Health & WellnessS


Cell Phone

Texting a Pain in the Neck, Study Suggests

Andrea Thompson
LiveScience
Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:42 UTC
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Texting long messages can be a pain in the neck - literally.

The repetitive action of working your fingers across the number pad of your cell phone can cause some of the same chronic pain problems previously confined to those who'd spent a lifetime typing, a new study suggests.

The possible connection is particularly worrying given how much teens and young adults - and increasingly those in professional settings - are texting nowadays, said Judith Gold of Temple University in Philadelphia, who carried out one of the first studies on the potential connection.
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Arrow Up

Top 12 Foods for Healthy Immune Response


Dr. Mercola
Wed, 09 Dec 2009 12:48 UTC
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The 2009 flu season is upon us.

Staying well while those around you sniffle and sneeze requires that you extract as much nutrition from your diet as you can, loading up on the foods that pack the biggest nutritional punch.

Avoiding processed foods, grains and sugar will go a long way toward strengthening your immune system. However, you can do even more by selecting foods that are loaded with specific immune boosting nutrients.

Eating a diet rich in the following foods will be far better for your health than loading up on handfuls of supplements, or worse yet, falling victim to vaccines that expose you to health risks far worse than influenza.
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Family

PTSD in Children Linked with Poor Memory Function

Tiffany O'Callaghan
TIME
Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:24 UTC
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© Jacob Langvad/Getty
In children, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may inhibit the function of a brain region associated with memory, according to a new study published online today in the Journal of Pediatric Psychiatry. In an effort to better understand how trauma may impact brain function in children, researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital recruited 27 children and adolescents, 16 of which had previously been diagnosed with PTSD, and 11 who were in the control group. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers took brain scans of the study subjects while they were asked to complete simple memory tasks. As the trial progressed, they discovered that children with PTSD fared far worse on the memory tasks, and showed correspondingly less activity in the hippocampus, the region of the brain involved with creating, storing and processing memories.
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Magnify

L-carnitine might not be the boost for you

Elena Conis
Los Angeles Times
Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:11 UTC
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Boost?: L-carnitine is often put in energy drinks.
Claims stem from studies of vascular and heart disease. But it's unclear if it helps lift the healthy at all.

Read the ingredient label on any energy drink and odds are fairly good that, among other arcane items, you'll come across something called L-carnitine.

Also sold in supplement form, L-carnitine is often touted as a miracle molecule that boosts energy and helps burn fat naturally.

The claims appear to stem largely from studies showing that the molecule may improve endurance and energy in people with heart or vascular disease. But to conclude that it would do the same in healthy people is a big leap, says Dr. Ziv Haskal, professor of radiology and surgery at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.
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Fluoride Causes Premature Births, Brain Degradation, Bone Loss, Cancer and Hormone Disruption

Ethan Huff
NaturalNews
Wed, 09 Dec 2009 04:00 UTC
A recent study conducted by researchers from the State University of New York (SUNY) found that fluoride ingestion may be responsible for causing premature births. Presented to the American Public Health Association at its annual meeting, these findings ratchet up yet another detrimental consequence of ingesting this toxic poison that is added to most American municipal water supplies.

Sodium fluoride, a waste byproduct of the aluminum industry, is touted by most mainstream health bureaucracies as one of the greatest public health achievements ever discovered. The American Dental Association praises the medication of the public through fluoridated municipal water supplies, claiming that it has done wonders to prevent tooth decay. A simple investigation beyond the glaringly false rhetoric, however, reveals the dirty reality behind fluoride and the incredible harm it inflicts upon those who ingest it.

Contrary to popular belief, fluoride is not a natural substance; it is the byproduct of the aluminum and nuclear industries' use of fluorine gas. The Merck Index lists fluoride's primary use as rat and cockroach poison and it is a known carcinogen. It wasn't until the 1950s that the FDA was somehow convinced that the poison allegedly helped protect teeth.
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Nearly One Third of Human Genome Is Involved in Gingivitis, Study Shows


ScienceDaily
Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:00 UTC
Gingivitis, which may affect more than one-half of the U.S. adult population, is a condition commonly attributed to lapses in simple oral hygiene habits. However, a new study shows that development and reversal of gingivitis at the molecular level is apparently much more complicated than its causes might indicate.

Research conducted jointly by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Procter & Gamble (P&G) Oral Care has found that more than 9,000 genes -- nearly 30 percent of the genes found in the human body -- are expressed differently during the onset and healing process associated with gingivitis. Biological pathways associated with activation of the immune system were found to be the major pathways being activated and critical to controlling the body's reaction to plaque build-up on the teeth. Additionally, other gene expression pathways activated during plaque overgrowth include those involved in wound healing, neural processes and skin turnover.

Results of the study are published today in the December 2009 edition of the Journal of Periodontology. This study is the first to successfully identify gene expression and biological pathways involved with the onset and healing process of gingivitis.
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Bacteria Offer Insights into Human Decision Making


PhysOrg
Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:00 UTC
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© Eshel Ben Jacob and Herbert Levine Colonies of billions of Bacillus subtilis bacteria exhibit the complex structures that sometimes form under environmental stress.
Scientists studying how bacteria under stress collectively weigh and initiate different survival strategies say they have gained new insights into how humans make strategic decisions that affect their health, wealth and the fate of others in society.

Their study, published this week in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was accomplished when the scientists applied the mathematical techniques used in physics to describe the complex interplay of genes and proteins that colonies of bacteria rely upon to initiate different survival strategies during times of environmental stress. Using the mathematical tools of theoretical physics and chemistry to describe complex biological systems is becoming more commonplace in the emerging field of theoretical biological physics.

The authors of the new study are theoretical physicists and chemists at the University of California, San Diego's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, the nation's center for this activity funded by the National Science Foundation, and Tel Aviv University in Israel. They say that how genes are turned on and off in bacteria living under conditions of stress not only shed light on how complex biological systems interact, but provide insights for economists and political scientists applying mathematical models to describe complex human decision making.
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Omega-3 Fatty Acids May Reduce Risk of Colon Cancer


ScienceDaily
Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:00 UTC
Long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, primarily found in fish and seafood, may have a role in colorectal cancer prevention, according to results presented at the American Association for Cancer Research Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference, held Dec. 6-9, 2009, in Houston.

"Experimental data have shown benefits of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids in colorectal carcinogenesis, ranging from reduced tumor growth, suppression of angiogenesis and inhibition of metastasis," said Sangmi Kim, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park, N.C. "Our finding of inverse association between dietary intakes of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids and distal large bowel cancer in white participants adds additional support to the hypothesis."

Although experimental and clinical data suggest that long-chain omega-3 fatty acids possess anti-neoplastic properties in the colon, epidemiologic data to date has been inconclusive.
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Pills

Anti-depressants 'can change personality'

Rebecca Smith
Telegraph UK
Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:23 UTC
Anti-depressants really can change someone's personality, researchers find, as patients become more extrovert and less neurotic.

A study in America found patients taking the popular antidepressant paroxetine, also called Seroxat in Britain, were more likely to see a drop in neuroticism and a rise extrovert traits than those receiving talking therapies or a dummy pill.

It had been thought that any changes in personality with the drugs was due to the patient's depression being lifted.

But now it appears the medicine, one of the drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs, can directly affect traits.
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Sherlock

Hidden Sensory System Discovered in the Skin


ScienceDaily
Tue, 08 Dec 2009 04:00 UTC
The human sensory experience is far more complex and nuanced than previously thought, according to a groundbreaking new study published in the December 15 issue of the journal Pain. In the article, researchers at Albany Medical College, the University of Liverpool and Cambridge University report that the human body has an entirely unique and separate sensory system aside from the nerves that give most of us the ability to touch and feel. Surprisingly, this sensory network is located throughout our blood vessels and sweat glands, and is for most people, largely imperceptible.

"It's almost like hearing the subtle sound of a single instrument in the midst of a symphony," said senior author Frank Rice, PhD, a Neuroscience Professor at Albany Medical College (AMC), who is a leading authority on the nerve supply to the skin. "It is only when we shift focus away from the nerve endings associated with normal skin sensation that we can appreciate the sensation hidden in the background."

The research team discovered this hidden sensory system by studying two unique patients who were diagnosed with a previously unknown abnormality by lead author David Bowsher, M.D., Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool's Pain Research Institute. These patients had an extremely rare condition called congenital insensitivity to pain, meaning that they were born with very little ability to feel pain. Other rare individuals with this condition have excessively dry skin, often mutilate themselves accidentally and usually have severe mental handicaps.
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