Health & WellnessS


People

Flashback More Americans Embrace "Feel-Good" Morality, Study Suggests

A majority of Americans base their beliefs and moral decisions on feelings, and reject the idea of absolute truth, according to the results of a study released last month. The Barna Research survey shows that 64 percent of adults and 83 percent of teenagers interviewed for the study believe that truth is always relative to the person and their situation.

Adult respondents who classed themselves as "born-again Christians" were more likely to reject moral relativism, with 32 percent affirming their belief in moral absolutes. But there was little difference in the responses of Christian and non-Christian teenagers: only one in 10 "born-again" teenagers accepted the idea of absolute moral truth, almost the same rate as their non-Christian peers.

"The study indicates that humans left to themselves are not able to find absolutes; they become their own standard of truth," says Seventh-day Adventist theologian Dr. Angel Rodriguez. "Yet social life is not harmonious unless there are absolutes acknowledged by those who are a part of it. Otherwise chaos will reign through selfishness.

Coffee

Coffee Does Little to Protect the Aging Brain

Sorry coffee lovers -- downing a few cups of coffee throughout the day may spark alertness, but it's unlikely to protect the aging brain from mental decline or dementia, according to researchers from Finland.

Some studies have suggested that coffee has a protective effect on brain function in old age, while others have not shown this association.

One of the latest studies on the topic, which appears in the September issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found no association between coffee consumption and declining cognition or dementia scores in either men or women.

Dr. Venla S. Laitala, at the University of Helsinki, and colleagues assessed the coffee drinking habits, as well as other social, demographic, and health data, of a large population of twin pairs who were 50 years old on average.

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After a Stroke, When Seconds Count, Innovative Device from NeuroInterventions Speedily Restores Brain's Blood Flow

A new device from NeuroInterventions, Inc., is designed to minimize brain damage by dramatically speeding the delivery of post-stroke countermeasures.

"Stroke is the third most frequent cause of death, and the number-one cause of permanent disability," says NeuroInterventions President and COO Michele Migliuolo [mil-u-OLO]. "When a clot blocks the flow of oxygen-rich blood in the brain, the 'window' for surgical help is only a few hours wide. Every second can mean a drop in brain function."

So, driven by the emergency-room maxim, "Time is brain," NeuroInterventions has developed groundbreaking technology that enables surgeons to reach and remove clots in much less time than conventional approaches. Dr. Migliuolo will describe the development in a presentation today at AdvaMed 2009, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Room 304, at 10:20 a.m.

"Even after a patient reaches a hospital, it can take up to 60 minutes just to introduce a conventional catheter through the femoral artery and steer it to the site, before you can deal with the clot," he says.

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Learning New Tricks Improves Wiring in the Brain

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© Denis Sinyakov/ReutersRony Gomez of Spain performs during the 4th International Circus Festival in Moscow, late September 15, 2009.
Adults who learn new tricks such as juggling can improve the "wiring" of their brains, British scientists said on Sunday.

The scientists said their research showed newly trained jugglers had better connectivity in parts of the brain involved in movements needed to catch the balls -- and the improvement lasted for weeks, even after they stopped practicing juggling.

"We tend to think of the brain as being static, or even beginning to degenerate, once we reach adulthood," said Heidi Johansen-Berg of Oxford University's department of clinical neurology, whose study was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience on Sunday.

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Study Links Concussions To Brain Disease

60 Minutes Looks At Alarming New Research On The Longterm Effects Of Concussions And Head Trauma

You can't separate violence from football - it's part of the thrill of the game. Players know what they're risking when they hit the field, including injuries such as torn ligaments and broken bones. But what about a blow to the brain? According to the Centers for Disease Control, concussions from sports are an epidemic in this country.

As many as three million sports related concussions happen every year.

And new research shows that their effects can be frighteningly long-lasting, even leading to permanent brain damage and the early onset of dementia. While concussions happen in many sports, most happen in football. They can happen to kids, to the pros, and as we saw recently, to one of today's top college players.

Two weeks ago, everything was going right for Tim Tebow, the best college quarterback in the country. His team, the Florida Gators, was coasting to victory and Tebow seemed invincible, until he took a hit.

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Fortifying Food for Your Brain

Brain
© Julie Notarianni, Krt
Nutrition expert Elizabeth Somer sees a future with more fortified foods - and where our brains remain healthy enough to remember to buy them.

Just knowing how to pronounce docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, should be a pretty good indicator of brain health, right? (Need some help? It's DOH-koh-sah-HEXXA-eh-NOH-ik.) It's enough to say "DHA," and good thing, since we'll probably be hearing more about this tongue twister as research emerges about the link between diet and dementia.

When nutritionist Elizabeth Somer's mother developed Alzheimer's disease years ago, Somer began looking for anything that might give her an edge against a similar fate. Omega-3 fat has been touted as brain food, but she learned it's not just one fat, but three: ALA, EPA and DHA.

ALA may help your heart, and EPA and DHA help your head, with DHA accounting for up to 97 percent of the omega-3 fats in the brain and up to 93 percent of the omega-3 fats in the retina. One study indicates that those with a diet high in DHA may decrease their risk of Alzheimer's disease by as much as 70 percent.

So, in the language of the grocery store aisle, what does this mean?

Newspaper

Food Safety Action: What a Difference Investigative Reporting Makes

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Last Sunday, investigative reporter for the New York Times Michael Moss took a hard look at a hamburger contaminated with e. coli, following the elaborate path it took from multiple cows and slaughterhouses and through various processes to one of the victim's plates, a 22-year old dance instructor, now paralyzed, named Stephanie Smith. The piece was a shocker because it showed just how unaccountable these companies have become in the face of an often powerless and conflicted USDA. The piece is still on the most-emailed list of the NYT website as of this writing, it pushed Tyson into a deal with Costco over testing, and it is even being discussed in Washington, according to a follow-up piece featured today by Moss.

Question

Can You Taste the Fuels In Your Food?

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Amanda Little on the farm.
If you pinned a map of the United States to a dartboard, Kansas would be the bull's-eye. Smack dab in the center of the country, the Sunflower State is one of America's most productive agricultural hotbeds - the fifth-biggest producer of crops and livestock in the country. More than 90 percent of the state consists of farmland endowed thousands of years ago with rich glacial loam. This fertile topsoil is no longer as robust as it once was, having offered up its nutrients season after season, decade after decade, century after century, to produce great bounties of wheat, corn, soybeans, sorghum, hay, and sunflowers. I could almost sense the exhaustion of the land as I drove through the back roads of northeastern Kansas one chilly November morning - past sagging wooden farmhouses silvered by age and weather, barbed-wire fences with listing wooden posts, general stores and swinging-door saloons, a Native American heritage museum commemorating the Kansa tribes that once roamed and tilled these prairies, and mile after desolate mile of denuded farmland.

Binoculars

Where They Grow Our Junk Food

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Dave Ferguson grows mostly corn and soybeans on his 364-hectare farm.
Our reporter went looking for the farms that produce the raw materials for junk food and found that they take up almost half of the cropland in Ontario

Follow the flow of food. That's what any farmer will tell you. Because apples don't grow in supermarkets.

So to get to the root of the exploding obesity epidemic, I went in search of a junk food farm.

Such farms are not so easy to spot. No fields of Dorito bags waving in the breeze, no orchards blooming with soda pop, no soil bursting with 99-cent burgers.

What you do see are vast operations growing the raw materials for junk food: soybeans and corn.

The two crops go into the production of many things: pharmaceuticals, industrial products, animal feed - and inexpensive calories.

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Emotions Misleading When Assessing Danger

'Immediacy bias' means large-scale problems take back burner

A University of Colorado professor who studies emotions found that it's human nature to be more concerned about headline-grabbing dangers, such as an impending terrorist attack, than large-scale, prolonged problems like global warming.

CU psychology professor Leaf Van Boven calls it an "immediacy bias." His newly released study shows people tend to view their immediate emotions as more intense and important than their previous emotions.

Van Boven said the research could be of interest to policymakers and the media, given today's 24-hour news cycle that focuses on the threat of the day and can exacerbate the human trait of focusing on immediate emotions.