failures in the political sphere." The 800,000 deaths are comparable in size to the worst cases of genocide and mass murder in recent history.

In their new article published in the European Heart Journal, Graham Cole and Darrel Francis continue to explore the extent and implications of the damage caused by the Don Poldermans research misconduct case. [Update: the EHJ article has been removed from the EHJ website. For more on this see the bottom of the story.]

The earlier paper demonstrated the potentially large and lethal consequences of the current European Society of Cardiology guideline recommending the liberal use of beta-blockers to protect the heart during surgery for people undergoing non cardiac surgery. The guideline was flawed because it was partly based on unreliable research performed by the disgraced Poldermans (who also served as the chairman of the guideline committee). This may seem like a highly technical question but it effects many millions of people and may, as Francis and his colleagues have demonstrated, led to many thousands of unnecessary deaths.

Apple Red

School ditches rules and loses bullies

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© ONE NewsUnidentifiable child on playground
Ripping up the playground rulebook is having incredible effects on children at an Auckland school.

Chaos may reign at Swanson Primary School with children climbing trees, riding skateboards and playing bullrush during playtime, but surprisingly the students don't cause bedlam, the principal says.

The school is actually seeing a drop in bullying, serious injuries and vandalism, while concentration levels in class are increasing.

Principal Bruce McLachlan rid the school of playtime rules as part of a successful university experiment.

Bulb

Infections damage our ability to form spatial memories

Increased inflammation following an infection impairs the brain's ability to form spatial memories - according to new research. The impairment results from a decrease in glucose metabolism in the brain's memory centre, disrupting the neural circuits involved in learning and memory.

Inflammation has long been linked to disorders of memory like Alzheimer's disease. Severe infections can also impair cognitive function in healthy elderly individuals. The new findings published in the journal Biological Psychiatry help explain why inflammation impairs memory and could spur the development of new drugs targeting the immune system to treat dementia.

In the first trial to image how inflammation impairs human memory, the team at Brighton and Sussex Medical School scanned 20 participants before and after either a benign salty water injection or typhoid vaccination, used to induce inflammation. Positron emission tomography (PET) was used to measure the effects of inflammation on the consumption of glucose in the brain and after each scan participants tested their spatial memory by performing a series of tasks in a virtual reality.

Smoking

E-cigarettes are a calming vapor for inmates

e-cig smoker
© Christopher Berkey/NYTLogan Smith with his e-cig
As city governments and schools across the country move to ban or restrict the use of electronic cigarettes, one place increasingly welcomes the devices: the rural county jail.

Though traditional cigarettes are prohibited from most prisons and jails because of fire hazards and secondhand smoke, a growing number of sheriffs say they are selling e-cigarettes to inmates to help control the mood swings of those in need of a smoke, as well as address budget shortfalls, which in some jails have meant that guards are earning little more than fast-food workers.

Inmates are addicted to cigarettes and pay what the market bears to get their fix. Prisons and jails earn a little extra money to pay their guards and provide a safer environment for inmates. Everybody wins. It is obviously not a utopia, but this system logically seems to be one where everyone is relatively content with the outcome.

The trend stands in contrast to restrictions on e-cigarettes approved in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and other big cities. County jails in at least seven states have permitted the sale of a limited selection of flavors of e-cigarettes to inmates. They have quickly become one of the most sought-after items in jail commissaries. And although federal prisons ban e-cigarettes, the inmate market has so much potential that Chinese and American manufacturers now produce "jail-safe" versions made of plastic instead of metal.

Comment: A good example of the benefits of smoking on mood. Here's more:

5 Health Benefits of Smoking

Health Benefits of Smoking Tobacco

'World No Tobacco Day'? Let's All Light Up!


Sun

Heat the body, heal the mind

FIR for depression
© Charles RaisonA participant lies in a tent that elevates his core body temperature using infrared heat. Preliminary data suggests that the treatment is effective at reducing symptoms of depression.
University of Arizona researchers are using heat to treat depression.

The ongoing study, led by UA psychiatry professor Charles Raison, is examining the effectiveness of a technique known as whole-body hyperthermia as a treatment for depression. Early results show that the technique works, Raison said.

"This is one of the first studies of depression treatment that is not directly targeting the brain itself," said Clemens Janssen, one of Raison's graduate students at the UA's John and Doris Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences.

Raison's interest in the link between body temperature and mood was inspired by Tummo meditation techniques, used by Tibetan Buddhists to reach a euphoric state by increasing their body temperature.

Comment: For more on the benefits of infrared heat see: Use Infrared Heat for Pain Relief and Other Health Benefits


Smoking

If smoking is so bad for us, why legalize marijuana?

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Government gives green light to get stoned, and the red light to get thinking.
Regarding "Reefer madness: Why the big rush to legalize pot?" [Viewpoints, Jan. 19]: I've heard on the news and read several articles this past week related to how cigarettes are more addictive than ever. There was a New York Times editorial on Jan 19: "Smoking is worse than you imagined."

Smoking kills even more Americans than previously estimated with 480,000 per year dying from smoking-related illnesses. This costs us between $289 billion and $333 billion in medical care and lost productivity. The article states expectedly that the cause of all the deaths and costs are due to marketing from the tobacco industry freely not the individuals who choose to smoke.

The solution? The FDA should put regulations on all tobacco products. Thanks to the government, they will protect us from ourselves. This in addition to Obamacare, which will for the most part restrict all tobacco products so that the government will save all of those billions of dollars, right?

Comment: Wrong!

But we share the author's skepticism. The whole anti-tobacco/pro-marijuana thing stinks.


Health

Medicaid swells with Obamacare

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More than 6.3 million Americans were deemed eligible for government healthcare plans for the poor since the October 1 launch of President Barack Obama's healthcare law through December, federal officials reported on Wednesday.

The swelling rolls for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) reflect both an expansion of Medicaid under Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA) and what healthcare policy analysts call an "out-of-the-woodwork effect," in which people who heard about Obamacare sought to obtain health insurance and discovered that they had qualified for Medicaid even before the law expanded eligibility.

"We have people who for the first time will have some health security that they never had before," Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said of the Medicaid numbers at the winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C.

It was not clear how much credit goes to the healthcare law, however.

Clipboard

Study Shows: Obamacare is a bad deal for the young, cheaper to be uninsured

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The success of Obamacare largely rests on the shoulders of the estimated 2.7 million "young invincibles" whose premiums are needed to subsidize healthcare costs for others. People in the 18 - 35 age group are needed to create a balanced risk pool.

Now a study shows that coverage through the ACA is just not a good deal for those young adults.

The study, conducted by The American Action Forum, concluded that for 86% of that demographic, ACA coverage is just not worth it:
The ACA's perverse economic incentives are well documented. The law makes health insurance more expensive for many young adults, while at the same time making the decision to go without health coverage exponentially less risky than it previously was. It is impossible to predict how many young adults will ultimately enroll in coverage, but it is clear that many young adult enrollees will be worse off financially if they decide to purchase health insurance.