Health & WellnessS


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Vitamin B 'Can Rewire Stroke Patients' Brain', Study Finds

Andrew Hough
The Telegraph
Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:30 UTC
Image
© Getty ImagesAmerican researchers found that vitamin B3, or niacin restored a brain's neurological function after a stroke.
Vitamin B could help improve the health of stroke patients, a study has found.

American researchers have found it can "rewire" the brain by improving blood vessels in patients.

Doctors at the Henry Ford Hospital, in Detroit, found that vitamin B3, or niacin - a common water-soluble vitamin - restored a brain's neurological function after a stroke.

Scientists said the findings from the study of rats, which will lead to a similar trial in humans, could result in new low cost treatment for stroke patients.

"If this proves to also work well in our human trials, we'll then have the benefit of a low-cost, easily-tolerable treatment for one of the most neurologically devastating conditions," said Dr Michael Chopp, scientific director of the Henry Ford Neuroscience Institute, who led the study.
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No Good Scientific Evidence Flu Shots Are Effective or Safe for Elders

S. L. Baker
NaturalNews
Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:00 UTC
According to none other than the esteemed health experts of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) web site, "... people 65 and older should get their regular, or 'seasonal', flu vaccine as soon as possible...People age 65 and older are at increased risk for complications from seasonal influenza compared to younger people and are recommended for annual seasonal flu vaccines." If that's not enough to convince you older folks definitely need flu shots, try this proclamation from the National Institutes of Health (NIH): "You should get a flu shot every year if you are 50 or older ..."

It turns out, however, there's no valid scientific evidence to back up these recommendations. In fact, a new study just published in the Cochrane Systematic Review concludes: "Evidence for the safety and efficacy of influenza vaccines in the over 65s is poor, despite the fact that vaccination has been recommended for the prevention of influenza in older people for the past 40 years."

A research team conducted an extensive investigation of studies based on previous vaccine trials.
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House

What's in Household Dust? Don't Ask

Jeffrey Kluger
Time Magazine
Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:38 UTC
Household dust
© Frank Herholdt / GettyHousehold dust holds hidden dangers
It's hard to get too worked up about dust. Yes, it's a nuisance, but it's hardly one that causes us much anxiety - and our language itself suggests as much. We call those clumps of the stuff under the bed dust bunnies after all, not, say, dust vermin.

But there's a higher ick factor to dust than you might think. And there's a science to how it gets around - a science that David Layton and Paloma Beamer, professors of environmental policy at the University of Arizona, are exploring.

Layton and Beamer, whose latest study has been accepted for fall publication in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, knew a lot about their subject even before they set to work. Historically, everyone from chemists to homemakers has tried to figure out just what dust is made of, and the Arizona researchers drew their preliminary data mostly from two studies of household dust conducted in the Netherlands and the U.S. The American survey in particular was a big one, covering six Midwestern states. Layton and Beamer also included a localized study in Sacramento, Calif., that focused particularly on lead contamination. What all those surveys showed was decidedly unappetizing.
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Attention

Doctors Warn About Dangers of Genetically Modified Food

David Gutierrez
Natural News
Thu, 25 Feb 2010 04:35 UTC
The American Academy of Environmental Medicine has warned that the public should avoid genetically modified (GM) foods, stating, "There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation."

A large number of studies and incidents have implicated GM foods in a wide variety of health problems, including accelerated aging, immune dysfunction, insulin disorders, organ damage and reproductive disruption.

For example, female rats fed a diet of GM soy experienced a drastically higher infant death rate, and their surviving infants were smaller and less fertile than the offspring of rats fed on a non-GM soy diet. Male rats fed the GM soy had their testicles change from pink to blue, and the GM soy was also observed to damage the DNA of sperm and embryos. Fertility problems such as abortion, infertility, premature delivery, prolapsed uteri, infant death, and even delivery of unformed infants (bags of water) have been observed in farm animals fed GM cottonseed and corn.
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People

Exercise Reduces Anxiety for the Chronically Ill

Shari Roan
The Los Angeles Times
Tue, 23 Feb 2010 02:47 UTC
Los Angeles - Life is full of worries. When you're battling a chronic illness, it seems almost impossible to escape nagging anxieties. When will I feel better? Will my condition worsen? When can I return to work or school?

But if you exercise regularly, you probably will feel much less anxious - regardless of the status of your illness. In a study published yesterday in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers analyzed data from 40 studies on how exercise affects anxiety. All of the 3,000 study participants were sedentary individuals who had chronic illnesses but were able to exercise in sessions of at least 30 minutes.
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Family

Too Much of a Bad Thing: Internet Lures Kids into Porn Addiction

Paul Knight
Dallas Observer
Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:00 UTC
Ethan Burnett spent a lot of time alone in his bedroom, and that was before he hit puberty.

Being alone was OK for Ethan, because at his desk and his chair in the corner of his room, in front of his computer, he was comfortable. That wasn't the case when Ethan was at school or at church surrounded by other boys and girls his age.

Ethan (names of the teens in this story have been changed) was a gamer, and even at 12, he spent much of his idle time on the Internet. The first time he stumbled across pictures of people having sex, it fit. Like his games, the stream of Internet pornography did not stop, and even though looking at porn and masturbating felt wrong to Ethan, alone in his room, there was no one to stop him.
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Remember Magnesium If You Want to Remember: Synthetic Supplement Improves Memory and Staves Off Age-Related Memory Loss


ScienceDaily
Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:00 UTC
Those who live in industrialized countries have easy access to healthy food and nutritional supplements, but magnesium deficiencies are still common. That's a problem because new research from Tel Aviv University suggests that magnesium, a key nutrient for the functioning of memory, may be even more critical than previously thought for the neurons of children and healthy brain cells in adults.

Begun at MIT, the research started as a part of a post-doctoral project by Dr. Inna Slutsky of TAU's Sackler School of Medicine and evolved to become a multi-center experiment focused on a new magnesium supplement, magnesium-L-theronate (MgT), that effectively crosses the blood-brain barrier to inhibit calcium flux in brain neurons.

Published recently in the scientific journal Neuron, the new study found that the synthetic magnesium compound works on both young and aging animals to enhance memory or prevent its impairment. The research was carried out over a five-year period and has significant implications for the use of over-the-counter magnesium supplements.
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Toxin Does Not Affect MRSA-Induced Pneumonia


ScienceDaily
Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:00 UTC
A group led by Dr. James M. Musser at the Center for Molecular and Translational Human Infectious Diseases Research of The Methodist Hospital Research Institute in Houston, Texas has demonstrated that the cytotoxin Paton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL) does not affect methicillin-resistant Staphlococcus aureus (MRSA)-induced pneumonia.

Their report can be found in the March 2010 issue of The American Journal of Pathology.

Community-associated-MRSA causes a wide spectrum of infections, ranging from mild skin problems to fatal invasive diseases. MRSA spreads rapidly from initial topical symptoms to affect vital organs, often resulting in widespread infection, toxic shock, and 'flesh eating' pneumonia. MRSA is resistant to traditional anti-staphylococcal beta-lactam antibiotics and is therefore much more difficult to treat.
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Reversing Remodeling in Chronic Inflammation


ScienceDaily
Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:00 UTC
Dr. Li-Chin Yao and colleagues of the University of California, San Francisco, CA have discovered that remodeling of lymphatic vessels may be more persistent than blood vessel remodeling as a result of inflammation. These results are presented in the March 2010 issue of The American Journal of Pathology.

Vessel remodeling plays a pathogenic role in a number of chronic inflammatory diseases, including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease, and skin lesions in psoriasis. Reversal of such remodeling could prevent long-term complications from these diseases.

Yao et al used mice infected with the bacteria Mycoplasma pulmonis to induce vessel remodeling as a result of inflammation; these mice were then treated with the anti-inflammatory corticosteroid dexamethasone to examine the reversibility of vessel remodeling. In the absence of dexamethasone, both blood and lymphatic vessel remodeling occurred, whereas concurrent dexamethasone treatment prevented this remodeling. In contrast, dexamethasone treatment after two weeks of remodeling reversed blood vessel changes but not lymphangiogenesis; it also decreased the number of lymphocytes but not neutrophils and macrophages. Thus, lymphatic remodeling may be more persistent than blood vessel remodeling and may play a larger role in future inflammatory episodes.
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In Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder, Life Is Not Black and White


ScienceDaily
Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:00 UTC
Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder affect tens of millions of individuals around the world. These disorders have a typical onset in the early twenties and in most cases have a chronic or recurring course. Neither disorder has an objective biological marker than can be used to make diagnoses or to guide treatment.

Findings in Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier suggest that electroretinography (ERG), a specialized measure of retinal function might be a useful biomarker of risk for these disorders, and retinal deficits may contribute to the perceptual problems associated with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Over the past several years, research has suggested that cognitive impairments in schizophrenia might be linked to early stages of visual perception. This work is now drawing attention to the function of the retina, the component of the eye that detects light. Within the retina, rods are light sensors that respond to black and white, but not to color. Rods are particularly important for maintaining vision under conditions of low light and for detecting stimuli at the periphery of vision. Cones are light sensors that detect color and perceive stimuli at the center of vision.
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